Mastery of tension

We wanted to see Past Lives when we saw the trailer at the Michigan Theater, but it didn't end up meeting our usual schedule. I don't recall if it was because it simply wasn't showing on Tuesdays or if showtimes were too early for us to make it. I remember thinking that it looked at first glance like a standard "long lost relationship" story, but there was something subversively attractive about it that elevated it beyond what I would have normally dismissed as boilerplate. With the recent dearth of interesting films at the two theaters, we decided to take a chance on this one on Apple TV+ and I'm really glad we did, because it was anything but bog standard and is one of the better films we've seen this year.

There's an art to cinematic romance that goes beyond the dreamy quality that many people associate with it. It's not just about living out fantasies. Sometimes it's about dealing with the emotions that are known to all of us and inherent to the human condition. The ability to display that is an art in and of itself because many will associate those presentations with sappiness or "chick flicks", but when you can convey real anguish and uncertainty and restraint, it creates a tension on the screen that is the essential hallmark of storytelling. It's what keeps your viewer glued to the screen. They want to find out what happens next, whether it's the predictable (Love conquers all!) or the not so much (Real life...) This film has that tension from beginning to end. From the moment we first see 12-year-old Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), we can feel the bond between them and their desire to immerse themselves completely in it. But we can also feel the restraint (the uncertainty of youth; the conflicting paths of life; the attachments to others) that they have to exercise to keep themselves from engaging in that deepest desire. It's a difficult task to sell that tension without overselling it to the point of melodrama and both Lee and Yoo, as well as writer-director, Celine Song, pull it off with aplomb.

Indeed, some of the best moments of the film are those without dialogue or obvious action, but which are instead simply studies of the two leads as their faces betray everything they want and everything they're containing as they try to navigate their changing circumstances from 12 to 24 to 36. I've often said that visual storytelling is often a lost art in modern filmmaking but Song's pacing and direction have it down. That extends to the sets and costuming, as well. There's nothing overly remarkable about any of the backgrounds or apartments or restaurants. They all seem everyday and normal because this situation is also everyday and normal, but no less important for being so. Nothing that you see detracts from the focus on the characters and the emotions that they're alternately struggling to contain and desperate to express. It's an extraordinary feeling when you can understand why it would be gratifying to some degree to see these two people finally get to interact in the way that they both want, but would also be a hindrance to the telling of a genuinely good story if they tipped over that edge. Again, that tension is what separates the film from the bog standard and it had to be maintained. The fact that much of the story was drawn from Song's own life probably made it that much easier to tell.

Some mention also has to go to Nora's husband, Arthur, played by John Magaro, who some might consider the truly tragic character in this drama, as he's the innocent bystander in this drawn out collision. He cogently identifies himself as the "White bad guy" in this romantic scenario when all he's trying to do is continue to love the woman that he's been married to for a decade. You feel for him at least as much as the two leads for knowing that his wife may still be bonded at the soul, as it were, to another person. But she also points out that she made the choice to have this life and she's choosing to spend it with him. It's that choice that kept Nora and Hae Sung apart the first time they rediscovered each other, so he's a conscious inclusion. But, of course, the genuine desire is written on Nora's face through the final third of the film, whether Arthur is present or not. In the end, it's a great film in the path of favorites of mine like Blue is the Warmest Color, because it's a film about humans and how we react to the world and the people around us. Highly recommended for a watch and a re-watch, for that matter.

Trying too hard to be something different

It's been a few weeks. There hasn't been much playing at the Michigan Theater that's been particularly interesting, so we've mostly just been watching TV on Tuesdays. But there hasn't really been much of that that's particularly compelling, either. We've had the misfortune to see a film that we were hemming and hawing about seeing at the Michigan and also another Apple+ TV series that is ending up like all of the rest of them, other than Severance.

The film was Bottoms; another Emma Seligman feature that is the follow-up to her fairly-entertaining Shiva Baby, which we did see and did enjoy, but wasn't compelling enough for me to sit down and type out a couple thousand words about. It was originally a short film and then was popular enough to become a long film and didn't really benefit from the necessary padding of the script. Meanwhile, Bottoms, which stars and was co-written by Rachel Sennott (also the lead in Shiva Baby) is one part bog-standard teen sex comedy and one part parody of same. The characters are all hyper-realized stereotypes of those idiots you detested in high school, except for the main group, which is the poor nerds that somehow end up with all of the girls. At any moment, I was waiting to hear Robert Carradine's bellowing laugh erupt from one of the women that mostly occupied our time. But the problem, of course, was just that: We've seen all of this before. Many times. None of it is new. None of it is original. None of it is really that funny. The only difference here is that both leads (the other being Ayo Edebiri, best known as Sydney from the spectacular The Bear) are gay. That's a nice acknowledgement of modern viewpoints and the identities that many people had even back when you and I were in high school, but it doesn't make the tired plot or screenplay any better. It just makes it an even more obvious retread with some modern window dressing to try to sell it to new audiences (much like Bros.)

Seriously, the summary offered by Rotten Tomatoes (where the film has a 93% approval rating...) is "Propulsive and over-the-top, Bottoms is an instant high school comedy classic that feels both current and nostalgic." I can assure you that there's nothing inherently "propulsive" (whatever that actually means) about it, especially when it comes to the leaden predictable plot. That, of course, is probably what makes people feel "nostalgic" about seeing the same thing they've seen since the 1980s introduced us to Porky's. I'm sorry to say that nostalgia was not the overarching feeling I was getting. It was more like boredom. And, of course, the "current" part was, again, likely down to the fact that many reviewers seem smitten with the idea of gay people being something original in storytelling when they should just be regular people in a decent story, if one were being told. If they wanted to make a film about being LGBTQ+ in high school, then they could have written a script that fully engaged that topic, rather than simply using it as a note of "modern" difference from the almost 40-year-old Revenge of the Nerds. There really was nothing that made this film stand out- script, direction, performances -from any of the dozens of lookalikes over those past four decades, which is really disappointing after the solid films that we've seen both Sennott and Edebiri (Shiva Baby, Theater Camp(!)) in this past summer. And, yes, I should get around to writing something about The Bear.

Until then, I'll have to content myself (and you) with writing about Apple+'s attempt to be different in a similar failing fashion to Bottoms. As noted, other than Severance, the offerings on Apple+ have been pretty subpar for any number of reasons. The problem with our latest attempt to find something interesting, Invasion, is also one of trying too hard to stand out from the crowd and missing the target in the process. Just from the title, you're automatically aware that the series is about an attempt by little green men to conquer/eradicate/make aggressive contact with/something-as-long-as-it's-violent our little green world. Again, this is a plot that goes back to H.G. Wells at the end of the 19th century (War of the Worlds is 125 years old this year, in fact.) However, in this case, rather than show the snake-necked saucers of the Martians laying waste to the countryside, through the three episodes we've watched, we've seen the presumed aliens once, for about 15 seconds. In their place, we've gotten four stories about emotional and personal loss that just happened to occur during this supposed crisis.

We have the estranged former doctor who gave up her career to be the perfect housewife; the career soldier wrestling with the effects of distance from his own marriage; the fragile schoolboy dealing with bullies and absent parents; and the brilliant engineer who is enduring her first long separation from the love of her life, driven by their mutual careers. Again, all of these are themes of emotional and personal loss and all of which are completely ancillary to the ostensibly overarching theme of an alien invasion. Any of them could have happened in the midst of any other kind of disaster (pandemic, terrorist attack, worldwide forest fire) and any of them could simply have been happening on their own, no crisis required, such that the focus of the show called "Invasion" isn't any SF element at all, but simply the angst of these people going through their personal problems. But all that does is make a footnote of what is supposedly the central thrust of your story. Said invasion is a background element, at best. I think the idea was that they'd tell the story of a "war of the worlds" at the ground level, by showing what happens to these normal people facing normal problems who are suddenly thrust into extraordinary circumstances, akin to the classic Alien. But all they've done is provide a veneer of SF to a pretty standard melodrama; to the point where you wonder why it's considered speculative fiction at all.

Now, I was just complaining about seeing the same, old thing and, certainly, we've seen a few hundred alien invasion-type films and TV series that put our (human) heroes in trying times over the years, from ongoing wars like Battlestar Galactica to plain, old Earth-gets-firebombed stuff like The Tomorrow War. None of that is particularly exciting or original anymore. But none of them try to pretend they're something they're not in the hopes of approaching it from a nominally original angle, either. All of the stories and characters (and performances) in this show are interesting enough. It's not been boring. But it could have just been titled "Four Stories of Loss" with any of the premises mentioned above (jokes or not) and we would have had the same result. But we came into this with the idea that this is about an ALIEN INVASION and instead it's about a lot of longing (and appropriately plaintive looks) for when things can be "normal" again; presumably post-divorce, post-mourning, and post-getting back to primary school before someone kills you and takes the conch. Clearly, they've tried to slow play this as a different way of approaching the stereotypical assumption that many would make and that's all well and good. But it also sets up the viewer to be disappointed as we wade through the emotional debris and wonder what visitors from other worlds have to do with any of this or why they'd bother. We're probably not going to anymore, either.