Uncouth Reflections

Paleo Retiree writes:

Interesting / awful film by Catherine Hardwicke, who did the first “Twilight” movie, which I haven’t seen and don’t plan to see. It’s an interesting movie because Hardwicke is very talented; it’s an awful one because of the script. I fast-forwarded through more than half of the movie; the Question Lady made it barely ten minutes into the film before she snoozed off.

It’s about Hayley, a young rock star whose brother/creative-partner has died, and who’s trying to get back into the music-making, concert-giving game. Lost (and flopping) without her brother, she takes on a new performing/writing partner, a guy guitarist with dyed black hair and a lot of Goth eye makeup; he’s bisexual, kinky, talented and maybe a little too dangerous. Hayley may still be a funky rock chick but she’s also now a wife, a mom and a homeowner. Can she find a way to continue to rock out while protecting her relationships and living up to her adult responsibilities? The film is clearly intended to address this question in a style today’s hyper-assertive Millennial young women can relate to. It’s a metaphor for trying-to-find-a-way-to-continue-having-fun-while-growing-up.

Hardwicke has a background in design and decor, and she gives her film a wonderful, if a little too glossy, alt-boho/Free People look — ie., a glam-disheveled, boas-and-leather, neo-’70s feeling. (There’s ‘way too much handheld/reality-TV camerawork for my tastes, but that’s the current mode and I’m trying to roll with it.) Hair, clothes, makeup, jewelry, fabrics, and backlighting — the movie’s backlighting budget must have been huge — are all chic, inventive and fun.

Hardwicke’s also very free and enthusiastic with her actors, and they respond with a lot of freewheeling charisma, spirit and daring. Emily Browning is supercute and very talented as the waifish, tough/sensitive rock chick/mom (note to self: time to catch up with “Sleeping Beauty“); Xavier Samuel manages to make his wildly-talented, dangerously-troubled guitarist not-laughable, a considerable acting achievement; and, as Browning’s middle-aged-but-still-girlish manager/agent/ publicist/friend, Dawn Olivieri is hilariously pushy, shrewd and enthusiastic. Back in my days as a magazine flunky, I frequently dealt with these too-raucous-for-an-office-job professional pop-culture gals, and Olivieri really nails the type.

Incidentally, I notice that many of the movie’s Amazon reviewers found the film a lot more sexual than I did. Does that reflect a difference between people whose culture-consumin’ lives mainly consist of TV-watching and people, namely me, who have a foreign-film/downtown-theater frame of reference? But aren’t a lot of today’s cable-TV hits said to be shockingly adult? I haven’t watched them myself.

The film’s script is an absurd combo of the dewy-and-naive and the wised-up-and-edgy, veering in mode from chickflick to magazine article to music video to horror movie, and doing so in very arbitrary-seeming, YA-novel ways. For all I know, that’s a recipe that could really please a lot of younger viewers. So it was interesting to learn that the film was a flop. What about it didn’t work for young people? I have zero idea. (The film wasn’t made with me in mind, that’s for sure.) In any case, what it definitely is is a movie for people who have never grown up and never will, but who want to think that they’re watching a grownup movie anyway — and especially for young women who were once addicted to the WB network and “Sex and the City,” and who are now starting to think about kids and houses.

Related

• Back at my old blog, I wrote about the history of the Young Adult novel.