Movies
Relying on beauty
New Haynes drama ‘Carol’ lovely but reserved
“Carol,” the latest shimmering masterwork from openly gay director Todd Haynes, is like a cinematic Fabergé egg. It’s stunning to look at, radiating light in all directions, but it’s also a little brittle and untouchable. It’s definitely a must-see movie, but it doesn’t quite reach the sublime standard Haynes set with his previous movie, “Far From Heaven.”
Like it, “Carol” tells the story of a forbidden love using the vibrant palette of 1950’s Technicolor romances. But, unlike “Far From Heaven’s” cinematic roots, “Carol’s” pedigree is literary. It’s based on the 1952 lesbian romance “The Price of Salt” by bisexual author Patricia Highsmith, who also wrote the homoerotic thrillers “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Strangers on a Train.” Highsmith’s semi-autobiographical novel was remarkable for not killing off any of its queer characters. Instead, the novel closes with the tantalizing and groundbreaking possibility that the lesbian lovers will reunite and build a life together.
Phyllis Nagy’s solid adaptation of the book retains the positive ending of the Highsmith novel, along with the passionate depiction of the physical relationship between the two women, something which is sadly still all too rare in mainstream Hollywood movies. The title character is Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a wealthy Manhattan socialite who is battling for custody of her daughter Rindy as she divorces her staid husband Harge.
Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), an aspiring photographer, is working as a department store clerk when she meets Carol, who is buying a Christmas present for her daughter. Carol leaves her supple leather gloves lying on the counter, and the two begin a passionate relationship when Therese arranges for their return.
Blanchett’s performance as Carol is stunning, but her crystalline manner rarely catches fire. Her languid beauty is mesmerizing (How could Therese ever resist her? How could Harge bear to lose her?), but she all too frequently remains controlled and aloof.
One stunning exception occurs when Carol and Harge meet with their divorce lawyers. Carol eloquently pleads for civility in their new relationship. “We’re not ugly people,” she says. The moment throbs with raw emotion; it’s a complicated primal plea for decency and dignity and respect and tolerance. The movie might have reached untapped depths if only Haynes and Blanchett allowed Carol a few more moments that shattered the character’s lovely façade and laid bare the submerged passions that simmer beneath.
There is also something remote about Rooney Mara’s performance as Therese. Mara (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Social Network”) creates a compelling character, but her Therese only ignites intermittently, most notably when she is behind the lens of her camera. Perhaps what Therese needs is a more clearly defined antagonist.
Blanchett and Mara are given excellent support by Sarah Paulson’s superb performance as Abby Gerhard, Carol’s best friend and former lover. Providing steadfast sympathy and solid support, her character helps stabilize the story, just as Paulson (“American Horror Story”) helps anchor the film.
“Carol” always looks splendid and the décor is flawless. Haynes and his wonderful design team work together seamlessly to capture the glamorous and gritty period detail, nicely contrasting Carol’s wealthy surroundings with Therese’s working-class environs. Cinematographer Edward Lachman’s Technicolor palette is rich and revelatory, highlighting the fine work of the visual team. Composer Carter Burwell’s lush score adds further depth and momentum to the film.
Todd Haynes brings all of these pieces together with a firm hand. His sense of pacing is as assured as his sense of style. But unfortunately “Carol” only occasionally fulfills its great promise.
Movies
A rising filmmaker triumphs with sassy and sublime ‘Anora’
It’s the best film of the year so far
When filmmaker Sean Baker chose to shoot an entire feature film – “Tangerine” (2015) – using only iPhones, he caught the attention of film enthusiasts and turned it into his breakthrough. For LGBTQ audiences, however, what felt much more groundbreaking was that Baker had made a film about trans sex workers on the “mean streets” of Hollywood, cast real trans women to play them, and depicted them with as much humanity as the cis/het protagonists in any mainstream movie.
It really wasn’t much of a bold leap for Baker, who had from the beginning centered his movies around people from marginalized, largely stigmatized or disregarded communities. A story about transgender sex workers was a logical next step, and the years since have seen him continue in the same vein; he has publicly advocated for decriminalization and respect for sex workers and repeatedly offered up compassionate treatment of their stories in his work – such as 2017’s “The Florida Project,” arguably his most visible success so far.
In his latest film – “Anora,” now in limited release after a premiere at Cannes 2024 and a win of the festival’s prestigious Palm d’Or prize – that undercurrent in his creative identity may have manifested its most fully realized bloom.
The title character, who goes by the more American-sounding “Ani” (Mikey Madison), is an in-demand erotic dancer at a popular Brooklyn club, and she’s the walking definition of a seasoned “pro.” Even so, when Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) – a wealthy Russian oligarch’s son in America on a student visa – shows up at the club, she finds herself in uncharted territory. Smitten, he whisks her into a world of endless parties and unthinkable wealth – and when he impetuously proposes to her during an impromptu trip to Las Vegas, she embraces the chance for a “Cinderella story” and accepts.
Their wedded bliss proves short-lived when the tabloid gossip reaches Ivan’s parents in Russia. No sooner has the couple returned to Brooklyn than a trio of family “operatives” (Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Yura Borisov) stages a clumsy home invasion to take control of the situation, with orders from the top to have the marriage annulled immediately. The young groom, fearing his father will pull the plug on his free-wheeling American lifestyle and force him to return to Russia, flees the scene – leaving Ani to fend for herself, and ultimately leading her into an unlikely (and volatile) alliance with her supposed “kidnappers” as they attempt to track him down in the wilds of Brooklyn.
According to press notes, “Anora” began as an effort by Baker to produce a vehicle for Karagulian, a respected indie actor of Russian-Armenian heritage who has appeared in every one of his movies to date. He developed the story with the idea of the “home invasion” sequence as a centerpiece that transforms the narrative from edgy romance to character-driven “chase” adventure – and after casting Madison (previously best known for her regular role in TV’s “Better Things”) as Ani, decided to craft the story around her emotional journey.
It was a fortuitous choice, supplemented by the filmmaker’s talent for making all his characters – even the antagonists – into relatable figures with whom we cannot help but empathize. No one is presented as a one-dimensional menace, but rather just another struggling human caught up in thankless circumstances and trying to rise to the occasion; this is hardly a surprising approach from Baker, oft-praised for the humanism reflected in his work, but in “Anora,” that egalitarian perspective makes for a dynamic that both heightens and undercuts the inherent tension. While the threat of violence may hover over the film’s second half like a patiently circling vulture, we recognize that none of the involved players desires such an outcome, and their resultant ineffectiveness adds a winning layer of comedic irony. It also helps his movie to deepen as it goes, and by the time he brings “Anora” home, it has transcended the genres from which it samples to leave us with a bittersweet satisfaction that feels infinitely more authentic than the “Pretty Woman” fantasy toward which it hints in the beginning.
It would be an affront to reveal much about how things play out, except to say that its final scene delivers a profoundly resonant impact which we understand without having to hear a word of dialogue; it’s the payoff earned by two hours of flawless performances from a cast palpably attuned to each other, guided by a cinematic master whose gift for bringing out the best in his collaborators has helped to make him one of the most unequivocally acclaimed American filmmakers of our era.
As seamless a group effort as it is, Madison’s Ani – fierce, determined, and unwilling to give up any agency over her life – is the lynch-pin, so much a force to be reckoned with that we somehow never doubt she will come out on top of this harrowing crisis, yet at the same time navigates around a layer of vulnerability that reminds us just how much like the rest of us she is. While neither she nor any of the film’s characters is queer, there is something about her – her refusal to be defined or stigmatized for who she is, perhaps, or her outsider status in a culture where conformity to traditional rules and class hierarchies is the prime directive – which makes her feel like “one of us,” an outcast thumbing her nose at those who would dismiss or decry her over how she lives her life. It’s a tour-de-force performance, and “Anora” hinges on its power.
She’s supported by a universally superb ensemble. Special mention goes to Eydelshteyn, whose Ivan has an irresistible charm that helps us believe Ani’s decision to trust him and keeps us from judging him too harshly for his inevitable callowness; Karagulian and Tovmasyan, as the chief and second banana (respectively) of the hapless henchmen who attempt to intimidate the young newlyweds into submission, both embody decidedly ordinary men trying to stay in control despite being hopelessly out of their depth, a source for both much-needed humor and unexpected empathy; but it’s Borisov”s Igor who becomes the film’ most compelling figure – the “muscle” of the home invasion crew whose outward thuggishness hides a much more thoughtful approach to life than anyone around him might be capable of seeing, and who establishes himself in the third act as the film’s grounding emotional force.
Of course, Baker’s knack for creating a “wild ride” of a film (populated by people we probably wouldn’t want to hang out with in real life) plays a big part in making this one a sexy (often explicitly) and entertaining movie as well as a deeply engaging, challenging piece of cinema, and the gritty, ‘70s-evocative cinematography from Drew Daniels only heightens the experience. It’s one of those rare films that, even though it is crafted with excellence from every contributor, somehow manages still to be greater than the sum of its parts.
It’s our pick for the best film of the year so far, and while it might be too soon for us to proclaim “Anora” as Sean Baker’s masterpiece, it’s certainly tempting to do so.
Movies
‘Beauty, beauty, look at you!”: 50 years of ‘Female Trouble’
Celebrating John Waters’s lovably grotesque black comedy
It’s funny – and by funny, we mean ironic – how things that were once on the fringes of our culture, experienced by few and appreciated by even fewer, become respectable after they’ve been around for half a century or more. The Blade herself can probably attest to that.
Cheap, self-deprecating one-liners aside, there’s something to celebrate about the ability to survive and thrive for decades despite being mostly ignored by the mainstream “tastemakers” of our society – which is why, in honor of the 50th anniversary of its release, we can’t help but take an appreciative look back at John Waters’s arguable masterpiece, “Female Trouble,” which debuted in movie theaters on Oct. 11, 1974 and was promptly dismissed and forgotten by most of American society.
Waters had already made his breakthrough with 1972’s “Pink Flamingos,” which more or less helped the “Midnight Movie” become a counterculture touchstone of the seventies and eighties while making his star (and muse) Glenn Milstead – aka Divine – into an underground sensation. Naturally, expectations for this follow-up were high among his already growing cult following, who were hungry for more of his gleefully transgressive anarchy. But while it certainly delivered what they craved, it would have been hard for any movie to surpass the sensation caused by the latter, which had already broken perhaps the ultimate onscreen taboo by ending with a scene of Divine’s character eating a freshly deposited dollop of dog feces. Though “Female Trouble” offered plenty of its own hilariously shocking (and occasionally revolting) thrills, it had no standout “WTF” moment of its own to “top” that one. Subsequently, the curious mainstream, who were never going to be Waters fans anyway, lost interest.
For his true audience, however, it was anything but a let-down. After all, it featured most of the same outrageous cast members and doubled down on the ferociously radical camp that had made “Flamingos” notorious even among the “straight” (as in “square”) crowd; and while it maintained the bargain basement “guerilla” style the director had perfected throughout his early years of DIY filmmaking in Baltimore, it nevertheless displayed a savvy for cinematic craft that allowed Waters to both subvert and pay homage to the old-school Hollywood movies his (mostly) queer fans had grown up loving – and making fun of – just like him. It was quickly embraced, joining “Flamingos” on art house double bills across the U.S. and helping the Waters cult to grow until he finally won the favor of the masses with his more socially palatable “Hairspray” in 1988.
Fifty years later, there is little doubt that “Female Trouble” has displaced “Flamingos” as Waters’s quintessential work. Riding high on the heels of the latter, the director had both a bolstered self-confidence and an assured audience awaiting his next movie, and he outdid himself by creating an ambitious and breathtakingly grotesque black comedy that frequently feels like we’re watching an actual crime being committed on film. Ostensibly framed as a “cautionary tale” of “juvenile delinquency,” it follows the life story of Dawn Davenport (Divine), who abandons social conformity once and for all when her parents fail to give her the black cha-cha heeled shoes she wanted for Christmas. Running away from home, she quickly becomes an unwed mother, leading her to a life of crime as she tries to support her unruly and ungrateful daughter Taffy (Hilary Taylor, later Waters stalwart Mink Stole). Things seem to turn around when she is accepted as a client at the exclusive “Le Lipstique” beauty salon, where owners Donald and Donna Dasher (David Lochery and Mary Vivian Pearce) take a particular interest in her, and she marries star hairdresser Gater (Michael Potter) despite the objections of his doting Aunt Ida (Edith Massey), who wants him to “turn Nelly” and avoid the “sick and boring life” of a heterosexual.
From there, Waters’s absurdly melodramatic saga enters the realm of pure lunacy. Dawn’s marriage inevitably fails, and she falls under the influence of the Dashers, who use her as an experiment to prove their theory that “Crime equals Beauty” and get her hooked on shooting up liquid eyeliner; Gater leaves for Detroit to pursue a career in the “auto in-DUS-try”, and his doting Aunt Ida (Edith Massey) disfigures Dawn’s face by dousing it with acid; Taffy goes on a quest to find her deadbeat dad and ends up stabbing him to death before joining the Hare Krishna movement; and things culminate in a murderous nightclub performance by the now-thoroughly deranged Dawn, which earns her a date with the electric chair for the film’s literally “shocking” finale.
It would be easy to rhapsodize over the many now-iconic highlights of “Female Trouble” – some of our favorites are its hilarious early scenes of Dawn’s life as a high school delinquent, the Christmas morning rampage in which she destroys her parents’ living room like Godzilla on a bender in Tokyo, “Bad Seed”-ish Taffy’s torment of her mother via jump rope rhymes and car crash re-enactments on the living room furniture, Aunt Ida’s persistent attempts to set up Gater on a “boy date,” and the master stroke of double-casting Divine as the low-life mechanic who fathers Taffy and thereby allows him to literally fuck himself onscreen – but every Waters fan has a list of their own.
Likewise, we could take a scholarly approach, and point out the “method” in the madness by highlighting themes or cultural commentaries that might be observed, such as the film’s way of ridiculing the straight world’s view of queer existence by presenting it to them in an over-the-top caricature of their own narrative tropes, or its seeming prescience in spoofing pop culture’s obsession with glamour, beauty, and toxic-behavior-as-entertainment decades before the advent and domination of “reality” TV – but those things have been said many times already, and none of them really have anything to do with why we love it so much.
What we love is the freakishness of it. Waters revealed years after the fact that Divine’s “look” as Dawn Davenport was inspired by a photo from Diane Arbus, whose work served as a testament to the anonymous fringe figures of American culture, but it could be said that all of his characters, in this and in all his early films, might also be drawn from one of her images. It’s that, perhaps, that is the key to its appeal: it’s a movie about “freaks,” made for freaks by someone who is a freak themself. It makes us laugh at all of its excesses simply because they are funny – and the fact that the NON-freaks don’t “get it” just makes them all the funnier.
As Aunt Ida says, “Queers are just better” – and in this case, we mean “queer” as in “different than the boring norm.”
In any case, queer or otherwise, celebrate your freakishness by watching “Female Trouble” in honor of its anniversary this weekend. Whether it’s your umpteenth time or your first, it will be 97 minutes you won’t regret.
Movies
Aubrey Plaza, Hollywood’s most ironic star, delivers one-two punch
If you’re an Aubrey Plaza fan, this might just be the best time to be alive.
Plaza, whose role in the hit series “Parks and Recreation” catapulted her to fame, graduated to highly regarded indie film roles and into a career trajectory that includes an award-winning turn on the second season of HBO’s “White Lotus.” She’s currently placing her edgy stamp on two of the buzziest entertainment options of the season, and in each case her very specific gifts as an actor not only shine through, but add a dimension that both fits and enhances the material – and we’re a hundred percent on board for both of them.
The most high-profile of these is unquestionably a blockbuster event. It’s the anxiously awaited “Agatha All Along,” a spin-off that picks up the story of its witchy title character (Kathryn Hahn, in a virtuoso star turn) from the Marvel and Disney Plus limited series “WandaVision” after having been trapped in a “twisted spell” by Emmy-winner Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff – aka the Scarlet Witch – during that show’s finale.
In this case, it’s hard to say much about Plaza’s performance yet – she only appears in one of the two episodes released to date, and her character, while provocative, is still very much an unknown quantity within the larger structure of the show – but it’s clear from her electrifying subtext with co-star Hahn that their relationship will likely be a key to the show’s still-unfolding mysteries, and the presence of “Heartstopper” star Joe Locke (as a gay teen acolyte) only amps up the LGBTQ factor. That’s pretty groundbreaking, considering that both Marvel and Disney have long been accused of pulling their punches when it comes to queer representation in their screen content; and such considerations aside, how can anyone resist a comedically spooky fall show about a coven of questing witches that includes Patti LuPone?
Plaza’s participation in the second vehicle might end up being considerably smaller than what she eventually delivers in “Agatha,” but her two-scene performance in “My Old Ass” leaves a significant enough impression to call her the “anchor” of the film. The sophomore Sundance-lauded feature from filmmaker Megan Park (“The Fallout”), it’s a youthful-but-wise seriocomic coming-of-age tale that blends tongue-in-cheek absurdism with magical realism and a touch of sci-fi fantasy to create a “what if?” scenario with the power to make audiences both laugh out loud and “ugly cry”, and sometimes both at once.
The film stars Canadian actress and singer Maisy Stella (TV’s “Nashville”), making her feature film debut as Elliott, a proudly queer Canadian teen who lives on her family’s cranberry farm near Ontario’s scenic Muskoga Lakes. The story opens on her 18th birthday, as she and her two besties (Maddie Ziegler, Kerrice Brooks) go off for a celebratory overnight camping trip – with “magic” mushrooms on the menu to start the party off right, and we don’t mean a microdose. Each of the girls winds up having their own individual trip, but Elliott, who is weeks away from leaving for college and a new life of adult freedom she can’t wait to start, experiences something particularly mind-blowing: a visit from none other than her own future self (Plaza), a 39-year old with a still-unsettled life and a few regrets she hopes to undo by offering up some advice to 18-year-old Elliott about choices that will soon be coming her way.
No, it’s not inside info about “the next Apple”, as the film’s effortlessly witty screenplay (also by Park) puts it; rather it’s advice not to fall in love with a boy named Chad, something Young Elliott – who self-identifies as “only liking girls” – thinks will be a no-brainer. At least, she does until a day later, when a boy named Chad (Percy Hynes White) signs on as an extra summer worker at the family farm. He’s immediately taken with her, and she finds herself responding to his good-natured (and irresistibly charming) flirtation with more enthusiasm than she expects. Desperate to learn more, she attempts to re-forge the time-bending connection with her “Old Ass” before she winds up making the same mistake she’s been warned against in spite of herself.
While it sounds, in many ways, like the fodder for a fanciful-yet-predictable teenage “rom-dramedy”, Park’s approach aims higher than merely turning its premise into a framework for a love story. Instead, she leans hard into a refreshingly positive depiction of a young woman learning to see life from a wider perspective, to let go of the identifying boundaries she’s set for herself and become more connected with the ebb and flow of time and circumstance that has little regard for such limitations. In many ways, it’s the non-romance-related wisdom imparted by Older Elliott that arguably makes more of an impact on her life, such as learning to appreciate her family and the time she spends with them instead of simply being impatient to leave them behind. Ultimately, though, it’s the dilemma of Chad that sounds at the deepest level, and while spoiling it would be a crime, it’s enough to say that, when all is revealed, the bold and life-affirming message delivered by Park’s disarmingly light-hearted movie is guaranteed to resonate with almost any viewer.
From a queer perspective, it’s important to note that some audiences have taken exception to the film’s depiction of a same-sex attracted person being tempted by an opposite-sex romance, seeing it as a throwback to an old-school Hollywood formula under which she just needs to “find the right man” to be redeemed from her “deviant” sexuality; yet while such objections might be understandable, “My Old Ass” has also been widely praised for its authentic portrayal of bisexuality – something sorely lacking in a film industry that doesn’t know how to handle it – and its strongly asserted message about the limitations imposed by the labels society wants us to claim for ourselves.
In any case, what makes “My Old Ass” into a truly special film is not the sexuality of its characters – though that’s definitely an important theme – but the open-hearted perspective that informs it. Park makes a point of stressing that life has its own ideas for us, regardless of what we may have planned, and further that true joy might only come from letting go of all our fears and simply embracing the experience of being. There are a great many larger, more “prestigious” movies that have tried to do the same, but few have succeeded with as much raw and unmanufactured certainty as this relatively humble gem – and while it’s definitely Stella’s movie, capturing our empathetic engagement with her from its earliest moments and showcasing her unvarnished naturalism throughout, Plaza is the presence that gives the film its necessary weight, using her two scenes to cement her stature as a talent whose unequivocal stardom is long overdue.
You can catch “Agatha All Along” on Disney Plus, with a new episode dropping each week. “My Old Ass,” given a limited theatrical rollout earlier this month, may still be in some theaters but will likely be available soon via distributor Amazon Prime’s streaming platform.
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