MOVIE DIARY 2023: I'M THE KING AROUND HERE AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!
No guest this time, but I think I’ll have at least one on Thursday! Today I’m writing about two movies I really liked, but before I get into that, I just now remembered to let all you MOVIE DIARY 2023 readers know that I am open to any and all sponsorship opportunities! It worked really well back in MOVIE DIARY 2018 when I was sponsored by Levi’s and Porsche, brands that really got a huge boost thanks to their sponsorship of MOVIE DIARY 2018. You’ve heard of Levi’s and Porsche. If you have connections to big brands that will give me money, hop into the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord and get me in the room!
Please Baby Please (2022) - dir. Amanda Kramer
To be honest I am wary about writing about something as “camp” because I don’t know that I possess a solid, working definition of it, despite having read and reread that one Sontag essay. For me, it’s one of those things where I feel like I know it when I see it, and Please Baby Please certainly looks the part. It’s great, I loved this, it’s one of the craziest movies I’ve ever seen. Watching this felt like staying up all night, sweating out a fever. Visually, it’s very playful. It has kind of a 70s does 50s look, but with much more aggressive and bold lighting and set design. I loved the horny neon stylization of each set. It felt like they took that sort of peak Riverdale-era bisexual lighting aesthetic and ran with it, pushing it even further, making it even more wild, sexy, and gay. The look of this movie is so overwhelming and so overpowering; it immediately sweeps you up into this heightened, campy world.
The story follows Arthur (Harry Melling) and Suze (Andrea Riseborough), a young couple who has just witnessed a murder on the stoop of their apartment building. The murder awakens an obsession in each of them, upending their square, bourgeois lifestyles. Arthur begins fixating on Teddy (Karl Glusman), one of the gang members who murdered their neighbor, and it seems to trigger a sexual awakening in Arthur. Meanwhile, Suze begins to fixate on the thrill of violence, becoming more and more domineering and reckless as an act of liberation from conventional femininity. The whole movie is sort of an ongoing conversation about gender, gender roles, men, women, sex, and violence, and it’s done in a very bombastic, theatrical way. Everyone is laying bare their feelings about who they are and how they fit or how they’re expected to fit or how they don’t fit in society, but the heavy stylization and the over the top theatricality help prevent it from feeling too didactic.
I think one of the things I liked best about this movie is how the characters’ thoughts on gender, sex, et al, are in flux. Suze and Harry begin in a kind of state of confusion about how who they are expected to be conflicts with how they feel about themselves inside. Arthur laments how “the world of man is one of comparison and measurement,” and how he’s constantly pressured to think about whether he’s enough of a man. Suze chafes against the idea that men have the power to act however they please. As the movie progresses we spend more time with their thoughts and that state of vulnerable confusion becomes more a purposeful state of fluidity. I think as Suze begins to embrace her own strength and the idea of violence, there’s a part of her that resents Arthur for not taking advantage of the power afforded to him as a man, but that resentment wanes as Arthur becomes more self actualized by embracing his queerness. There’s a scene where an acquaintance of Suze’s, Billy (Cole Escola), approaches Suze and Arthur at a nightclub. The three discuss what everyone is always discussing in this movie, gender roles and relationships. Billy pointedly wonders aloud why Suze and Arthur are together, then Billy scoffs as Suze weakly explains that it’s because they love each other. Arthur throughout the movie also insists that he loves Suze, but as he wrestles with his identity, he amends that to “I love you for now.” I think that they do love each other, and maybe Billy is scoffing because the way that Arthur and Suze are together, in a conventional monogamous relationship, is obviously not working for them. It’s only until later in the movie when Arthur fully acknowledges his feelings for Teddy that we see Arthur happy, and when Suze sees this, she’s happy too. It’s subversion on top of subversion on top of subversion, and while it can read as very dense and complex (or “messy,” if you’re being ungenerous), it’s also really viscerally and immediately thrilling to watch the characters getting drawn into all of this, eventually becoming and accepting their true, queer selves. The movie ends with Arthur, Suze, and Teddy in a happy throuple, which seems to be the relationship that allows all of them to be loved and to be who they truly are. Good for them!
First Cow (2020) - dir. Kelly Reichardt
I really had no idea what I was getting into this movie, but I loved it. “Cookie” (John Magaro), a down on his luck cook for hire has a chance meeting with with King Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant who has come to the American frontier to make his fortune. When the two of them hear that a cow is being brought to the home of Chief Factor (Toby Jones), the wealthiest man in their frontier town, King Lu suggests sneaking onto Factor’s property and taking some of the cow’s milk so that Cookie can use it to make some biscuits. They steal the milk by night, Cookie makes some great biscuits, and King Lu has the idea to sell Cookie’s baked goods to the fur trappers that frequent their little town. Cookie’s wares are an instant hit, which means King Lu and Cookie have to go out every night to steal the cow’s milk so that Cookie can keep baking and King Lu can keep selling.
First off, very amusing that this movie is partly about 1820s hustle culture, but even more hilarious that it’s a Kelly Reichardt slow cinema hustle culture movie. Reichardt’s deliberate, methodical pace and lingering style really lends itself well to this time and setting. Things back then moved a lot slower, and you can feel that in this movie. Tracking down your food was a full time job. And then on top of that you want to make biscuits to sell at scale? It took fucking forever to make biscuits just for yourself and your buddy. You gotta gather up all the ingredients, you gotta steal milk from the cow, you gotta mix all that up and then put that in the big heavy cast iron pan and set it in the fire. And that literally took all night. It’s interesting to think about the pacing of the past, and it’s cool to actually see that reflected in this movie. If there’s one director today who’s not afraid to slow things down and just really spend some time with a person doing their little tasks, it’s Kelly Reichardt.
King Lu’s pushy entrepreneurship is kind of the engine that keeps this movie going forward, but more than my facetious hustle culture label, this movie is about a particularly American feeling of possibility and opportunity and the expectation of self determination. We see that in the obvious way of King Lu and Cookie selling to the fur trappers, the fur trappers who themselves are out there to make a buck, the men who’ve traveled out west because they’ve heard there’s gold out there just waiting for someone to take it, but we also see it in the land itself. The unspoiled landscapes of 1820s Oregon are beautifully shot. Reichardt shows us these gorgeous, lush forests that have not yet been blighted by the destructive touch of mass industrialization. It’s still a land of plenitude, offering up its riches to anyone determined enough to take advantage of them. There’s a part where King Lu and Cookie are walking back to their shack and King Lu is just casually picking up dead squirrels from the traps he’s placed along the path. It’s difficult to get your food, but it never seems like it’s a problem. The land will provide if you’re smart enough to work with it.
First Cow captures perhaps one of the last periods in American history when it still felt like the promise of America was still real and attainable by anyone brave enough to believe it. You can see why these characters have all traveled so far to be here, but you also get the sense that this feeling of possibility will not last long. More settlers will come in, and entitled rich men like Chief Factor will swoop in and claim land and resources that they haven’t worked for, all in the name of civilization, Manifest Destiny, and other selfish ideas of ownership that are at odds with the nature of this land. Men like Chief Factor will eventually come in and poison this place for their own fortune, but for now men like King Lu and Cookie know that this could be a last chance to build a better life for themselves and be in a position to decide their own destiny.
Links
MOVIE DIARY special guest Kyle Amato interviewed Amanda Kramer about Please Baby Please last year! It’s a very good interview.
I really liked this one on Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004), particularly the writer’s point about how hollow the idea of Crazy Rich Asians (2018)-style “representation” can feel today. Honestly, it’s time we all revisit Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), Justin Lin had it all figured out.
Join the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord and let’s talk more about some of the good Asian representation. We can talk about the bad Asian representation too if you want, I famously love to complain.