Author: Chloe Pelletier

Phenomena: Being a Girl is Fucking Metal

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Phenomena (1985)
Directed by Dario Argento
Written by Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini
110 min.

Very mild spoilers.

It’s understandable that independent, assertive, intelligent women might have trouble identifying with most female characters, because these traits are traditionally seen as ‘masculine‘, and as such, given to men.  For this reason, I more often identify with male characters than female ones. Aside from Ana in Cria Cuervos, it’s usually pretty hard for me to think of any on the spot—but now that I’ve seen Dario Argento’s Phenomena, I have another.
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The Wind Rises: Sub or Dub?

Jiro and paper airplane_out


The Wind Rises (2013)
Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
126 min.

Spoiler-free.

Dear Prospective Viewers Of The Wind Rises,

I know what you’re wondering—which version to see. Both are out now, some theaters even playing both, and you don’t want to spend your money on the wrong one.

Well, I’ve seen both, and I’m here to help.
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Cría Cuervos: The Most Chloe Movie Ever

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Cría Cuervos (1976)
Written and Directed by Carlos Saura
110 min.

Very mild spoilers ahead.

When I was seven, my mom made a home movie of me walking around a mulberry bush surrounded by purple and white flowers, picking them and humming to myself quietly.  Even though I had bossed her incessantly before she hit record to follow me with the camera as I carefully timed my pauses and expressions, she did what moms in the 90’s with fanny packs and Hi-8 cameras did instead—she began to narrate it in the most sarcastic, dorky voice possible: “This… is… Chloe…”

At the time, I didn’t know that I was trying to direct.  I didn’t even know what directing was, nor had the concept of moviemaking ever occurred to me.  And to this day, although I want to make movies, I haven’t done anything serious—I’ve only been daydreaming, just as I had been doing on that day, when her seemingly oblivious voice interrupted me and made me feel embarrassment that I’d been caught, and as though a special moment had been robbed of me.  I angrily ran up to her and yelled at the camera, “Mom, erase it! Erase it!”

My mom must not have been as oblivious as she acted though, because after that, she made our main way of interacting watching and analyzing movies together.  And she instilled in me, not just a love for movies, but a certain idealism about life that has stubbornly remained and kept me alive to this day, long after she’s been gone.

One might assume that it’s easier to write about movies that strike us deeply in our souls.  However, this is the most challenging piece I have ever written—not because I have little to say about the film (I have so much to say about it) but because it takes a lot of discipline not to go on and on about my entire life story over the course of explaining why I was so deeply affected by it.  Cría Cuervos is basically a movie about my childhood—and the reason I watched it was that someone who knows me very well said, “Watch Cría Cuervos, it’s the most Chloe movie ever.”  They were right—I had to pause it several times in order to not blur the frames with my tears.
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Andy’s Panties: The Visual Motif That Subliminally Got You Drunk on The Goonies

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When I was a kid, I wanted movies to instantly make me feel good, like soda pop.  The Goonies was one of the movies I saw on TV all the time while flipping channels, and at the time, it seemed boring and annoying to me, simply because I was tired of seeing it around.  I remember in particular that the kids in it all talking at the same time gave me anxiety.  Because of this, every time I stumbled upon it, I’d change the channel after a scene or two—eventually seeing almost every scene at one point or another, enough to understand the gist of the story—but it wasn’t until I was old enough to pull my head out of my ass that I realized—by actually watching it from beginning to end—that classics like The Goonies are on TV so often because they’re transcendent.

I now also understand that the very aspect that made me feel too frustrated to take The Goonies seriously was supposed to make me feel that way, by design. As an extreme introvert, the constant yapping made me feel uncomfortable, whereas extroverts may have felt invigorated.  The realism of this is beautiful.  It puts us in the story by replicating very real feelings of nervousness and exuberance.  It’s okay that I feel anxious watching the overlapping dialogue—enjoying a movie doesn’t have to mean it makes you feel good.

We graduate from soda pop to cocktails.
Continue reading Andy’s Panties: The Visual Motif That Subliminally Got You Drunk on The Goonies

A (Reformed) Lost Girl’s Take On ‘Tiny Furniture’

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Tiny Furniture (2010)
Written & Directed by Lena Dunham
98 min.

About a year ago, the editor of this site wrote a scathing critique of Lena Dunham entitled The Empress, Quite Literally, Has No Clothes.  A few months before reading it, I’d made the transition from engaged college student with supposed direction to a member of Lena’s target demographic—single, 20-something, stagnating in a “post-graduate delirium” as she puts it, working a minimum wage job and living with a single parent.  A “lost girl”, as Cody puts it in his piece.

Until very recently, I’d avoided watching Tiny Furniture because I didn’t want to deal with any of the three possible outcomes of me doing so:

  1. Liking it, and being berated by my peers.
  2. Disliking it, and being annoyed that I wasted my time.
  3. Hating it, and agreeing with Cody that it is in fact detrimental to its audience.

I didn’t need any of those stresses in my life, especially when I was so busy having such a “hard time” trying to “figure things out” (as she puts it, over and over). But after a year of being in the position that the film attempts to depict, the subject matter and controversy finally seduced me and, with the aid of a few beers, I jumped into bed with it.
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