The Quiet Girl ‘An Cailín Ciúin’ (2022) Dir. Colm Bairéad

Great review!

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Of all the legal thrillers I’ve seen, Anatomy of a Fall feels the most genuine and relatable. While there are big revelations about the people involved and technically, they come suddenly, this isn’t a story of accidental confessions, surprise witnesses, or even earth-shattering pieces of evidence. Something happened while there were no witnesses present. The court must decide whether a crime was committed or not based on the evidence. That's it. In the process, the film peels back layers to reveal the truth and half-truths that comprise relationships.

Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is woken from a nap by her son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner). Her husband (his father), Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), has fallen from their roof and died. She insists it must have been an accident - he was working on the roof when she went to sleep. The authorities are not convinced and she is indicted on charges of murder.

There’s a particular line in the film that summarizes what a nightmare this situation is. It's something like “What you hear, it’s just a small part of the whole”. As we're presented with testimonies from experts and people who knew Samuel, as more evidence is brought forth, we're given a version of Sandra and Samuel's relationship. In a way, it’s not even Sandra who’s on trial; it’s her marriage. If she and her husband fought a lot, if someone was unfaithful, if someone was planning on leaving, then it probably means Sandra killed him. It’s not even if the whole relationship was bad; it’s if it was bad recently. We're not talking about "a rough patch" or something they could've overcome. This fragment is now the whole.

In a way, the trial is a matter of life and death. The jury is deliberating whether Sandra killed her husband. It’s also about an intimate subject you could call mundane in the grand scheme of things: two people’s marriage. Drawing a conclusion from the snippets presented is an unfair way to judge their relationship but it’s also the best way to see what it was like because you get the “highlight reel”. By the time this film is over, you feel like you know these people so well that they're no longer characters in a film. Then, you remember that quote from earlier and you second-guess everything. Do you really know? That sentiment is amplified by the revelations that come up during the trial. They’re not the sort of bombshells you’re used to seeing in these legal dramas, but they’re just as earth-shattering and revelatory.

The film is as absorbing as it is because of the excellent script by Justine Triet (who also directs) and Arthur Harari and the performances. There are so many character moments in Anatomy of a Fall that I see it as the kind of film you would come back to in the future, despite so much of the suspense coming from the uncertainty of the final verdict. Even some of the minor characters I keep thinking back to, like the two forensic analysts who bring to the stand completely different interpretations of three drops of blood found outside. It makes you wonder if they - despite having no investment in this narrative whatsoever - somehow made up their minds about the case anyway and brought in their biases. Why else would they be so combative? Many characters are deliberately unlikable, but not in a way that makes them villains. Wait. Did I dislike them because of who they really are, or because of the way I perceived them based on the evidence presented? hmm.

Anatomy of a Fall is a film of complex emotions. There are so many details in the case, the way the characters behave or relate to each other that you forget everything else around you. The performances are excellent, as is the script. You've never been put on trial for murder before but you'll know what it must feel like once the end credits roll. (March 27, 2024)

The village needs sacrifices. That's how it's survived. ヴィレッジ VILLAGE (2023), writ. & dir. by Michihito Fujii

Roma (2018), dir. by Alfonso Cuarón

Y'all, I just watched the Babadook on Netflix and I took from it a message I probably wasn’t intended to. Slight spoilers below.

With everything Amelia deals with, the depression from her losses, and everything that came with the Babadook, I could relate.

I don’t have a literal demon inside or around me, but when I look at it from the perspective that Amelia was dealing with significant mental illness, it makes sense to me. You can’t get rid of the Babadook, of mental illness.

But you can live with it. You can learn to control it, overpower it. To see the symptoms of mental illness flare up like the Babadook did and scream in its face to f*ck off.

Mental illness is like the Babadook. It can scare you, bring you horrifying hallucinations and prevent sleep and cause you to hurt the people you love because you can’t project the hatred you feel for something invisible onto anything that isn’t invisible. It brings you voices and the more you deny it, the stronger it becomes.

But like the Babadook, mental illness can be controlled. It can be kept on a leash and treated like what it is - a burden. It can be handled and it can be weathered through.

I don’t know how many others like me will see this and relate, but all I can say is that when your symptoms flare up and present themselves in a scary way, treat them like the Babadook. Don’t let them into your head and don’t let them make you feel like you have to be hopeless. Like you have to be afraid and tell yourself ‘It’s not real’ even if you don’t believe it.

Look those symptoms in the face like Amelia did the Babadook and scream. Even mentally, even out loud. Scream. Tell it to f*ck off, and tell it that YOU’RE the boss, and that sure, you’re afraid. You cry. You show fear and emotion. But that’s because you’re not afraid to do that. To expose your vulnerability to this thing and still be able to roar at it. To shrink it down to size and control it.

Idk, I’m sorry for this rant. But I just connect to this movie. My mental illness doesn’t define or control me. It’s the Babadook. I may not be able to get rid of it, but I’ll be damned if I let it hurt me or those I love. I can live just fine with it.

If you relate to this or know someone who will, could you pretty please reblog this?

a man of culture 🫖

Kazu-kun & Chizuru

I talked about Kazu-kun last time, and now I wanted to talk about how his character mirrors Chizuru's.

They are both close friends of Sakuko who fall in love with her. Which obviously is a problem since Sakuko is aroace and not interested in dating her friends.

And I want to talk about how they are almost perfect opposite of each other.

Kazu-kun struggles a lot to understand how Sakuko can be uninterested in love, and gets pushy about it (refusing to let her break up with him, moving in and asking invasive questions). Chizuru has known (and accepted) for a long while that Sakuko isn’t interested in love and therefore that her feelings would never be reciprocated.And because the show already has Kazu-kun to explore the amatonormativity-is-a-bitch side of things, Chizuru gets to just be an example of a very common tragedy of human relationship — sometimes you just don’t want the same thing, and it’s sad but there is nothing to do about it.

Kazu-kun is very clear about his feelings for Sakuko, to the point of making them everyone else’s problem. Chizuru hides her feelins for Sakuko to avoid bothering her with them, to the point nobody knows they even exist.

Kazu-kun does everything he can to stay at Sakuko’s side, including forcing his way into moving in with her and refusing to let her break up properly. Chizuru cuts off contact, moves away and changes her number.

The first thing I want to talk about is how this is so very clearly a gendered dynamic.

Kazu-kun, has I’ve said already, starts off as a very Entitled Straight Man™. And that informs everything he does in how he treats his feelings to Sakuko. He expects his feelings to be returned the same way most straight men are taught they’re owned women’s attention. He wants to be present in her life and he wants answers to his questions and he has very little qualms about how he gets what he wants, because once again men are taught they deserve women but rarely to care how their actions make others feel.

On the other hand, Chizuru is not only a woman, but she’s also a shappic woman in love with another woman. Both these things heavily influence how she deals with her feelings for Sakuko.

Firstly, she’s a woman. She has most likely been taught not to bother anyone with her feelings, while learning to be mindful of other people’s feelings. She’s also aware that unwanted romantic attention can hurt, in a way most men aren’t. She’s of course especially aware of it in relation to Sakuko, since she’s known her for years and knows very well Sakuko isn’t interested in love with anyone.

Secondly, she’s a woman in love with another woman. And like a lot of other sapphic women, she’s afraid of her attraction to women being invasive, dirty, or predatory. It’s particularly true here because Sakuko is a long-time friend, so attraction can feel like it’s “tainting” an otherwise “pure” friendship, or “invading” with “dirty feelings” what was supposed to be a safe space; and because Sakuko is AroAce, which in this perspective makes her even more “pure”, and therefore makes the “stain” even more unforgivable.

Hence why she runs away and cut all ties with Sakuko — when Kazu-kun doesn’t, even though he’s facing the same unrequited-love situation.

So yes, the dynamic between Kazu-kun and Chizuru is 100% a gendered dynamic. They could have had the same parallels with two men, but it would have felt and read very differently.

The second thing is: in the end, the both hurt Sakuko.

Chizuru, by desperately trying not to impose her feelings on Sakuko, still imposes her decision to leave and cut ties. Sakuko is hurt when their plans to live together fall through, worried when she can’t reach Chizuru, and hurt again when Chizuru explains why she cut ties and that they can’t go back to being friends (yet).

Kazu-kun drags her into a relationship she doesn’t actually want, then refuses to break up with her, then invades her privacy. Sakuko ends up needing to be the one to officially break up which hurts her too (though Kazu-kun accepts it with grace and keeps being her friend).

Even though they had opposite ways to deal with their feelings for Sakuko, they both did it in a way that worked for themselves without asking Sakuko’s input, and ended up hurting her in the process.

It’s the illustration of a very old fear of mine, that I believe is fairly common among aros : loosing friends because they fell in love with me. It’s not a fear exclusive to aros; it’s the driving tension in almost all friends-to-lovers stories; but it’s very prevalent in the aro community for obvious reasons.

It’s also an example of how amatonormativity fucks up relationships. Both Kazu-kun and Chizuru are first acting under the idea that romantic love comes first and is more important than anything else — that it justifies breaking up a very close friendship with no explanation or invading someone else’s privacy.

But thirdly, having two parallels situations also allows for nuances.

I have talked a lot about amatonormativity in these analysis, for very good reasons (such as it being the show’s main theme). But it’s not the end-all be-all. Even in a perfect society with no stupid rules and expectations, people’s feelings would still be messy and hurt sometimes. And having two different relationships to explore the friend-falls-in-love-with-your-aro-ass-what-do-you-do allows the show a real space for nuances.

Sometimes deconstruction works. Sometimes you take a step back and realize most of your problems came from assumptions and rules that have no real basis, and you’re able to work through them.

Kazu-kun does come to the realization that things can be done differently, which is shown when he asks Sakuko to be in a QPR with him instead of a romantic relationship. It’s him realizing that while their feelings may never be the same, they could make a relationship work if they focus on what they actually want to do together — for example, they enjoy karaoke together as new colleagues, as lovers, and as situationship-it’s-complicated-we’re-maybe-on-a-break. And when Sakuko refuses, he’s the one reassuring that they can stay friends, because he now understands that they can keep enjoying karaoke as friends.

But sometimes feelings are just messy. Sometimes even once the air is cleared you still hurt. Sometimes you don’t feel and want the same things and no amount of deconstruction or compromise will solve that.

Chizuru is still hurting that her feelings aren’t and will never be reciprocated. And the show allows her that. She hurt Sakuko, yes, but the situation is unfair to both of them. They don’t want the same thing and it’s hurting both of them and no one is really in the wrong.

Could Chizuru have dealt with the situation better? Obviously yes. Is there amatonormativity (and probably some internalized homophobia) at play? Yes of course. But even outside of all that, there are still tangled, hurting feelings.

And because the show already has Kazu-kun to explore the amatonormativity-is-a-bitch side of things, Chizuru gets to just be an example of a very common tragedy of human relationships — sometimes you just don’t want the same thing, and it’s sad but there is nothing to do about it.

And Chizuru does say that she wants to go back to cutting Sakuko’s hair, to be her friend. But she needs the space to sort her feelings first.

honestly I love ash from fantastic mr fox so much because sometimes you have a parent who’s so impressive you’re never gonna live up to them and it’s all you want.

i’d rather be an athlete he is so me wanting to be as smart as my dad lol

and it’s not necessarily anything to do with them, you just want to be worthy of being their kid and others might not see you as?

which makes it so fucking emotional when ash and mr fox have that conversation- i’m so glad he was you

Salt of the Earth (1954), dir. Herbert J. Biberman

I love this film sm 💚

誰先愛上他的 | DEAR EX 2008 | dir. Mag Hsu, Hsu Chih-yen

disappointed by farewell my concubine tbh!