(no subject)

Last night I finally saw In Her Shoes. I had a fair bit of affection for Toni Collette & Cameron Diaz already. I'm not really familiar with Shirley MacLaine, but she was good in this.

I really like this movie. I like the divergent lines plot structure, the focus on the internal development of the characters, & the ironic sense of protecting someone who's done you wrong from others' anger.

In one of the bonus features, the director (or one of the producers, I forget) was saying how this is the kind of movie that used to be common but now is rare, in how it's about modern realistic people, to whom the audience will react with a, "that's me!" I felt that way about both Rose (Toni Collette) & Maggie (Cameron Diaz) at different points in the course of the movie.

Rose is the "responsible" one, Maggie is the "irresponsible" one. And over the course of the movie, we see them each go through personal progress & reshape their relationship to each other (boy that's vague). It's quite a ride. Not one to watch with your very conservative parents, I would say, but a neat flick.

One strange thing: Why cast Toni Collette in a role that was written for a "fat" woman? I took it as "fatter than her sister"/"self-critical" but she's supposedly a woman with a noticeable weight problem (or former weight problem) in the script. She said she gained 25 pounds for the part, but she comes off as a svelte woman in baggy clothes.

Also this week:

Paris, by Cédric Klapisch.

One of those movies that has a whole lot of characters, some of whom intersect in odd ways. I thought I identified one great loop of intersection & a cluster of other characters that don't intersect with the loop, but then I remembered that one of that cluster was neighbor to the main characters & does interact briefly with them.

Fabrice Luchini plays a very Fabrice Luchini character, who is significant in one cluster, & might have been central to another less expansive movie.

Juliette Binoche is perhaps most recognizable to English-speaking audiences, & has a lot of scenes, especially early.

But the real "central/p.o.v. character" seems to a man named Pierre (Romain Duris) who is dying of a heart condition at a rather young age, has quit work due to weakness (he was a dancer, apparently), & stands outside his apartment watching those around him. We then follow them around.

I found the treatment of sexual mores a bit surprising in one bit, but I'm a giant prude & not French.