My experience of depression is unique to me, but may resonate with you. I don’t know.

It has been helpful to me to discuss it with other sufferers (and I find that word very apt) but it may not be helpful to you. Maybe this blog post will make your day, maybe it will make you sneer and roll your eyes.

I am mostly posting this to de-stigmatise depression to myself, but also so I have something to link people to if they don’t seem to have a grasp on my behaviour or are curious, bemused or frustrated by it. I wrote ‘de-stigmatise depression to myself’ as opposed to ‘de-stigmatise depression to others’ because I don’t presume to think that I am influential enough to do the latter, but also because my attitude to my own mental illness is part of the problem.

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I first felt depressed at the age of 14. I remember the day and the feeling vividly. I knew what depression was, because it runs in my family, on my father’s side, and because I was one of those irritatingly precocious children who strives desperately to be wise beyond their years. (By that age I had already read The Bride Stripped Bare, a brutal erotic novel I’m not sure I have the experience to relate to now, let alone as a 14 year old pubescent virgin).

I managed to distinguish it from your garden variety sadness or upset by virtue of the fact that, that day, there was nothing I could possibly think of to make me feel bluer than a broad well of blood under the skin. My life wasn’t perfect, sure. I’d even experienced a glut of horrible bullying, that I’d escaped by moving schools, but overall, up to that point, I had felt positive about life. There was no problem I couldn’t surmount, or so I had thought.

Fortunately I was still young and that feeling was fleeting. Depression came back in large crashing waves and shorter, more surreptitious stints, but because I was going through some other shit (bullying, struggling with my sexuality, sexual dysfunction, sexual abuse, self abuse) after that first day, I always managed to identify a reason that I felt like hurling myself into the sea or melting away into the air, in that melodramatic teen way, never to return. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t depressed, I was just dealing with adolescent life issues, and this sort of thing would clear itself up. I’d see. As soon as I was an adult and my career was off the ground and everything was going my way, I’d be fine.

Of course I was wrong and perhaps I shouldn’t have tempted fate (not that I actually believe in fate, but my mother is Spanish Catholic, and I am unreasonably superstitious, it is ingrained in me) but I couldn’t help being optimistic despite or in spite of my waves of depression. At that age, living in a tiny village and being unhealthily ambitious, I always felt that there was something better out there, as soon as I moved away to the big city. Again, of course I was wrong.

Perhaps ironically, my depression returned full-bodied and determined not to budge when I was 17 going on 18 and moving to London, at the exact time that I thought it would leave forever. That first year in The Big Smoke was the worst whole year of my life. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but nothing happened the way I imagined it would and I suffered an enormous lapse in self-confidence.

Whereas previously I had felt as if the world were mine for the taking, and my waves of bleakness were a temporary stop-gap, I then felt as if I’d botched my only chance at success and was watching my lifeblood swirl (agonisingly) slowly away out of sight, bubbling back in weak hopeful whorls, before vanishing again down the proverbial drain. I felt unable and unwilling to do anything about it. I felt paralysed with depression for no identifiable reason, and completely out of my depth.

The only thing that prevented me from walking into oncoming traffic or fusing myself to my mattress and wasting away, was my incredible boyfriend who visited me constantly and encouraged me to engage in activities that would distract me and improve my confidence. We’re no longer together, but parted amicably and I still love him and owe him a lot.

Throughout my three years at university, I continued to feel depressed, but again, I told myself that as soon as I started to make more friends, find a job, experience some career success, I’d feel fine. This, to cut a very long story very short, has not been the case. As a recent graduate (I finished my degree last year, aged 20) I have, at the end of 2011 and the start of 2012, felt the worst in my life, as if my body is droopy and heavy with misery almost every single day.

“Of course”, I can hear you say, “you’ve graduated during a double dip recession with little to no job prospects and you’re suffering the post-uni blues!” But if only. If only that were the case and I could put a name or reason to my constant, incessant suffering.

In actual fact, things are fine. More than fine. I realise this next paragraph could come dangerously close to smugness/rubbing it in, but I think it’s necessary to explain: I have it good, and I know it. I live in a beautiful, cheap apartment with my best friend of almost 11 years. My career is not off the ground yet, but I can feel it and see it on the horizon (*touch wood*) (see, told you I was superstitious to a fault). I have a loving, understanding, supportive family and despite being single, I have always been the kind of independent person who enjoys being alone and thrives on it. And I have a dedicated and loving set of friends who appreciate my dry sense of humour and my refusal to smile like a joyous drone, and have never tried to change me, or judge me. There is uncertainty in my life but it is exciting.

I feel like I’ve never ‘had’ it better and yet at the start of this year I suffered a nervous breakdown. I shaved my head, Britney-style (because if there’s a cliché to enact, I’ll enact it!). At one point, on my way back from seeing family in Spain, I actively willed my plane to crash (killing me but leaving everyone else unhurt) and was irritated when it didn’t because I genuinely wanted to die. As the airplane hurtled at impossible speeds towards the terminal in that way it always does just before it brakes, I leaned into it and made peace with death. At another point I became so stressed out over the simple task of getting my passport done, that I started crying and hyperventilating and tried to lay down outside the post office minutes before I was supposed to be at work. I was two streets away from my former work place and yet I was so panicked and wracked with anxiety that I couldn’t find my way and forgot where I was. I had to ring up my then boyfriend and ask him for directions. To find a place in an area I knew like the back of my hand. Two streets away.

What was most horrifying about this breakdown was that it came out of nowhere. Or rather, it came out of a great, dark nihilistic whirlpool of self-doubt, low-self esteem and negative energy that seemed to come out of nowhere. More frustrating than anything was the fact that I felt I was unravelling, with no way to stop myself and the breakdown was spooling violently from an unknown place. I knew my life was going great. I knew everything was going to be ok. I knew that humans were ultimately good and that I would find my way in life no matter what. I told myself these things and somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain I even believed them. But still this liquid, spreading half-insanity was pouring out of me and I felt split and ready to be put out of my misery.

I only ‘came out’ about my depression about a year ago, which is very late considering how long I’ve suffered. I told my (then) boyfriend and best friend first, and then slowly become open about it to friends I work with and then, now, on the internet. It felt good (or at least like progress) to put a name to it and make the first steps towards seeking treatment (which is ongoing), but unfortunately, my fears about expressing it to others were not totally allayed. My biggest fear was that other people wouldn’t believe me, or else they would tell me I was just looking for attention. I haven’t been totally proven wrong.

As well as enduring insensitive ignorant clots telling me to “cheer up, it’ll never happen”, to “get a grip” or to stop ruining social occasions with my miserable countenance, I have also experienced a former work colleague and friend telling me to “shut up and fuck off”, because I didn’t smile politely when he asked me how I was as well as various people (with no medical training) attempting to diagnose me or recommend useless treatments (“try exercise”, someone unhelpfully offered). Telling my manager at my former place of work seemed like a good idea at the time but it set in motion a series of events that ended in me leaving the job, almost exactly as I’d feared.

On the flipside, I have also experienced many, many people offering their support and advice, and for this, I am extremely grateful. In the intervening months since my breakdown and with the help of a great new friend, I have somewhat made peace with my depression and despite no cure, I feel at least that I have found a way to cope and prevent it from colouring or affecting my work life or social life as much as it did for the foreseeable future. This - considering I spent the majority of almost three years mostly alone, eating my way to chubby, crying, miserable, unable to find the motivation even to leave my bed, let alone the house, for no discernible reason followed by a breakdown where the stress of deciding what I needed to buy first at my local shopping centre made me want to choose death - is an achievement.

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I know it’s the convention to finish a blog of this type on a positive note, in order to give the reader a feeling of closure and comfort and emotional resolution, but I feel that I should also point out that I still suffer with depression and despite my progress in becoming more open/comfortable with it, it still pains me on almost a daily basis.

One of the most common misconceptions about the mental illness (and my god, there are thousands, I could write a whole book on them) is that a good dose of quality time spent relaxing and doing healthy, wholesome things that the sufferer enjoys (if they can think of anything that they actually enjoy), will clear it right up for good. A lot of people (myself included) find that this is not the case, and even if they are able to enjoy short periods of happiness and time away from the tedium of every day life, depression is always there in the background like the great roar of the ocean, or the hum of the refrigerator. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because you have noticed small amounts of positive behaviour, that someone is cured or that they feel great. You can’t see feelings, obviously.

(In fact, when it comes to depression, best not to do any presuming or assuming at all, considering the vast number of misconceptions surrounding it.)

I have mostly written this for myself, because catharsis. But if you enjoyed it or found it helpful or take issue with any of it, or managed to read it all without rolling your eyes in that internet-too-long-didn’t-read sort of way, that’s great too. I have tried not to concentrate on my experience with medication or treatment, as I am definitely not a doctor (or at least wasn’t the last time I checked) and don’t want to offer ANY advice on how to go about dealing with it, medically.

If, like me, you feel miserable and want some advice about coping, talk to your GP or a medical professional. I can’t and I won’t recommend medication or treatments because I’m not qualified to and I don’t know anything about it. I know what works/hasn’t worked for me, but everyone is different.

Artwork by Natalya Lobanova

I went to see A Dangerous Method at the BFI with a close friend and artistic co-conspirator the other night and I knew I wouldn’t necessarily be satisfied, so I can’t really complain. Cronenberg is wonderful, in my humble and meagre opinion, and I have a huge reserve of respect for Fassbender and Mortensen as well as personal interest in the subject of the birth of psychoanalysis, so I was still tingling with excitement, but cautiously so, in view of the mixed reviews. It’s worth noting, also, that I am by no means a Keira Knightley fan. In fact I might be described as a ‘hater’, if we are to use trendy internet parlance. Despite this, I attempted to be as objective as possible, not allowing my distaste for her terrible, terrible acting to colour my opinions with preconceptions.

The film itself - and here we encounter the irony of this review’s title - shocked me in only one way: how staid, undangerous and lacking in risk it was. This is a film by Cronenberg, famed for his graphic violence, weird gore and unflinching brutal depictions of sex. This is also a film about sadomasochism, incestuous desires, adultery, and above all, Freudian interpretation and innuendo. How odd, then, that the film feels so surgically preserved in green screen latex. Pristine and exquisitely shot, but still, dead, as if the entire thing, including the actors have been CGIed into lush but fake uncanny valley landscapes.

The film tells the story of Jung (Fassbender), founder of analytical psychology and his sadomasochistic affair with one of his mental patients, Russian Sabina Spielrein (Keira K) who also goes on to become a psychoanalyst and doctor herself. Viggo Mortensen’s depiction of Freud makes up the third point in the triangle, as he acts as disapproving mentor and father figure to both.

It is adapted from a play by Christopher Hampton, screenwriter of Dangerous Liaisons and Atonement, who has also produced the film’s script. And perhaps here we’ve encountered the film’s major problem. It is so glaringly obviously adapted from a stage play that I felt at many times as if I was simply witnessing a televised version, filmed directly from a west end theatre. It may seem deeply patronising to point out, but the great beauty of film is that its magic lies in the ability to depict things that our eyes are never normally privy to experience. In the theatre, you have to use trickery, either in terms of dialogue, acting or set design to fool an audience who have willingly suspended their disbelief, to depict otherworldy or panoramic happenings, when in actuality people are staring at professional liars standing on a wooden platform.

But A Dangerous Method includes little to no filmic flourishes or indulgences. Dreams are discussed, extensively. Strange, disturbing-sounding dreams, but we don’t get to see them. We’re presented with some of the greatest academic thinkers of the 20th Century, who were doubtlessly in possession of great, boundless imaginations, Jung especially, who is shown to be (or at least believes himself to be) almost frighteningly clairvoyant, and the sufferer of apocalyptic dreams. And yet we never see inside his head. He is accused of being inclined towards mysticism, but the film is so frosty, despite being constantly bathed in heavenly sunlight, and so dialogue-centric that there doesn’t seem to be anything mystical about him at all.

Worst of all, Keira Knightley, who is one of the few people in the film to not speak in the standard English received pronunciation (she affects a semi-successful Russian accent, despite the fact that everyone’s supposed to be talking German anyway), turns in a performance consisting of some of the worst professional acting I have ever seen in my entire life. She gurns and shakes, self-consciously, constantly seeming to be aware that she is acting. She juts her jaw forward to show that she is convulsing with lust, and does the hammy drama school intakes of breath and exaggerated posture that is more acceptable in the theatre, where audiences are much further away and therefore unable to discern subtleties. This sort of acting translates disastrously to film and Keira, despite being a film stalwart and Oscar nominee, doesn’t seem to have worked this out. She portrays Spielrein as histrionic and even in later scenes where she has assumed normalcy and is studying (as opposed to being confined to a mental hospital) she imbues her with comically affected way of speaking as if every line is a children’s book reading.

She may be dreadful (and really, she is) but at least she provides the film’s only spark of the titular danger, throwing herself into the role with the dedication and passion that if applied elsewhere in the project, might have elevated it to the great, powerful, fascinating film it could have been. Let’s hope Cronenberg’s next project, 2012’s Robert Pattinson starring (*shudder*) Cosmopolis, packs a more devastating and less sterile punch.

I saw three ‘arthouse’ films in three different cinemas this past week or so. They were Drive, Tomboy and Melancholia. I say ‘arthouse’, but in fact, I’m not sure I find that term particularly useful, nor accurate. I understand why it exists. It helps differentiate and distinguish between movies that are made, usually by Evil Hollywood, with the end goal of producing huge fistfuls of cash, and movies, usually made in other countries in Strange, Foreign Languages, with the end goal of winning awards at film festivals and making middle class British people who read The Guardian hum, haw and argue.

The reason I don’t find it particularly useful nor accurate is that I think it’s a rather lazy and vaguely insulting euphemism. Because, you see, when people usually say ‘arthouse’, what they in fact mean is ‘foreign’. Or: not American or English. Surprisingly, two of the three films I saw are in English, but both are directed by Scandinavian men and neither of them were churned out by major Hollywood studios. This is why I suppose they qualify as ‘arthouse’, despite ‘Drive’ being show in mainstream cinemas across the land and featuring Oscar-nominated Hollywood totty and hotstuff.

The other issues over which the term ‘arthouse’ becomes thorny is the one about artistic intent and integrity. During my first year of university I became convinced that authenticity and artistic integrity do not exist, or at least do not matter and are impossible to measure, and, real or imagined, are the realm of impossible snobs. That may or may not be true, but either way, there is definitely a split, in all art forms and disciplines that have become ‘industries’, between people who primarily care about gaining the aforementioned huge fistfuls of cash and the people who primarily care about making a work of art. That is to say: something that resonates, provokes, innovates, inspires, angers, endures and/or invokes flatulent outbursts of euphoria.

It would be lovely to say that mainstream Hollywood fare fits neatly into the first box and all arthouse into the second, but it just doesn’t work that way, and anyway, that is to ignore the fact that almost everyone who has ever made a movie probably felt a conflicting or harmonious combination of the two, tempered and coloured by myriad other feelings. It’s a complex subject, and one which I shall leave, for now, partly because it’s past midnight and I am blistered and drained, but also because if I carry on like this, I’ll never stop, and then it will have to become a thesis and then a book and then a tome and then a neverending scroll and let’s just not go there thank you very much.

The first film I saw, Drive, has been described by many as a neo-noir and I guess this is accurate enough. In case you were completely unaware, I am obsessed with and in love with film noir. Don’t probe me too deeply, though, as my obsession is a fledgling one, and I’ve yet to properly tackle the vast noir back catalogue properly. I know that this particular genre is misogynist, predictable, often slow and convoluted, difficult to understand, full of hard-boiled, miserable sociopaths and double-crossing victims and sometimes cruel, mindless, violence, but I just don’t care. To me, it is a cocaine-laced triple chocolate baked alaska replete with cherry liqueur ganache, tobacco meringue and blood-flavoured ice cream: completely irresistible and definitely wrong (Queen Wrong in fact).

I thought Drive was decent enough. It gripped me, it featured an incredible musical score, beautiful cinematography and invoked a variety of emotions in me, but I just couldn’t wax Evangelical about it. For a start, I wasn’t quite sure, despite his heroic pouting and frowning and lip pursing, that Ryan Gosling really possessed the cool or charisma to carry off tha part. I mean, he was good, but I wasn’t in awe and I wasn’t really aroused either. He didn’t scare me and he didn’t really blister or burn. Carey Mulligan, too, was almost too docile. I love her, I really do, but she must have had about 2 lines, and, as I memorably (or not) said on twitter, watching the two enact their blossoming romance was like watching two beige balloons chafe gently together. In other words: boring.

I wasn’t too bothered about the plot holes or the context-less mega-violence, I think that’s sort of par for the course with noir or neo-noir, but I felt my beloved and flawless Christina Hendricks was underused and my heart wasn’t set on fire by Ryan’s thin lips. As great as it looked it felt like it embodied the old cliché ‘style over substance’.

Melancholia was the last of the three films I saw and I found it similarly frustrating. Kirsten Dunst turns in the performance of her career (and the year so far), and I certainly didn’t hate the movie, but I didn’t feel like it had anything to say. At all. Whether or not cinema, or art in general, has to SAY something is a tricky and irritating topic, so I won’t tackle it, but I felt more than almost any ‘arthouse’ film I have seen in a long time, that it merely observed. To me, it seemed to be a film about depression, but only in the most superficial sense. It depicts the severe crippling depression of two sisters set against a disastrous wedding and a rather clunky, heavy-handed but exhilarating metaphor for descent into despondency so deep and sickly blue it overwhelms and consumes. But that’s it. I don’t feel I gleaned anything, and, perhaps I am totally wrong, but I don’t think any of the sorts of people who might consider parting with money to go and see it would consider it revolutionary or eye-opening to be confronted with a frank but not totally unusual depiction of the mental illness.

After the film I had a lengthy discussion with my best friend Jenna about whether it was honest or dishonest for Von Trier to come across as such a trickster and to subvert our expectations about how characters should act in a film or how they should unfurl, gleefully piling on ‘arthouse’ cliché and unrelenting gloom, knowing that pretentious youngsters and hardened critics the land over would be arguing over the meaning of nominal details that might have actually meant nothing. We didn’t reach any conclusions, other than: if Kiki doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Actress it’ll be a travesty greater than the last great travesty you can think of.

The second film I saw, but last here, because I enjoyed it the most, was the Céline Sciamma-directed Tomboy. It was so good, in fact, that it almost toppled The Skin I Live In, as my film of the year, beating out The Tree of Life, which at the time, I thought was incendiary and heart-stoppingly wonderful, but has since proven to be almost completely forgettable. If Melancholia seemed to petulantly say nothing at all, Tomboy said it all, albeit without moving its lips very much. It’s a deceptively simple film, frighteningly well acted by a bunch of unknown French kids about a rather butch and incredibly beautiful young girl who moves house and tells her new friends she’s a boy, with both funny and horrifying consequences.

Perhaps this is an LGBT thing, as most of the reviews I’ve read by straight men manage to be both positive and ambivalent, but it affected me in a disturbing way that had long lost feelings, buried deep in a draw in the back of my brain and emotion-box, lurching sickeningly forward and making tiny human tears prick into the corners of my eyes. I never tried to persuade my friends I was a girl, and have comfortably inhabited my biological sex of ‘male’ my entire life, but as a self-confessed queer artist and gender non-believer, the weird, fascinating horror of seeing children so happily and comfortably mimic their parents’ heteronormative gender identities whilst the film’s protagonist stood outside their boundaries, perplexed but desperate to conform, made my heart ache in a very specific way.

It reminded me that although I inhabit a supposedly liberal and liberated Western 21^st century world, growing up can still be stained by the trauma of not understanding or wanting to belong to the strict imaginary gender binary that holds its iron grip over us, still. I had forgotten that. As I have grown into a young adult with greater understanding of sex and gender politics and a privileged life where I don’t necessarily have to daily answer to people about my choices re: how I dress, walk, talk, do my hair, interact with other people, I have forgotten that almost totally. Also the film made me laugh out loud and do what is commonly referred to on the interdots as a ‘squee’ due to cuteness.

Anyway.

Recently I rented the little known 2001 film Crush from Lovefilm. I did so because I saw the cut price video outside blockbuster in one of their clearout sales, and was so intrigued I decided it had to be watched. This is the poster, here (clicky!). Why is Imelda Staunton, Grand High Duchess of British Acting, doing a sassy jazz dance pose whilst her friends stand back to back? I had to find out.

Anyway, I’m intrigued by films that seem awful and have probably been watched by a grand total of 3 people, only 1 of whom is still alive, as the others lost the will to live. But I’m also obsessed with a very specific brand of terrible film, usually made pre-9/11. As it happens, this was released the month before the terrible attacks on the World Trade Center in New York (NO I AM NOT MAKING A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO, THE FILM’S NOT THAT BAD). But you’ll see why I’ve brought this up a bit later in this article.

The film tells the story (and spoilers, here, but who gives a fuck, it’s not like you’re going to watch it, is it?) of 3 forty-something professional ladies, seemingly living in the lush, green, wet, perpetually late spring British countryside, in apparently palatial houses, and why their lives are so hard and sad and rubbish. In fact, this film was originally titled The Sad Fuckers Club, and within the first 10 minutes, it’s not easy to see why. Certainly, that would have been a more fitting title than the final one: Crush. Interesting fact: crush films are sadistic movies where (usually attractive, stilletoed) ladies crush animals to death for the sexual pleasure of horrid perverts. So there’s that to think about.

Anyway the film tells the story of yadda yadda yadda, three ladies who get together once a week to discuss how sad their lives are whilst they chain smoke cigarettes and drink a bottle of red wine each, and then 3 more during an M&S microwaveable dinner. Andie McDowall plays, implausibly, a waif-like, quavery-voiced American expatriate headmistress at a posh private school, Imelda Staunton is a tough but hazard-prone Chief Police Detective or something, and Anna Chancellor, or Ducky from Four Weddings and a Funeral, is an enormously well-paid GP. These are women with big salaries and even bigger houses, and yet their greatest pleasure is eating, drinking and smoking themselves into a coma and competing to see who is the saddest, old over-the-hill fucker. EMPOWERING, LADIES.

Once we’ve established this, the plot gets underway, and of course, she being the most conventionally pretty, Andie McDowall gets to be the main character and the story of her hot and heavy affair with an ex-pupil young enough to be her son becomes the crux of the plot. When she first meets this young lad, who implausibly (implausibly will be the most used word in this review) is called Jed, it is at a funeral, and afterwards they fuck on a tombstone. By this point, Imelda Staunton has escaped a scary rapey fake cab driver by drunkenly stumbling slowly off into the woods (as if scary rapists don’t run after potential victims who are also Chief Police Detectives in small towns where everyone knows who everyone is) and Anna Chancellor has said ‘rectal prolapse’ very loudly in a room full of old people in kilts.

Yes, this is the sort of film, made at the sort of time, where swearing loudly, and women doing sex, especially degrading sex like sex on a tombstone, was considered edgy and current and important. God knows I love Sex and the City (the tv series, not the ghastly films) but this is its legacy: lots of middle aged ladies doing brazen fucks in public because it’s controversial and they’re empowered and say swears like ‘cunt’ a lot and snorezzzzzzzzzzz.

Anna Chancellor reminds me a lot of Bridget Jones’ best friend, Shazzer, actually, who appeared in the film released earlier that year, who swears a lot because Generation X and post-modern and young, stressed professionals and blah blah blah. Sidenote over.

The rest of the film portrays Andie’s torrid affair and her friends’ disapproval, with increasingly implausible (told you) plot twists. First Andie is too ashamed to admit that this is who she’s shagging, then she gets caught being fucked by him in Imelda’s house or something. Then they’re not in love, then they are, then they’re going to get married, then they’re not. Other implausible things that happen during the course of the film: Andie McDowall’s acting and character. This is a character played by a woman who is, or was, a famous model for god’s sake, and the only people who want to be with her in a community presumably full of horny men are a bumbling vicar and a barely legal organ playing ex-schoolboy.

I know that love is a kerazy thing and makes you act like an insane, but Andie’s character really acts like no human being who has ever been a human being. This is a woman who’s worked her way up to the position of HEADMISTRESS in a prestigious school, and yet ‘love’ (or is it?!?!?) makes her so fluttery and unsure that she acts like a berk in front of her entire school, shoving aside years of professionalism in order to decree that all faculty and students take the day off because it’s sunny. THIS NEVER HAPPENS BECAUSE THE BOARD OF GOVERNERS WOULD STEP IN AND DECREE THAT YOU TAKE THE REST OF YOUR CAREER OFF BECAUSE YOU ARE FIRED.

In the interest of fairness, the two ‘girlfriends’ act like idiots at all times too. The three of them decide to take an impromptu trip to Paris, funded by Anna’s ex-husband’s credit card, that he conveniently left with her after they divorced years ago, and forget to cancel or ask for back (as if he wouldn’t get a massive bill in the post saying “EXPENSIVE SPA AND SHOPPING TRIP TO PARIS, PLEASE PAY UP NOW”, and get suspicious) and the three ladies get horny and randy with some VERY UGLY old French men. Disgusting.

Andie has just done the nasty with one, we’re lead to believe, when she realises that compared to this rotting, bulbous old Gallic gentleman, she’d much rather be fucking her nubile, countryside Jed, and rushes back to England. She doesn’t even tell her friends she’s going (as if they wouldn’t notice her packing) and we don’t see her travelling back. She just arrives, what seems like 4 seconds later, back in the English countryside, to tell Jed that she does love him and they should get married.

Believe it or not, it gets more implausible. Of course, Imelda and Anna decide that this can’t happen, they can’t marry. Judgemental cunts. This is a woman who is alone and desperate for a baby (aren’t all women) and has survived cancer, and they can’t let her enjoy a marriage with a man she claims to love, just because he’s young!! He proves himself to be more cultured and interesting than they are, and yet they turn up their noses because he slurps his soup (really!).

Their reason for this is they are hateful bitches who want to ruin Andie’s life, but claim to have her best interests at heart. In one totally awful scene, Anna attempts to seduce Jed, whilst Imelda videotapes on a comedically large video camera, so that they can show it to Andie and she won’t want to marry such a wanton, carnal stud no more. No true friend would act like this to ANYBODY, unless they were insane. To go to those lengths: awful.

So Jed runs off into the wild after an argument with Andie and gets run over by a lorry. Yes I know these things happen in real life, BUT REALLY. This happens for no reason at all. It doesn’t help the plot along, it doesn’t teach the characters anything, it doesn’t make sense. It just happens. It doesn’t even happen to show the frailty of fleeting life in a fragile and senseless world. It happens so that everyone can cry for a bit before they make up in the final act. AWFUL.

So Jed dies because melodrama in an otherwise pedestrian pseudo-rom-com, and everyone stops being friends, and it was during this part of the film that I started to enjoy it because the following priceless lines were offered up. First Anna tries to see Andie at the hospital and when she’s not let into the room because you can’t just storm into a hospital, she says “Fuck off, I’m a doctor”. YES! SHE DOES! I thought this was hilarious and brilliant and, yes, implausible.

But the best for last: when Imelda is cross at Anna for fucking things up by thinking that seducing her best friend’s fiancé might solve everyone’s life traumas (idiot), she shouts, at work, in the middle of the police station, “YOU ARE QUEEN WRONG OF THE BASTARD FUCKING WRONG PEOPLE.”

WOW.

That is my title now. That is going on my twitter bio, my CV, my first album sleeve notes, a tattoo on my lower back and MY GRAVE.

Genius.

So that happens and then of course, Andie nearly marries a vicar but sicks up on him instead of saying “I do” (she literally does, it’s spectacular) and then she’s pregnant with her dead boyfriend’s baby (surprise! happy ending!) and then Anna is randomly a late-flowering lesbian, not because she has feelings for a woman, but because she grabs one and snogs her at a party to make people stop looking at her AND THEN SHE IS A LESBIAN. That’s how lesbianism works. It could happen to you. It’s that simple. And Imelda starts dating a petty criminal with a Spanish villa who actually says these words to her in this order: “I want to be in your pussy, right now.”

Yes, someone says this to Queen Imelda. Worth the price of admission alone.

And it’s all larks and the end.

What I was trying to say with the 9/11 thing was that post-9/11 is a term usually applied to a feeling of fear/desperation/panic/terror/fear-mongering/suspicion that arose after the horrible terrorist attacks, but I feel like it also marks a time when media became more cynical. It’s not just down to the all-pervading horror that followed these dreadful incidents, it’s the rise of the internet, the rise of globalisation and the oncoming environmental threats. We now live in a cynical, self-referencing, ironic, post-ironic world, and I feel like media and art reflect this.

Crush, in this sense, is very clearly pre-9/11. It’s weirdly hopeful for a film about sad, lonely, old, rich ladies. Their problems are relatively small, no mention is made of the internet or even the rest of the world, developing or otherwise, and someone actually thought that people would be interested in hearing about white, middle class people aspirationally complain and cry and laugh and be life-affirming (they were wrong in this instance, but it was a trend that brought in a lot of money in those days and was considered culturally acceptable without fear of admonishment).

I’m fascinated with films like this, that could only have existed in this time. No one would think to write or film or fund a movie like this now. Even in Desperate Housewives, which is a more recent continuation of the trend, everything was always more sinister, with nods to environmental disaster and terrorism, even in sheltered suburbia.

I urge you to watch this slice of implausibility. Most of all, I urge you to read this entire article and not skim to the end.  I think it’s one of the most lucid and vaguely humorous things I’ve ever written. But then I’m biased. Or maybe I’m just Queen Wrong of the Bastard Fucking Wrong People. Anyway, you decide.

I saw this the other day with my boyfriend and I couldn’t stop thinking about how Pedro Almodóvar has slowly but surely become my absolute favourite director. Even in a film like this, with a fairly (and comparatively) unassuming story, with relatively banal twists and turns, the craft work, level of skill and thought put into every frame leaves me enraptured.

When I was 15 I desperately wanted to be a film director (an ambition that fell by the wayside when I started writing music) and my ambition was to make films where not a single shot was throwaway. This might sound obvious, right? But even in middling to great Hollywood fare, most shots seem to be set up for simple convenience. In Almodóvar’s films I feel like he’s obsessed over every frame, and in the process come up with something totally unique. Shots filmed backwards via a small mirror, from under a table, from a distance. Whatever. Always bizarre and beautiful.

Of course, Almodóvar is by no means the only director to work this way, there are thousands of auteurs who similarly obsess over the aesthetic details, but Pedro’s heady mix of melodrama, sisterhood, surreal humour, colour palette, farce and high emotion make him my absolute fave.

I mean, not that anybody particularly cares, but jsyk.

I went to see the Glamour of the Gods exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery with my boyfriend today after his work finished. It was sweet and incredibly short (seriously, about 3 tiny rooms) but a lotta fun nevertheless.

Of course, I glossed over the photos of male actors in favour of the female ones. The highlight was the above picture of Jean Harlow taken by George Hurrell but there was a veritable BEVY of screen goddesses from Lillian Gish to Elizabeth Taylor. I wanted the photos of a sleek, wet Ava Gardner (one of my personal faves) and Katharine Hepburn (another fave) but the post card selection was weak and they had neither.

(I know, art exhibitions aren’t all about the post cards but I gotta make my room look purty somehow…)

The show was supposed to place equal emphasis on the photographers and subjects, an idea that I find fascinating in theory, but in practise, didn’t work for me. As much as I like to know what goes on ‘behind the [literal] scenes’ and find out about the relatively unsung heroes, I found it impossible to care about the people doing the photographing when their sitters were that glamorous and beautiful.

My photographer friends might be offended but oh well.

As part of my study of aesthetics, I started to ask myself: is it enough for art to be beautiful, and what is beauty, anyway? Does a masterwork have to be beautiful? Does genius transcend beauty? I didn’t come to any conclusions, but I found that asking the questions were enough. I don’t think beauty is a prerequisite when it comes to great works of art, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it exists in so many of them. Beauty is subjective, anyway. Or so we are lead to believe.

Terrence Malick’s The New World is one of my favourite films (of allll tiiiiiiime). If I had to compile a top 5 it would be in there. If I had to compile a top 3 it would still be in there. I think it would probably still be in my Top 2, alongside Volver, but it would depend on how recently I’d seen Black Narcissus. Knowing this, and feeling this way about Terrence Malick’s previous film, I was expecting to be blown away, or to at least have all of my sensory glands/receptors frayed and/or caressed hypnotically by The Tree of Life. I really wasn’t disappointed. It is a film so beautiful, I thought my heart would stop. I couldn’t believe I’d ever felt downtrodden or depressed. I couldn’t believe I’d ever questioned human beings’ innate ability to love or be good. I felt bowled over, and I was genuinely never bored. The film must have been a good 3 hours long, but I would have happily watched it for longer and thought angrily “WAS THAT IT?” at the end. I could have endured more and I wanted to. It never tried my patience.

There were niggles, however. I wasn’t happy with the ending, which felt like a slightly laboured mobile phone advert about connectivity and possibilityzzzzzz. I felt occasionally as if I were privy to a film about white people’s problems. White, straight people’s problems (athough that was a very minor niggle, and I’m not suggesting that films shouldn’t be made on the subject). I wanted to know more about the wife, as I felt she was pushed away from the fore in what was, essentially, a man’s movie. The camerawork sometimes felt excessive. I wanted to see more dinosaurs. I wanted to be carried into teenagehood and see more of the boys’ lives unfold.

But these thoughts were tiny ants floating in a sea of admiration for the work - like the tiny meteorite that seems to drop gently into the side of Our Fayre Planet but sends vast tidal shockwaves around the entire globe, obliterating life (now that was laboured - Simile Police). I marvelled at Malick’s ability to seemingly effortlessly recreate the alternate wonder, majesty and horror of ordinary childhood and family life, contrasting the shameless joy of outdoor play with the heartbreaking terror of your parents arguing or the sinister and sensuous twin discoveries of sex and violence. The music was also so well chosen and well crafted that I wanted to burst into song spontaneously and cry tears of joy and sorrow at the same time.

I think that sufficiently explains my experience of the movie.

Essentially it is a film that doesn’t offer any explanations, reveal any motives or proclaim anything profound, it simply observes. The scope, however, of what it observes is so vast and overwhelming, that it ends up saying something profound by default. I had been warned that it was a deeply Christian and evangelical piece. But in the end I didn’t feel that. I felt it was a film about people who were religious, but ultimately, the film was not in awe of God, but in awe of Nature. At the start, Jessica Chastain’s character breathlessly intones that there are two ways: The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace, and nothing bad will ever happen to those who follow the Way of Grace. Her family do their best to take this path but bad things happen anyway, and they seem to suffer a crisis of faith as a result. I’m not sure I believe that nature even exists (I think it is socially constructed), but I HAVE to believe in it. In that sense, it is my god and religion and the film seemed to be wrought from similar ideas. I’m sure other people felt differently, but luckily, like the beauty that inhabited every frame of the film, that is also in the eye of the beholder.

There are certain phrases, or ideas, that have become so hackneyed and clichéd, that even if they speak to you on a level that is, quite frankly, spooky, you choose to ignore them because they bring out the embarrassment hives.

These include (but are not limited to) ideas about ‘nature’ and ‘the universe’, such as: we are all connected, life and death are an unending and beautiful cycle, nature (if it exists at all) is as repulsive and horrifying as it is stunning and calming, we are tiny, tiny ants floating in a giant black void so vast that we are incapable of comprehending it without our brain matter spattering the nearby walls in a cataclysmic head explosion, and, there are many things still beyond our understanding and conundrums we will, perhaps, never unravel.

See? Those all sound like the kind of things you would hear someone say in a low-rent, badly-acted, abysmally scripted megabucks Hollywood movie about the end of the world. But you also feel them to be true or at least mystical on some level. Well, such is the genius of Björk that she arranges ideas along those lines in musical and lyrical phrases filled with such curious oddness and wisdom that you feel you might cry at your own, pitiful insignificance in the face of our ginormous and splendid earthplanetworldgalaxyuniverse.

Björk’s 1st official show (the preview doesn’t count, byotches) premiering new material from her 7th official studio album, Biophilia, took place last week and I was in attendance, with my boyfriend, agape, agitatedly excited and ready for anything.

Fortunately for me (this was my first time witnessing the goddess live in concert, so there was a lot riding on it) Ms. Guðmundsdóttir didn’t disappoint. In the stale and formulaic world of the popular music concert, it’s not difficult to innovate, but Björk did enough in one evening to make up for the lack of imagination in the cases of almost every single other artist working today. In the centre of a square stage, with audience surrounding on all four sides, flanked by a cryptic hexagon of double-sided screens and mind-bogglingly brilliant midi-controlled instrument-hybrid beasts (such as the gameleste, an enormous hand-wound music box contraption with gramophone horns coming out of it, a monolithic swinging pendulum that supposedly attuned to the earth’s movements and what looked like an organ, playing itself) Björk emerged with a choir of Nordic dryads in attendance (and a few nerds to play percussion and laptops) to deliver a set of startling originality.

Usually when an artist plays old favourites nestled in amongst new material, it’s the past hits that people seem to get most excited about, but I was genuinely frothing even more at the gills for tracks we hadn’t heard yet. Again, I wasn’t disappointed. There were no sour grapes of bitter mischance for me (!!!!!!!!!!). “Thunderbolt” had little crystalline (geddit) tears, beading in the corners of my eyes, its combination of synth baseline crafted from raw, purple electricity and ghostlike choir evoking the almost ineffable power and fragility of energy. And “Virus”, with its distressing video footage of blood cells fighting a losing battle, turned out to be a surprisingly sweet and melodic lullaby that had me totally enthralled.

Not that the old stuff paled in comparison. A lowkey and stripped back “One Day” made a surprising and moving encore and “All is Full of Love” felt more amped up and volcanic (fitting with footage of tectonic plates in another of her new songs). On the second date I saw her (yes I went twice, I’m that obsessed), not only did she substitute “All Is Full of Love” with a beautiful, wispy rendition of “Unravel”, which is in my top 10 most listened to songs of ALL TYM, but she also did a surprise encore of “Jóga”. “Jóga”, just to give you an idea of how important this song is to me, made me cry the first time I heard it, when I was 13. It made me a Björk fan, it is still, to this day, my favourite song of all time. And, perhaps most significantly, it made me want to become a pop singer/musician/violinist/artist/songwriter/composer.

Björk herself was ever the commanding presence, seeming to appear out of nowhere, as if she had somehow invented teleportation, too. Her dedication to conveying meaning and intent behind each song and lyric was consistent throughout. I was, at times, mere feet away from her, and although she briefly caught my eye, she seemed so devoted to each character and emotion that I felt transported all around the universe, not in a hip Mancunian warehouse. And yes, even though she seemed to be reading her own lyrics off karaoke screens, I still believed every word.

As previously mentioned, I went to catch her concert again, the following Sunday, and my previous thoughts were confirmed and magnified a hundred fold: that the material on Biophilia is, at times, even more challenging and oblique than on her previous record, but as melodic and swirlingly euphoric and majestic as we have come to demand from her (certainly, do not go into it expecting Confessions on a Nordic Danceflöör because not only does that make you an idiot who is incapable of allowing artistic progression or enjoying music that isn’t instant or of its time, but also, that’s not what you will get); BUT AS WELL, the Björk Live Experience is a visceral and multi-faceted (at times, literally) immersive extravaganza that was so overwhelming, its impossible to really do it justice in a blog post.

If you don’t have tickets: despair.

(Note: I originally wrote this for Shiny & New, my boyfriend’s music blog, and adapted it here for my personal one. Just so you know.)

Usually when I’m searching for records, I search for stuff I already know and love. This is a seriously flawed approach to record-buying because I’m not broadening my horizons or exploring new musical frontierzzzzz or whatnot. I’m just ploughing money into stuff I already have in either CD or MP3 format. My reasoning and thinking behind this is that I love to have albums I already own (and worship) with the artwork all large and 12 inches square. I also love being able to throw an album I already wuv on my record player and listen to it with the scratchy needle sound playing in between and all the way through, without skipping tracks or using the Satanic shuffle button.

The other day I was in Greenwich at one of my fave record shops (whose name I don’t even remember, but then I don’t think I would want to promote it anyway: their stock is incredible but their staff are rude, cocky cunts and epitomize the stereotypes about snobbish, arsey hipster dickheads who run shops of that ilk) when I stumbled across a vinyl in the ‘US INDIE’ section (I hate the word ‘indie’ and find it unhelpful as a descriptor or subgenre) by a woman called Laura Gibson. The artwork is above, and was the main factor in drawing me in. I guess anything with a naked owl and stag, cowering, embracing was gonna give me a boner, so that explains that.

Anyway I bought it on a whim, having no idea what the music was like and am overjoyed that I did. The album is a warm, hazy, multilayered set of lovingly crafted little… I was going to say ‘vignettes’ but I’m fucking OVER that word (it makes me sound like the NME work experience, asked to review… well… anything). The songs are good to excellent. They veer from swoony, dour countryish lullabies to rich, tart folky hymns and upbeat, brassy shanties.

I’m sure if Laura had a dick, she would have been proclaimed a visionary genius out to change sonic landscapes with her husky vocals forever, but of course she doesn’t so she hasn’t been. Nevertheless, I enjoy her, and I’m sure many other people of good taste do too, so she shouldn’t feel too bad.

Anyway, this experience will encourage me to buy more music on a whim again. Can I get a “hell yeah” for judging vinyls by their covers? *superficial*

I often find it difficult to explain why I like something so much that I’ve carried a dedication to it for years, since childhood even. I guess with personal tastes, but especially with something that meaningful, there’s an element of the mystical to it. Explaining our love for the things we relentlessly stan for might spoil it, or we might discover something we dislike in the process.

Because of this, you’ll be overjoyed to learn, I’m not going to write one of my famously prolix 2000 word essays on the subject of Tintin. If I had to come up with a list of reasons why I think Hergé’s series is so excellent and compelling and exciting, it would spoil the fact that I derive pure, uncomplicated joy from it. So this’ll be short.

Of course, Tintin is not ‘just’ a comic and there are really interesting issues surrounding it concerning the sexually ambiguous relationship between its two male, cohabiting protagonists (does it matter?) but also its racial ignorance. It’s well known that Tintin Au Congo is so racist it has never been translated into English and, in fact, in my copies, which are my dad’s from the 1960s, some of the depictions of African American people in the other books are so offensive they’ve actually been altered or removed in later editions. What I find interesting and a little irksome, actually, is that the books, even in their modern formats, are so racist and xenophobic, it’s quite shameful to admit I’m such a fan. The depictions of South-East Asian people, South Asian people, Latin American people and Eastern European people are all extremely offensive but also so integral to the plots, that if you had to remove them you’d have no comics left.

Of course, it’s impossible to ask Hergé to have been ahead of his time, and many can and would employ the age-old excuse that Shakespeare was anti-semitic in The Merchant of Venice, not because he was a vicious or terrible person but because he, like most people of his era, was ignorant, so it’s ‘ok’. I don’t think it’s ok, and as the son of two anthropologists I’m constantly irritated or disturbed by badly handled, exoticised or reductionist portrayals of people of other cultures. But unfortunately, the good outweighs the bad, and I have too many childhood memories associated with staying up all night poring over each Tintin comic in chronological order (and trying to get my quiff to stay up like that) to reject them because of their shortcomings.

I realise I’ve just done what I said I wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t be one of my blogposts without that happening. I’m sure my friends and family will be keen to know what I think of Spielberg’s upcoming film adaptation, a trailer of which emerged the other day, as I am renowned amongst them as a Tintin obsessive. And obviously, I am unable to offer an opinion yet. I’m sure with the enormous budget he commands, Spielberg is attempting to helm the definitive Tintin adaptation that will be held up against all others for the rest of all time. But I s’pose the great thing about the series is that it has a different feel to all its fans and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother writing an enormous long essay-cum-review about a film as goddamned awful as the Hilary Swank-produced romcom (yes, really) Something Borrowed, but for some reason, the mood just takes me. And this film was exceptionally bad. I write this as someone who, as a teenager, would go to see bad films in the cinema on purpose. I saw The Lake House, House of Wax, Elizabethtown, and many more, simply because I knew they would be execrable and I suppose there’s some sort of camp pleasure to be found in the so-bad-its-painful. Maybe I’m just a masochist.

Anyway I willingly saw Something Borrowed today because it was Orange Wednesday and my boyfriend paid so I was effectively seeing it for free. Also because I’m in the midst of extreme stress and thought it might be brief, brainless respite. It wasn’t, although it did put me in a good(ish) mood for absolutely every wrong reason imaginable.

The story is a piece of light-as-air guff centred around the premise that the guy you’re in love with, and have been for years, is about to get married to your best friend. You introduced them. You stood by as their romance blossomed into an engagement. And now you’re going to hold the train and wait for them at the end of the aisle as you embark on an affair behind your best friend’s back. Wait… what?

This is a film not just about cheating, but about cheating on your best friend with her fiancée weeks before they are about to get married. It is a film about doing the wrong thing. No, wait, the super wrong thing. It is about being so selfish and incapable of exercising either restraint or will power that you betray your life-long best friend and put everyone’s happiness at risk.

Of course, the film has plenty of ways of making you sympathise with the main character, who I will refer to as Ginnifer Goodwin because I can hardly allow her ‘performance’ to be described as acting. They try to make you feel that, wait, no it’s ok to do something this horrid and wrong because:

• Kate Hudson, the best friend who is oblivious to the cheating is a super-self-obsessed party girl, with apparently loose morals, a loud mouth, a tendency to exaggerate or lie, a love of tequila shots and a preponderance for $2000 Chanel purses. So clearly, because of the above, she deserves to be cheated on. That makes it ok because misogyny.

• Frowny Orange Man (who is Kate Hudson’s fiancée) and Ginnifer Goodwin went to law school together and had requited feelings of passion and romance that they never acted on because each one thought the other wasn’t interested (a.k.a. straight people can’t communicate) so that makes it ok for them to cheat. They knew each other first, so clearly, like, it doesn’t count.

• They are supposedly genuinely in love. So, again, infidelity becomes moral! This is a classic Hollywood idea: that true love trumps making other people’s lives miserable. If you actually love each other, you can hurt your friends because your love is more important, right?

What I couldn’t get my head around, was how these two extremely poorly written and acted characters could actually be in love, considering they seemed to be wrought from fluorescent orange clay and have brains made of whinge. Neither of these people had any discernible personality traits to speak of, except a talent for complaining about how hard it is to be a lawyer in New York because of all the money you have when what you really want to do is teach (or cheat on your best friend because true love).

There were many scenes that started with supposedly raucous laughter stemming from a joke just shared. This was supposed to signal that the characters were meant to be together because they made each other laugh, therefore they share the common trait of humour (again, a lame Hollywood short cut for personality and compatibility in a relationship). Following this clearly forced and frankly, quite awkward, laughter was an explanation for the preceding joke that the film’s audience hadn’t heard: “So what happened to him?” “We never saw him again” was one such exchange. Yes, hilarious. They might as well have started the scene with “HAHAHAHAHAHA THAT IS SO FUNNY THAT THING THAT HAPPENED THAT TIME THAT WAS SO AMUSING THAT WE BOTH FEEL THE NEED TO LAUGH ABOUT IT NOW AGAIN BECAUSE IT WAS MADE FROM ROFLS AND LMAOS”. Awful.

I also felt, whilst watching, that I was experiencing something made specifically for The Right-Wing Republican Film Festival. Seriously, this film was so strait-laced and white. Extended sequences took place in THE HAMPTONS. As if we can all just mosey on down to a place full of squillionaires to have fun on our own private beach front. Yeah. Life is hard and whatnot. But also there was a sequence where Kate Hudson’s fiancée, Frowny Orange Man, was being bought a $2 million mansion by his rich, stuffy parents as a wedding gift and HE ACTUALLY LOOKED SAD ABOUT IT. I know, he looked sad because he had to choose between the mansion and Kate Hudson, or just plain old Ginnifer Goodwin and her luxury showroom flat the size of Marie Antoinette’s East Wing. HARD LIFE.

This brings me to another point. Kate Hudson was supposed to be super annoying in this and Ginnifer Goodwin was meant to be totally likeable, but this just did not ring true. Not only did I not like Ginnifer Goodwin at ALL (I will get to this in a minute) but I thought Kate Hudson’s character, was, all truth be told, a bit rad. Seriously, this woman was fun. Maybe it was just because everyone in the movie was boring and hateful, and I only liked her by comparison, but I thought Goldie Hawn’s most famous offspring was actually a complete gas. She was sassy and upbeat and confrontational and honest and bolshy and the closest thing to funny of any of the people in this. Why Frowny Orange Man would want to give her up for the MOPIEST and most drippy lady in all Christendom, I have no idea.

Of course, this being a romcom, the female characters ALL seem to have been written by a council of sexist pigs. Even fun and happy-go-lucky Kate Hudson turns out to be a cheating, hypocritical compulsive liar. As previously mentioned, Ginnifer Goodwin is a reticent shrew who is so paralysed by debilitating shyness and social retardation that she will literally let anyone walk all over her and give up any chance of happiness simply because she is frightened of getting anything she wants. There is another character, whose name I can’t remember, who is basically a comical version of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Yes, all professional, successful women are either whores, waifs or psychopaths. Refreshing.

In contrast, the men are supposed to be goofy, loveable and faultless. Or full of faults but loveable anyway. But these men are dickheads and cunts, if I am being polite. Frowny Orange Man cheats on his wife-to-be, romances her best friend and refuses to grow a pair of testes and actually DO anything to rectify the awful mess he’s gotten everyone into. John Krasiniankdfak;sdfj off-of The American Office is the whipsmart friend who is in love with Ginnifer despite her never being able to return the feelings and he is also an insufferable douche. He leads comical Glenn Close on, pretending to be gay so he doesn’t have to admit to her that he doesn’t want to get married and it was only a one night stand. What a horrible person. Lastly, Frowny Orange Man’s best friend is a bearded, be-hatted douche-sac who tells a story about making a splint for an injured chipmunk in order to get women into bed. Charming.

Nevertheless, it’s always the woman’s fault, and we’re supposed to follow Ginnifer through her journey towards being able to make a decision in life without having a nervous breakdown as if that deserves a fucking medal. During this time we experience the kind of special effects that are rarely seen outside of a Powerpoint Presentation circa 1999. Strange dissolves, cheap, tacky, fades to unnecessary flashbacks that are clearly included for the people in the audience who have had a frontal lobotomy and don’t understand the most basic plotting. We also get to see more stock aerial shots of the various places the film takes place in than I have ever seen in the rest of my whole life. Seriously, guys, this film was 60% stock footage of New York, London and The Hamptons. Fun.

I don’t understand why this sort of film still gets made. It’s clearly aimed at women but simultaneously seems to hate them and hold them in disregard. It’s insulting and shoddy and made by people who seem to have picked up a camera and vaguely pointed it in the direction of an actor because it took their fancy that day. Contrary to popular belief I actually enjoy films that are both romantic and funny but that doesn’t mean that I will sit through what feels like 5 long hours, of heterosexual orange rich people feeling sorry for themselves and then supposedly finding ever-lasting happiness despite being so bland they might as well be cyborg waxworks.

Anyway, just in case Hilary Swank gets to read this (hahaha, yeah right): girl what were you thinking?

I find it almost impossible to express my love for Björk. She has been my religion for 6 golden years and the thought of a new album from her fills me with so much excitement, I fear I might suffer a stroke (or disgrace myself… one of the two). I don’t understand how someone could not love her last effort, Volta. It was everything I could have wanted from a B album: melodrama, bizarre and challenging soundscapes, odd instrumentation, obscure, touching, profound, charming lyrics and soaring, heart-filling melody. The arguments that it either wasn’t poppy and melodic enough (Björk has never, despite skewed recollections coloured by nostalgia, been that kind of artist, and even so, there is melody aplenty in Volta) or that it wasn’t ‘experimental’ enough (for every track like “Wanderlust” or “Dull Flame of Desire” that practically bristled with euphoric tunes, there were tracks obscured by and shrouded in mystery and the unexpected) seemed to me to be founded in nothing. Did these people even listen to the album in its entirety, or skip through once and dismiss it?

Anyway that’s not even the point. Björk. Me love. The end.

(via drencrome)

Before I start proceedings, I would just like to make it very clear that I loved Black Swan. Seriously. Not only can I not stop thinking about it but it left a deep imprint (although not just in my head but also - with its baby pink and toxic green colour scheme - on the inside of my eyelids). When I criticise it in this article, it’s not because I didn’t like it, it’s because I’m horrible and expect perfection so criticise everything.

With that said, I shall start with the positive: what a great film. No, really. I haven’t seen something this compelling and well-put-together in a long time. And what’s more, I know this will become a horror classic. Yeah, that’s right. Horror classic. Because as much as this film (and the people showering it with deserved awards) want it to be mainstream arthouse - which I know is sort of an oxymoron, but that’s what it strives to be - it is, to all intents and purposes, a horror film.

Not a horror film in the modern sense of the word, but still, a horror film. I don’t mean to go off on a silly complainy tangent about how standards have slipped, and wasn’t it better in the good old days, and oh how technology and the intrawob ruined everything, but ‘horror’ nowadays is more about a gimmick or a hook with generous lashings of gore, than anything else. As previously mentioned, I hate to harp on (I don’t, I love it, so I shall continue), but I feel (and I am potentially completely wrong) that there is no imagination involved in the genre these days (at least not in the horror I’m seeing). Horror, now, is about photocopies of ghosts and serial killers and evil children, last seen in the 70s or 80s (or horrid botched remakes). No one appears to be bothering to think up a concept less done or obvious.

But Black Swan ain’t obvious and it sure as hell ain’t done, despite its barrage of extended clichés and nods to other films. It tells the story of nervous, mentally fragile Nina Sayers (Natalie P), who lives with her overbearing and smothering and (to be quite frank) deeply disturbed mother. She dedicates her entire life to ballet but it doesn’t seem to be enough, until sexual harassment from her creepy and hammy director, Thomas, pushes her to lash out and bite him.

This persuades Thomas to cast her as his new lead principle in the infamous role of the Swan Queen. The role fashionably demands her to play two characters: the main character, a virginal white swan and her evil twin, the daughter of the ballet’s villain, the seductive black swan. Now, I’ve seen this ballet a good 6 or 7 times and the role of the black swan is, all truth be told, very small. I can understand a good director would want whoever played the role to be able to embody these two rather antifeminist clichés of womanhood, but I cannot imagine anybody demanding that a dancer go this far and become sexually confident in her private life, just to play a role.

But, of course, this is a dramatic film, not a documentary so that doesn’t really matter. Nor does it matter that the film, whilst incredibly accurate in some respects, also doesn’t ring true in others. In the name of full disclosure, I trained in ballet for 13 years from the age of 5 and attended a full-time performing arts school, where, even though I didn’t specialise in the dance, I was surrounded by people who did. As I said, aspects were deeply accurate: the bitchiness, the obsession, the politics, the paranoia, the stress. I have met and known girls who, like Nina, are so obsessed with ballet, they have no other life, and when they meet someone (usually a straight male) who has no interest in it, are shocked and taken aback! How could you not be in love with ballet?

Controversially, I also think the mother was fairly accurate. She wasn’t as outright nightmarish or hammy as some reviews lead me to believe, although she was totally (if not intentionally) awful and, I believe, completely responsible for her daughter’s mental breakdown. Anecdote time: I knew one girl whose mother was so determined for her to succeed as a prima ballerina, that she forced her to list everything she had eaten during the day to her on the phone, encouraging her to drop things from her daily diet (which was meagre enough) and suggesting further, horrifying ways to lose weight. This sounds made-up or exaggerated but was entirely true and real. Of course, most ballet mothers are nothing like this, but they do, frighteningly, exist.

The dancing was also seamlessly and convincingly done. Natalie Portman really looked like a ballet dancer (of course she wasn’t perfect), and there didn’t seem to be any obvious cutaways. She wasn’t just doing ballet arms, either, she was doing fairly to incredibly advanced stuff, apparently without the aid of CGI trickery or clever editing. I say apparently because I saw this film on an enormous, eyewateringly-huge screen and barely had time to notice discrepancies or optical tricks. Potentially on second viewing it would all seem less seamless and cracks would start to appear but until then: to me, it looked approaching flawless.

Things that didn’t ring true, though, include but are not limited to Mila Kunis’ character dancing with her hair down (I have never in my entire life seen a classical ballet dancer doing this, ever), and the director, Thomas, who I thought was awful. There are very few straight men working in directorial or creative roles in ballet, and the ones that do, would not get away with that level of sexual harassment. Ballet dancers, especially female ones, are extremely close, and sisterly, even with their rivals or people they hate. People would talk, it would get out, something would be done. I also despised the scene where he chose people by tapping them on the shoulder during barre, explaining the story of Swan Lake as he goes. That, again, is totally ridiculous. Every ballet dancer knows the story and the demands of the lead role, and nobody would abuse their power to play mind games like that in front of an entire company.

But, again, if you want realism watch (the excellent) The Company. This was not a docu-, or mocku-, mentary and the clichés taken to their full and final conclusion were for staggering effect, not an attempt to show what ballet is really like. As for the other aspects of the film, I thought everything was well done. The performances (perhaps Cassell excluded) were universally incredible, the sets and production design were stunning, if occasionally heavy-handed, the script wasn’t as clunky as its awful first line might suggest (“I had the craziest dream last night” - seriously awkward) and the ear-bleedingly loud score was perfect.

Mostly, it was just fascinating to see a horror film about the imagined that comes along with total nervous breakdown. There were no murderers or ghosts in this film, except in Nina’s imagination, and despite what I thought was a really very silly ending (I won’t go into too much detail), I left the cinema impressed and with my nerves satisfyingly frayed by the most claustrophobic camera work I have ever seen.

I saw the Gaugin exhibition at the Tate Modern last night, and, like the common art philistine that I am, I was kinda blown away. First, a little background:

When I was 13 my anthropologist parents and my two younger siblings moved to Japan for a year. My dad had gotten a prestigious grant and my mom got a sabbatical so she could finish her book, Remaking Kurosawa. I managed to escape moving to a foreign land (and attending the French Lycée there), by begging to be allowed to start performing arts school and live with my grandmother, but I visited them at Christmas and then, again, in the summer, just as they were packing up to move back to England.

I could write an entire other essay about my experiences in Japan so I’ll spare you them here. Basically: it was cheaper to buy a round-the-world ticket to get back to Angleterre than to fly back in one go, so we took the opportunity as a family to visit places we’d never otherwise be able to afford to fly to directly. The first place was New Zealand where we have distant cousins, but the second place was Tahiti. Tahiti was one of the most bizarre and exotic places I have ever visited, but in truth, my memories of it are half formed and distant (it was 7 years ago and I was quite young).

One thing I do remember, however, are the Gaugin reproductions. Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin famously spent extended periods in Tahiti and painted native women in glorious and broad colours with dark touches like half-obscured religious idols or mysterious looming figures. I remember these paintings adorning everywhere from restaurants to tourist attractions. (NB: I use the word ‘native’, here, not to denigrate these women or paint them as simple or indigenous, but simply to indicate that Tahiti was their native country, as England is mine).

Certainly, anyone familiar with Gaugin might think immediately of his more ‘tropical’ works. But the great thing about this exhibition at the Tate Modern, was the range and variety of work displayed. I saw landscapes painted in Bretagne with large, almost comical cows and geese, and rolling, half-suggestive orange hills. There were self-portraits in abundance (the artist was, apparently, deeply self-obsessed!), pictures of his children, sleeping, dreaming of faint symbolic objects dancing about their heads, ceramics and even woodwork.

A whole room was dedicated to religious paintings - not just pictures of Tahitians (although having been largely converted by missionaries, they were included) - but paintings loaded with Christian imagery and symbolism. I’m a tiny bit obsessed with religious - specifically Christian - iconography, not just in fine art, but also in pop culture, music etc. so this was a real treat. Gaugin’s yellow and green Christs were fascinating and I picked up a postcard of his rich, sublime ‘Jacob Wrestling the Angel’ dominated by a bright, seductive, violent red.

All this is basically a way of saying that, I, who openly professes to knowing fuck-all about fine art, was, yet again, deeply impressed and moved by an exhibition at the Tate Modern. I often hear sneering about some of the more avant-garde works in the permanent exhibition, and I suppose that’s fine if those are not to your tastes. But I think anyone with even a passing interest in art should take any opportunity to experience one of the temporary exhibits. Every one I have seen, from household names like Kahlo and Gorky to more obscure artists like Francis Alys has been an exhaustive, well-laid-out and fascinating eye-opener for me. So, go.

For some reason unfathomable to me, the idea of a talented but reclusive artist crafting one brilliant album and then never being heard from again is romantic, whimsical and appealing to certain music fans. If you’re one of those people (and you’re not already familiar with her) Linda Perhacs may be right up your street.

I discovered her watching Gilmore Girls (yes, insert collective groan here) during a particularly brilliant scene. Lorelai ‘comically’ bumps a man during a cider mill parade and knocks a bunch of red balloons out of his hand, offering him cigarettes as an apology. In a following scene, Rory, confused and angry that she’s effectively been blown off by her married ex-boyfriend after he promised he was single and available, stares up from outside his house to be greeted by the bizarre and surreal (I can’t type this word without saying it aloud in a Kath & Kim-style Austroilian accent - ‘surroil’) sight of a whole bunch of red balloons sedately wafting by.

This scene is set against a snippet of music featuring the lyrics “I’m spacing out” (70s, I know). Every time I’d seen this episode I wondered what it was, but it was only the last time that I bothered to find out. The song is the stunning “Chimacum Rain” by Linda Perhacs, a 70s alternative folk singer/songwriter who released one brilliant album and (you guessed it) was never heard from again.

I can’t afford to pay my rent on time this month because I decided, on a whim, to get her whole darn album (the thorough and exhaustive 2005 reissue, and therefore her entire back catalogue) on iTunes. And I don’t regret it. The album is wonderful: all cascading and undulating guitar and subtle synthesized noodling. It sounds of its time, but not dated. Linda’s lyrics are both tart and simple, and ornate and lush. I am, of course, OUTRAGED that she never released another work.

Anyway, if you’re into folk, Joni Mitchell, 70s singer/songwriters or female vocalists I’d strongly suggest you ‘check it out’. I’m overjoyed I did, and I’m sure she’d be glad of the royalties (no this is not product placement). I’m certain there are people out there shaking their heads and rolling their eyes and saying “we’ve known about Linda for years”, but I haven’t, and I feel like I’ve discovered a forgotten and underrated gem.