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Bridesmaids: Do You Know What It Feels Like, For A Working Girl?

I realized, as I was working on my Hangover review (there's a misplaced modifier for ya), that I hadn't actually written a review of the other wedding-themed comedy, the infinitely superior Bridesmaids. Let me right that wrong, or write it, anyway.

In a season of too much bridal nonsense - let's just ignore bottom of the barrel stuff like Something Borrowed or even niche pieces like Jumping The Broom - Bridesmaids is the actually refreshing entry, a film that doesn't make the bride, or worse, the man, central to a wedding comedy among women. Bridesmaids is actually about the piece of the wedding puzzle that I think many women care about most - the relationships between the woman getting married, and the women in her bridal party.

Bridesmaids is, of course, brilliantly funny; and it does nothing less than confirm that Kristen Wiig is going to be a formidable force in film. Co-writing a great screenplay, she also delivers a fresh, natural performance as a somewhat unwilling Maid of Honor to her best childhood friend. At heart, Bridesmaids is a comedy about the challenges that test the bonds of such a deep friendship. But more than that, Bridesmaids hits a nerve about class and economic inequality in America right now that really makes the film hard to shake, and impossible to ignore. This is the film, I think, that should tell Hollywood that audiences really hunger for films that reflect on how we struggle, and survive, through this economic downturn.

The story is simple enough: two good friends are tested when one of them gets angaged to her longtime boyfriend, and makes her best friend her maid of honor. Annie is not a woman who goes for a lot of traditional feminine expectations, but she gamely tries to fit herself into the role. That gets harder as she realizes that her friend Lillian is marrying into a more upscale life than she has, sharing a sad suburban apartment and working a grim retail job she hates (her attempt to open a cupcake shop failed miserably).

Annie's world is even more shaken by the appearance of Helen, wife of the boss of Lillian's fiance, whi appears to be trying to muscle in as Lillian's New Best Friend. The movie's main tension is their competition for Lillian's favor and affection, leading to a series of over the top comic incidents - I can't pick between food poisoning in the fancy bridal boutique, Annie drunk and high on the plane, or the bridal shower gone nuclear as my favorite moment - that higlight their competition.

But more than that, Bridesmaids focuses on Annie's challenges to make a better life for herself, dealing iwth the dead end job, lousy living situation, and a dismal relationship with a hot looking cad (Jon Hamm, studly and brilliantly thoughtless). The picture brightens when Annie finds sparks with the cop who pulls her over for erratic driving, making tentative steps towards a new relationship. But without Lillian to keep her grounded, Annie's insecurities make a mess of the whole situation.

If Bridesmaids were simply laugh out loud funny - which it is, throughout - that alone would qualify it as one of this year's great comedies; but it's the ability of Wiig to dig deep and make Annie a fully rounded character that the audience comes to care about that lifts Bridesmaids into the realm of movie greatness. It's not that I laughed through this film - it's that, as Annie struggled to make sense of a life spinning out of control, I cried. This is a film that understands that comedy exists on the knife edge of personal difficulty - you can make it funny, but you can also make it very moving.

Maya Rudolph is smashing as Lillian, delivering the film's best costume payoff in a wedding dress that must be seen to be believed (in a word...ruffles). And Rose Byrne brings uptight perfection and real sensitivity to the role of Helen. As the other bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy transcends the obvious as the groom's tough, no-nonsense sister, while Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey are also brilliantly funny, but underused. Jill Clayburgh, also makes a wonderful, final, turn as Annie's mother.

Ultimately, though, this is Wiig's chance to shine and she makes the most of it; I'd expect nothing less, given that she's already shown, in nearly every film appearance, some real gifts as a natural, funny presence onscreen. This is also a brilliant script, one of the best I've seen all year, if not in several years.  Paul Feig's direction, on the other hand, is mostly perfunctory - he gives room for the comedy to shine, but visually, the film is often quite pedestrian.

Don't see Bridesmaids just because it's another wedding comedy, admittedly a very good one; see it because nothing else in major, mass market film right now comes anywhere near as close to touching the hard realities of working class life these days, in a way that manages to be both positive and honest. That's not just great filmmaking, it's nearly a goddamn miracle.

Midnight In Paris: The Purple Prose Of Zelda (And Earnest. And Scott. And Gertrude...)

Of the many films I've skipped reviewing in the past few years, nothing seems more odd to me than not reviewing Woody Allen. Considering that I think Allen is one of our great directors (certainly the greatest American, living), and that I've liked a string of his recent work, it's just... odd.

Midnight in Paris continues a phase which I suspect will be called "the late, or European, period" in his works. Based in Europe, Allen has focused, in recent years on shooting outside America with stories based in Europe's great cities. These are also the films where he has simply taken himself out of the mix as an actor, no longer devising lead, or even cameo, roles for himself.

From Match Point to Vicky Cristina Barcelona to You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Allen has evolved into a director entirely in his own element, no longer self consciously aping greats like Bergman. He no longer drifts between serious (his heavy dramas) and lightweight (his giddy comedies); the films are distinct, their tones individual, but Allen's ability to fuse comedy and drama into each story has become precise. These, really, are the stories he seems meant to have told.

Midnight in Paris puts Allen back in his most romatic settings (think the end of Everyone Says I Love You), drifting between reality and fantasy (think Purple Rose of Cairo), longing nostagically for the past (Radio Days). Midnight in Paris, though, is refreshing, complete, spare and surprisingly direct. And its message is simple: stop longing for the past. Accept your present, and make the most of it.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a lost soul of a screenwriter who is in the final stages of his first novel, in Paris with his girlfriend Inez and her parents, a wealthy businessman and his shallow materialistic wife. Though Gil and Inez are superficially close, their relationship is undermined by pointed barbs the two sling back and forth, which only deepen when the couple are joined by friends of Inez, Paul and Carol, intellectual poseurs.

Gil, seeking an escape, and overwhelmed by the beauty of Paris, wanders the streets one night and at midnight a car pulls up and takes him to... Paris in the twenties. Suddenly, he is interacting with Scott and Zelda and Earnest and Pablo and some matador who I should probably know as well (he sure is purdy). Gil brings his novel for Gertrude Stein to read. And along the way he meets Adriana, Picasso's mistress.

Like Gil and his romance for Paris in the twenties, Adriana longs for Paris of the Belle Epoque. Gil, like many men, finds her luminous (she is, after all, played by Marion Cotillard at her glowing best), but it's clear their real connection is on the intellectual level of shared ideas and ideals. Can their love survive across time? Don't be absurd... or surreal - did I mention we run into Bunuel, Dali, and Man Ray?

As with the best of Allen's ensemble work, Midnight in Paris is littered with opportunities for star cameos, and if Kathy Bates doesn't entirely shine as Gertrude Stein, Corey Stoll as Hemingway and Alsion Pill and Colin Hiddleston as the Fitzgeralds more than make up for it. Then there's Adrien Brody's smooth, surreal take on Dali and Adrien Du Van's small, shy Bunuel. In the modern day world, Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy shine as shallow parents to even shallower Inez.

Owen Wilson is doing a Woody Allen stand in part here, and he does with a kind of aplomb he'd seemed to have lost in recent years - shambling, easygoing, but reminding us that he's a man with a heart and a mind. McAdams, too, in a part that could easily fall into cariacature or mean spiritedness, does her usual smashing job of mixing likable elements with her hard edges. As for Cotillard... what the hell. She makes grown men melt. I am certainly not immune. And, as with her glorious turn as Piaf, Cotillard was made for twenties haute couture while remaining appealingly down to Earth.

Allen's sly mix of humor (ugly Americans have never seemed uglier) and sentiment suggests a mellowing in his old age, but an increased precision for the moments and etails that speak volumes. I noticed it most in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but here it is laser-like, surgical sharp (his can't resist gag, where Gil explains to a young Bunuel the plot of "The Discrete Charm of The Bourgoisie" is knowing and brilliant). Allen toys with a variety of messages and philosophies - his Hemingway quotes are spot-on, as are the surrealists - but in the end he offers a kind of existentialist idea of life both then and now: life is to be experienced. And it will be what you make it.

If this doesn't seem especially deep... it's not meant to be; Allen is, at heart, suspicious of a kind of intellectual superiority that substitutes knowingness for actual intelligence. Gil, in the end, figures out where and who he needs to be, because he doesn't dwell on what was but focuses on what is. And that's not the worst lesson to get from some old, purple prose.

The Hangover 2: The Hurt Looker

The Hangover is one of those films I initially resisted, despite various positive reviews. I skipped it in theaters, and only the insistence of my boss that it was that good got me to add it to my Netflix queue (where, despite suggestions of a wait, I managed to get it pretty quickly.

The only way I can explain my urge to rush out, today, and see The Hangover 2 is that I, too, was convinced after one viewing: The first Hangover was a rude, dirty, outrageous joke of a film.

The good news is that The Hangover 2 convincingly follows up on the first film's promise, every bit as rude and crude, with an even more dagerous edge. But if the premise of the first one turned you off... this one is surely not going to change your mind.

Sold as a fairly brazen filthy paean to the hedonistic misbehavior of randy bachelors, both the Hangover films are, to my mind, not quite that at all. Instead, they're actually caper films, that age old genre where solving a mildly intriguing mystery allows for the unfolding of a complex tale, usually in flashback, to explain How We Got Here and What Really Happened. In these films, the shameless, filthy hedonism is really window dressing to a much sturdier plot device: how do these idiots reconstruct a hazy night of debauchery while coming out of a drunken stupor?

By making the debauchery a series of ever more outrageous reveals (One of them got a tattoo! One of them stole a tiger! One of them married a stripper! They got into a fight with a drug kingpin!), The Hangover actually plays a game of Can You Top This, while stringing the audience along to find out what happened to one hapless victim. In the first film, it was the groom. In this one, it's the bride's brother.

Hangover 2 takes up a couple of years after the first, with the wedding of Stu, the dentist (he married the stripper in the first one, and subsequently broke several of his teeth) to a woman he met after the first failed Bachelor extravaganza (he broke up with his then fiancee at the end of the first). His new bride is Thai, and the wedding is being held at a coastal resort outside Bangkok. And the other guys are along, but there's a promise of "no bachelor party" and no repeat of the first film's antics.

That edict lasts about 20 minutes into the film, when a post rehearsal dinner "just one beer" leaves the film's orginal three protagonists in a filthy motel room in Bangkok, once again facing a bewildering array of messes and that missing brother (who happens to be a teen prodigy, top cellist, and premed at Stanford). Last time, they had a tiger in the suite; this time it's a small monkey.

Also in their Bangkok hotel room is Mr. Chow, the first film's nominal antagonist, who basically tops even the 3 main characters in shameless excess. In this film's first of many out of the blue turns, after telling them he can reconstruct the previous night's events, he takes one hit of cocaine and promptly drops dead (this, I have to say, was just about pitch perfect). Leaving the boys to both dispose of his body, and try to figure out what the heck happened.

From here the film basically takes off on a breathless chase across the crowded streets and less savory alleys of Bangkok, stopping at a tattoo parlor, a Buddhist monastery and a strip club, just to name a few. Along the way they acquire and return a Buddhist monk (to his monastery, natch), they find out the back story of the monkey, and they even return to discover that Mr. Chow is very much alive - and cold, having had his body stuck in an ice machine.

Though it's fair to argue that The Hangover films glorify a kind of ugly male behavior that deserves no celebration, I suspect the real appeal of the films is that they're in on the fact that this behavior is odious, and the lead characters aren't so much heroic as assholes the audience can't entirely dislike. In part, the film makes liberal use of torturing, abusing, and even disfiguring it's main characters (Bradley Cooper's Phil gets shot at one point, Stu gets a face tattoo much like Mike Tyson's), so that their suffering and humiliations are very much the joke.

Indeed, the film's real hero is Zach Galifianakis as Allen, the sad boyman who still lives in his parent's upscale mansion in middle age. Galifianakis is no pretty boy, and he plays Allen as an off-kilter, slightly shambling nerd boy who doesn't quite get the world of grown-ups. As a result, he ambles pleasantly through both films, causing trouble, getting hurt, but not nearly so much as the others. It's the survival of Allen, really, that both films deliver, much to the audience's relief (and if the producers have any brains left, they'll make The Hangover 3 his wedding).

Cooper's pretty-boy asshole performance made the first film, and he remains the second film's emodiment, such as he is, of the cool dude who can handle almost anything (it makes his reaction to getting shot all the more priceless). And Ed Helms does a weird, wonderful job of turning hapless Stu from victim to participant in his humiliations. And, too, Ken Jeong's Mr. Chow, which could easily be dismissed as ugly stereotyping, refuses to fit into any easy label. Justin Bartha, on hand again as the film's first groom, now brother in law to Allen, has little to do, and misses the night's fetivities.

The point, really, is that the combination of solid plotting and well realized, three dimensional characters is what separates The Hangover both 1 and 2, from other, more derivative comedies that mine the same territory. Rather than celebrate hedonism, the films remind us that "wild party nights" are, in fact, kind of sleazy, small, and sad. The film doesn't avoid the results of misbehavior, and doesn't glorify them, so much as  say "if you are going to be this kind of jerk... own it." Take your medicine, face your music, live with your tattoo.

Director Todd Phillips continues to give all of this a fresh, gritty feel that revels in excess, but doesn't lose sight of the seedy, tacky edges (the first film really gets Las Vegas in all its sonagles and seediness). Bangkok, in turn, fares better than one might expect - seedy, in places, but also energized and exciting.

It would be easy to suggest that Hangover 2 is more of the same... but the point, I think, is that the first film's premise worked well enough that returning to it yields yet more payoffs. And the wide appeal of the film - the first was a mcuh bigger than expected hit, this one may well match similar expectations - is probably proof, too, that straight white men are funny when they can be seen as ignorant assholes. It's a disservice, of course, to stright men to make such a blanket pronouncement, much the way humor that still finds gay people effemtinate or fat people worthy of ridicule carry a cruel, unkind edge. The Hangover, Parts 1 and 2, are probably a sign that this joke shows no sign of growing old. And not when the results are sick, wrong, and as flat out funny as this film turns out to be.

 

Friday Field Trip: Whole Foods And PF Chang's

I tend to leave Fridays to J and his lovely pictures. It gives me a chance, among other things, to go out and do things in the world.

Yesterday, I worked early, but not a full 8 hour shift, which was a relief. Still, by early evening, I was pretty much worn out, and Mom got home too late for any early show of Midnight in Paris, the new Woody Allen film (yes, I never miss Woody Allen. Sue me). Instead, we decided to take a little field trip.

Whole Foods has been slow to expand into Westchester, which strieks me as puzzling, since the high-end grocery chain feels like a perfect fit for Westchester's large number of pampered elites. It's fittingly ironic that their initial touchdown in the county, in White Plains, was the former site of Saks Fifth Avenue, which abandoned the space when The Westchester, an upscale mall prjoect, failed to connect the store to the mall as promised (Leaving them staring at Neiman Marcus and their first arrival in the area). Saks now has no Westchester location... which is also very odd.

Lots of people - including my Mom - might think I love Whole Foods; in truth, I find them exasperating. When I first met them, still living in my Manhattan apartment, I too was blown away by the luxe-ness of the goods, the absurd prices (I don't subscribe to the "Whole Paycheck" humor, but walking out with a small grocry bag with $60 in purchases was a first), and the crowds. (One famous memory is one blizzard-y day when the line in Columbus Circle stretched through prepared foods, past the meat department, around frozen foods and back to seafood.)

By the time I moved to Boston, I tended to use Whole Foods as an occasional backup to my main shopping in more traditional grocery stores. Boston, though, is lttered with Whole Foods - one by Symphony Hall on the edge of Fenway, one in cenrral Cambridge, one by Mass General at the edge of Beacon Hill, just for starters. And their promximity to much of my everyday life made visiting them too easy and addictive.

My Mom joked last night that she could envision a lifestyle where she had the money to only shop Whole Foods. Me... I don't see the appeal. Over time, in Boston I came to realize that what the store sells, really, is a kind of snob appeal: you're not just a grocery shopper, you're smarter, hipper, and probably healthier, the stores seem to say. Whole Foods doesn't bother popular, mass produced foodstuffs of ordinary stores - no, it's all artisanal this, and farm-raised that, organic and expensive and exclusive and hard to find. I always know that, if it comes to it, I will be able to find Creme Fraiche, Clotted Cream, and fancy infused olive oil at Whole Foods. Just not, say, Diet Pepsi. Or Wheaties. And not every department opf Whole Foods can claim absolute dominance - their coffee choices, I've come to realize, are haphazard and incomplete (in part, because they've no use for Starbucks, but they also overlook good small houses like Kicking Horse).

The truth is much of what Whole Foods brought to the grocery experience - the high-end items, the hot food cafes, the luxe presentations - have been adopted widely by competitors. Those with the square footage - like Shaw's in downtown Boston at the Pru, or Stop and Shop in many of its suburban locations - have similar sit down eating spaces, luxurious produce displays, and a lot of fancy olive oil. Even so... Whole Foods continue to have them beat for sheer over-the-top indulgence. As I walked past the refrigerated case devoted to nothing nut rare German and other artisanal beers, I realized  that so mcuh of what Whole Foods offers is class confirmation - come here, and you'll know you've made it. I like to think I don't need that kind of reassurance, and I can't be had for a slice of cheese (though a bottle of infused oltve oil and some fancy tortilla chips did follow me home, inexplicably).

Afterwards, Mom and I dined at PF Chang's, a similar experience in upscale mass appeal. Chang's is a fancy chain of Asian eateries, basically, a Chinese restaurant in a sleek dress. Try as they might to dress up the concept (and they're strying a lot less, these days), Chang's is every bit the aitport hotel chain store it seems to be, with a slight Asian twist. Since the economic downturn, Chang's has had to economize a bit,and they tend to feel dingier, and less epcial, if still a slight cut above, say, Applebee's. If it weren't for my endless devotion to Chinese food, I'd have completely given up long ago.

As it is, we endured one of those silly, pointless waits these chain restaurants seem determined to deliver - forced waits with handheld joy buzzer "pagers" and the promises of tables in 20-25 minutes (we wound up at ours in less than 10). It's an artifical kind of buzz creation, mostly leaving grumpy groups and annoyed dates standing around parking lots, and since the downturn began, it just feelssilly. The demand for this kind of dining has softened tremendously, but the urge to seem "special" can't be shaken.

Still, dinner was pleasant, the food reliably good, the air conditioning a nice respite from the beginnings of clingy summer heat. And overall, not that expensive. It's a weird world where luxury comes so cheap.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

Faster, Pootercat, Kill, Kill.

You may not believe the tale of my Dark Ages, but for the past few years - since I moved back to New York - I've been on a time share for internet usage.

My Mom and I shared our Verizon service on an old modem and a spiffy AirPort unit that we never were able to configure so that both my mom (on a Dell PC) and me (on my MacBook) could be online at the same time. We talked to Verizon. We talked to Apple. We tried several things. Nothing worked.

So, if my Mom had a project, I was offline; if I was in the middle of a piece and she needed to check e-mail, no dice.

Naturally, this interrupts one's flow; a lot of times when the blog was silent, I was either literally offline or just as likely trying to re-energize after life intervened, those few hours between work and friends and some sort of social life where wanting to write and having an internet connection might coincide. Anyone who writes with passion, not just to fill the space, can undrerstand, I think, that putting the words out there doesn't just happen on cue. And I can write to a deadline. I just can't always guarantee that the right piece can show up, start to finish, in a 40 minute window of time.

I ramble... but then, that's what I do. When the spirit moves me.

Yesterday, our world changed for the better - Verizon came and installed FiOs, speeding us up and providing a flashy new wireless router that covers us both. We can hardly believe the change. It's still sinking in.

I've been offline a lot in the past coupe of weeks, and it's given me a lot of time to think - again - about how this bloggy life is going, about what I'm doing, why, and where I really want to be. I've toyed with the idea of just putting my blogging away, being one of those stories of "made a go of it and moved on"... but I both like the opportunity this space gives me to write and create, and I feel like this journey is just not quite done.

To me, on my upgraded pooter, blogging at faster speed over a faster connection, this feels like a fresh start. What's past is prologue, what's next is up to me (and you, I suppose. Well, really mostly me). And for now, what's next  is diving back into the writing, focusing a little more on my cultural criticism and somewhat less on politics, especially when much of the current political state is so dreadful. You don't need me to tell you how bad it is, or even spending a lot of time trying to find the sunny side.

I spend a lot of time - I do realize it - pointing out that life has changed a lot for me since I started blogging. Part of the change is the act of writing and creating, the way pursuing an idea and making something can. It's not just blogging, of course; life has happened, and in some ways I've made my peace with liking where I am at. I'm calmer, more complete, more whole. I feel as though I have less to prove, less to explain or justify, less to apologize for. I'm just spending more time trying to get better, make things better. Maybe make a difference, somehow.

If you're still here, you motley lot, thanks for hanging around, if you just happen upon me, well, take a look around, see what you think. I'm planning to be here awhile. I move pretty fast... so try to keep up. And for now, the spirit is moving right along with me.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

And Now For Something Completely Different...

So I had this whole plan to post this afternoon... and then I accidentally deleted my Firefox (don't ask). And when I went to reload Firefox, it turned out they're on a whole new level (version 4.0.1) that doesn't work with my old Mac OS. Which is fine, because I have this disk of Leopard that I always meant to install... but didn't... so I had to install Leopard, then reinstall my ISP, and then re-download the new Firefox.

So, that's all done - and it all looks very shiny and new - but it's late and I'm tired. More posting tomorrow. :)

Boy Don't Try To Front, I Know Just What You Are...

At first, I figured there's nothing to say about Dominique Strauss Kahn.

But as this story unfolds, it's really impossible not to (though let's give the New York Times points for keeping it out of editorials and off the op-ed page for two days; even the Wall Street Journal felt fine leading with it as Monday's editorial). Strauss Kahn (or "DSK") and the tale of his alleged behavior ib the Sofitel New York is just so outrageous, and so enormous, it's one of those stories that you just can't anticipate that has the sudden ability to refocus everything.

What's struck me - and it usually doesn't - is how people, reporters, but also the rest of us, seem to be groping for the words to describe what happened. Part of the problem appears to be that "forced her to give him head" isn't a phrase fit for a family newspaper, but the other, more basic problem is that apparently no one wnats to say "rape." I don't usually favor Melissa McEwan's assessment of a Rape Culture in our society, but the past few days have brought home, for me, just how endemic the cultural problems around rape really are. As alleged, Strauss Kahn appears to have raped a member of the Sofitel's housekeeping staff. Yet so many alternatives are employed - "sexually assaulted," "attacked", "went after", "attempted to force her to.." it's hard not to notice the word no one wants to quite say. 

In the first few days, there's been a lot of reminders about how different events look between American and European perspectives. There's the European dismay for "perp walks" and complaints about our "harsh" legal system, and the American disdain for a kind of European notion of quiet aceptance of a kind of behavior that doesn't seem so quietly tolerated here. A lot of this strikes me as silly, and probably, in part, a question of immediacy - if an American magnate had been arrested in Paris, I suspect the reverse reactions would also be kind of messy.

It's dismaying to realize, at this late date, that Strauss Kahn was widely known for inappropriate behavior and acting out, including an affair with a subordinate that was quietly swept away by the IMF, and alleged advances on a reporter who kept quiet for years. This kind of behavior - which is reverberating, as I write this, around the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver mess - being quietly tolerated, known about, and ignored, is really one of our worst cultural aspects. And too often we label this behavior, too, with descriptions to make it sound less menacing, less harassing - "womanizer", "touchy feely", "roving eye." I don't think women who face unwanted attention think of it as "womanized."

To me, though, what really fascinates is the sense that this may be a wake up call to the world to examine the kind of powers and privileges that go to an overpampered elite class. The events at the Sofitel are the real example of "Versailles" theory that has been bandied about so much, these days; and I suspect that's the real reason that the Strauss Kahn arrest has so riveted the world's audience and the world press. It's rare to see such a direct, undeniable example of the wileding of class and privilege over a low level employee. Nothing could be more stark than an immigrant woman just trying to do her low level, menial job, only to be chased and held down and... well, possibly raped, by a powerful, wealthy protected man. Who might, very well, have managed to escape any prosecution if his plane had managed to take off.

It's true, too, that Strauss Kahn might be innocent. That this was all some big mistake, just some misunderstanding, even, as the wildest theories claim, some sort of setup. But I hope, in the end, that we will not let vague words and minor discrepanencies let a real crime somehow get minimized away, if it did occur. If what happened is anything close to what's alleged - a woman chased down a hall, forced into a room and forcibly raped - let's not dress it up, or explain it away. Let's know Strauss Kahn for who and what he is, and let's see some justice done. And maybe we can take some of this Rape Culture apart.

L'Amour Fou: I Like Pretty Things

If anything, L'Amour Fou is documentary proof that home furnishing sales are boring. Even if - especially if - they are auctions of an especially luxurious collection of art, furniture and decorative objects.

Though it's sold, ostensibly, as a documentary look at the private life of Yves Saint Laurent and his life partner Pierre Berge, L'Amour Fou is built, mainly, around Berge's decision to empty the contents of the three homes he shared with YSL, and the subsequent auction held by Christie's (which as many noted, netted Berge some $500 million, though the film never mentions it).

The film lightly covers biographical details of Saint Laurent and Berge (though mostly YSL) and charts their life together in Paris, Marrakech and Normandy... but L'Amour Fou is a film, as fashion films are, with lots of style and very little to say. Berge, who provides most of the narration, is at once frank, revealing, and vague. Though he's direct about the problems Saint Laurent had with drugs, alcohol and depression, there's also the protective instinct not to make Saint Laurent look bad as a result. The net effect is tame, toned down, and distancing.

Which is a shame, because the interiors that Saint Laurent created with Berge - a style, which, if it had a name, might be called seventies eclectic opulent - are by themselves stunning, and suggest a life of far more vitality and excitement. Both men had great taste and terrific eyes, and a real sense of the spaces they wanted to inhabit. Unlike many wealthy folks who use interior design to create a sense of taste or permanence, Berge and Saint Laurent simply bought what they liked and found space for it somewhere. The effect - with Picassos and Warhols and Goyas sharing space with Art Deco vases and Brancusi sculpture - is a constant barrage of beautiful icons, arranged for rooms where life is actually lived, and comfortably.

It's only as the rooms begin to be taken apart and the artwork divided into relevant groups and eras, that one can begin to make sense of the vastness of their holdings. But really, they weren't "holdings" or particularly "investments" - Berge talks, at length, about various pieces and their significance to the couple, and it's clear that the acquisitions were personal and meaningful. What's remarkable, really, is that Berge felt no need, after his partner's death, to hold onto the remnants and possessions of the life they lived together (and, at times, separately, when Berge could no longer handle YSL's drug problems). Berge gives the distinct sense of both gieving and knowing when it's time to let go and move on. It's not the things that matter... it's the memories he has to hold.

Along with Valentino and Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent represents a generational triumph of a certain sort of creative gay aesthetic. Each, now has been the subject of documentaries (in fact, more than one for each of them)... yet the sense of who they are, how they lived, what they accomplished, remains maddeningly elusive. From their genteel efforts to downplay their sexuality (Lagerfeld, oddly, has been the most frank) to their reluctance to reveal their creative processes, these top designers tend to like to let the work, the fashions they created, speak for themselves. Indeed, the most moving section of L'Amour Fou is right at its opening, as Saint Laurent, announcing his retirement, takes a moment to put into words his thinking about what fashion is, and how he approached the idea of making clothes for women (in essence, to make women comfortable and eager to take on the world). In those few words, he says more about fashion and designing and creativity than the rest of L'Amour Fou. Everything is not just beautiful, even if the film can't seem to figure that out.