Delicious and my not quite review
Aug. 11th, 2014 03:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avawatsonI started this post literally 3+ weeks ago, after I found myself downloading Delicious on iTunes at 3 in the morning. Here's the U.S. link. You can rent it for a little as $4 in standard def or buy it for $8 in high def. You can read ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mid0nz's interview with the writer-director, Tammy Riley-Smith, here.
I also livetweeted some idiotic thoughts along with it if you'd like to see. If you've ever wondered what sort of person I am, I am the kind of person who tweets about the Crime of M. Lange cinematography and chef!Shezza feels in the same film. Most of those thoughts really are idiotic though, so don't blame me if you click on it hoping for otherwise.
Non-spoilery writeup first, behind the cut for its obnoxious length.
I'll go ahead and state that I was interested in this film initially primarily because Loo Brealey is in it. To just make a general statement, I like her choices in project; I believe they have a certain feminist ethic to them and I want to see Loo in projects beyond Molly Hooper in Sherlock. She's lovely on twitter, adorableness and sweetness incarnate (when she isn't being snarky and real), and her writing is intelligent, introspective, and touching. See this and this for examples of things she's written.
Second to that, I learned that Michael Price was an executive producer, and then thirdly I learned that the director and writer is a woman. A woman I'd never heard of, but honestly -- female directors of any sort are automatically interesting to me. How did you come to be in this world? There's a story of how this film got made, there has to be, simply because the director's female. Films with female creative leads don't just get made.
And somewhere in me learning about these things beyond Loo's involvement, I watched the trailer.
Upon watching the trailer, I had these things to say about it when Mid0nz asked about the film for her upcoming interview with its director.
Also subsequent to the trailer watching and the above brain splat, I read the fairly in-depth synopsis of the film that iTunes put up of it, which I screenshotted for mid0nz here. At which point I realized that there was a fairly decent disconnect between the trailer and the synopsis. Jacques the bumbling, struggling new kid on the block vs. Life, London, and Stella's Demons was a fair cry from this backstory of a son searching for a dad and the long winding path of Stella's spiral matching up with his.
Below the cut is a review of sorts. But I'm somewhat terrified to post it, because it's not a great review. And I mean that both in quality and in assessment. It's a rambly and generally negative reaction to a film. I'm sorry about that, I really am. I feel very much like a killjoy posting this, and I tend to stay away from critique in fandom for a reason. But I thought I owed at least Mid0nz an honest reaction.
Cut for, again, obnoxious length and for spoilers.
I'll get some technical and aesthetic aspects out of the way, considering it's what hit me first (see the livetweet). This is despite the fact that I am not keenly qualified to comment on these things, so take it for what it's worth. To be very honest, after (1) reading the term "micro-budget" attached to this film and (2) seeing the tweet that said that the film was put together for less money that it cost to buy a house and (3) being not overly impressed with either the trailer or the released scene of Patti sticking up Jacques with a baguette in the courtyard, I wasn't expecting the film to look as good as it did. The crane shot in the beginning when Jacques is leaving St. Pancras actually made my eyebrows shoot up. I found the execution of this film far beyond what I thought was possible for "micro-budget." I could see that it was a labor of love, and I'm glad that it was made.
Having said that, I think the movie that was filmed, while pretty and well executed (and on Loo Brealey's part, extremely well acted), was not the film that this script and the characters of Jacques and Stella really needed it to be.
I didn't find this an easy film to like. I like the idea of it and the fact of it and certain disparate themes in it a lot more than I liked it. Even though it's marketed and shot and lit and musically scored as a light film, a romcom, it's really not one. It just occasionally happens to hit similar notes. Having stewed about it for a few weeks now, I think I'd rather this film just embrace the dark comedic moments and be an actual black comedy, rather than a spread-in-different-directions film that wants very much sometimes to be a romcom with foodie shots.
Let me backtrack a second and lay out my bullshit film critique cred. It's total shit and I don't know why you'd listen to me. I've watched a lot of capital G good or great films without actually liking them; they often do nothing for me. I appreciate that they're technically good or great or visionary or well constructed (and I mean it: Citizen Kane, Third Man, and The Wild Bunch come to mind) without actually being invested on any personal level. But I absolutely fall in love with fare like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Clueless and Fifth Element. I have a very difficult time liking films that have unlikable protagonists. (They can be problematic all they like, like Sherlock, but I want to at heart like them.) And I realize that protagonist doesn't mean hero, I do, but to me, Jacques is nothing short of a hopeless shithead. I'm not invested in his love story or his wellbeing; I'm not interested in his history or his dysfunction. And I have a hard time articulating why. I've honestly started wondering if it's his face that irks me.
Jacques shows increasingly poor judgment as the film goes on. He's oblivious in all the wrong ways and the journey means nothing in the end: he doesn't learn. And I don't find his obliviousness interesting, just grating (compare: characters on FX's Fargo). He's also, in that protagonist way, promised to be something of an underdog but I find that storyline entirely empty because chef Victor isn't actually tempted to fire him. We even get chef POV interspersed throughout the film just to let us know that he pities poor Jacques. But even early on in the kitchen scenes, we see that he knows Adolf was just sabotaging the new kid (and hello, I cannot believe that the jealous kitchen rival's name is fucking Adolf). So there was no danger there.
I felt little sympathy for Jacques that he was sleeping in the street. His plan to arrive in London with nothing but a small backpack really didn't strike me as smart to start with, but even then, he gets rescued from his idiocy and the mugging fates -- by Sully. The female line chef who has an immediate soft spot and attraction for him. And that irked me as well. Probably disproportionately.
Sully was never meant to be Jacques' love interest in much the same way that Molly Hooper isn't meant to be Sherlock's. Some feelings are destined to be one-sided in film and this was clearly one of them. It's almost a checklist of qualities:
So, right, I did warn, right? I'm probably fixating.
Anyway, Jacques continues his story and one of the first things that happens is a Jacques/Sully and Jacques/Stella parallel. Sully asks him if he wants to have a meal together sometime (he doesn't) and then Jacques asks Stella if she wants to have a meal with him sometime (and she doesn't). But whereas Stella looks sad and doesn't attempt it again, Jacques of course takes Stella's rebuff as a challenge.
From then on, Stella is the conquest, even to the detriment of his previously dogged pursuit of approval by the man Jacques is supposedly convinced is his father. The very next scene is Jacques in the restaurant, seizing the opportunity to take home the untouched meals left by one such miserable couple. Stella's all he has on his brain.
And Stella's established as a difficult character at this point. "Agincourt, 1415. We're English; we never forget." / "We're not friends, comprendez vous?" On their walk home from the store, she explicitly discusses failed therapy and her outlook that "life's tragic." She clues him into her self esteem issues with her remark, "I shouldn't have been terrorizing the neighborhood with my fat arse" and his response is simply, "You aren't fat."
At the flat, upon being gifted with Michelin-star takeaway, Stella kisses him. For the record, I have no problems with Stella at this point. I think she's fine as the opaque antagonist, taking her fill of Jacques and showing a sliver of vulnerability while doing so; I don't find this odd at all and I don't question her choices. Bad taste aside, I think she's more than allowed to make the move on Jacques. But the come on falls through and...the next scene, Jacques is stealing hundreds of pounds' worth of food from the man he suspects is his father. What. The. Fuck.
That sound you didn't hear just now was me gagging all over again. I can't. I can't brook with this. I don't even know how to articulate how stupid I find this, how stupid I find him. And maybe here is where I really did rebel at the idea that Jacques is the protagonist of the story, because this kind of infatuation with Stella, this shallow understanding of her actual issues and a superficial attraction to her as a person (because, again, Stella is fairly opaque to us and she ought to be to Jacques as well), strikes me as deeply antagonistic; he's happening to her; she's not happening to him. And the fact that he threw away the reason he was in London to try to fix her makes me want them to stay the fuck apart, not see them together.
I feel distinctly anti-romantic at this part of the film.
Jacques then finally suffers some fallout with his would-be father figure over his misguided attempt to help Stella. And I side with chef more than Jacques. Damn it all, this is where I have a Little Mermaid moment. Ariel's an idiot, Triton; I'm so sorry teenagerdom is terrible; I don't know how you cope. Jacques is an idiot, chef; you should definitely fire him and report him; I'm not sure he'll learn but his actions deserve consequences.
Just parallel to this, music starts up and the binge scene starts: antagonist(?!) Stella gets her own point of view, and we see all the locked box of snacks, the alcohol, the smeared makeup, and the sad coffeehouse accoustic. Loo's acting is beautiful here, and I'm glad the camera just stays on her, lets her work her way through this scene.
Meanwhile, Jacques is filmed running -- tracking pan shots the whole way home. Coming to save her? But I've strayed so far from Jacques at this point, I don't care what he's doing. When he gets violent with a bicycle, I just don't care. In fact, on first watch, I actually got angry he was trashing someone else's property. Fuck you, Jacques. Seriously.
Stella's retching, sobbing, drinking. She's self-destructing. She's deep in a pit, and I am adamantly not of the opinion that love or Jacques or a good fuck or a hot meal are going to help her. I'm not rooting for Jacques, not even rooting for love. Help and love are not the same thing.
Jacques finally gets home and hears Stella's music start up, and his frustration with that is not something I want to see or hear. He then breaks into London's least secure flat to look in on her, and the next extended scene is Jacques trying to forcefeed Stella and making her prisoner in her own home. Foodie cinematography notwithstanding.
This could've been its own movie, right here, and I think that's the part that kills me. This part that starts after the halfway point and takes up about 25% of the film. It could've simply been a one-location film, set entirely at Stella's flat. It could've started with Jacques introducing himself, trying to get her to eat, coming onto her, a failed one night stand, and then locking her up and trying to forcefeed her. This film could've had the same dark moments: their attraction, the potential, her binge, his break in, her screaming, her threat of arrest, his reveal of his prison backstory and why he's in London. It could've kept the absurd, insulting line, "No, your body is a theme park; it's Disneyland," and then kissing her like that's at all normal. It could've kept that terrible conversation where Jacques says it's no wonder Stella doesn't have good sex, since she denies herself all pleasure.
And that film would've been free of the mugging, the daddy backstory, Adolf, and the Sully vehicle. And it would be hopefully free of Patti's sage advice too, which I don't think I'd miss. (Her last line to Stella was the worst. I cringed, not so much because a doddering neighbor told a bulimic woman to consider the joys of a hot meal and true love, but because Stella's response to that was so positive. Oh really.)
At this point on the rewatch, I realized: I apparently want a dark fucking comedy out of this film. I don't even really like that genre and I definitely didn't start the film wanting a black comedy, but the characters have convinced me that this is what the story wants to be.
I wanted a film that shows Jacques thinking he's in a romcom. In a foodie film, even. It'd even be fine for him to think he's the helper of helpless girls, the protagonist in his own film. I don't want the film to try to delude me into think that's what he is, but I think it's interesting if he thinks it. I think it's fitting, given that he doesn't learn any lesson whatsoever by the end of the story. I want his actions to have consequences. I wanted him to be the Lester Nygaard of this story and I wanted the story to own the fact that he's a shithead who gets what comes to him. And it never happened.
I wanted Stella in a wholly separate film: a Christopher Guest/Coen brothers nightmare, dealing with the absurd violating doesn't-get-it fucktwit that is Jacques in her flat and her eating disorder on top of everything else. I wanted her story to be one of a nascent love based on dubious consent, Stockholm syndrome ambiguity meets the alternating clarity and denial of Girl, Interrupted.
After much consideration, I've come to the conclusion that I wanted something akin to a less romantic, more adult themed, much more abusive, but romantically inchoate version of The Fault in Our Stars. I wanted two fucked up people to have a terrible experience together in that flat and then come to the brink of almost working it out despite it all. And I did get that, a bit. My problem is that that's only 25% of the film that got made.
Certainly, your mileage may vary, and I absolutely hope that it does.
mid0nz's interview with the writer-director, Tammy Riley-Smith, here.I also livetweeted some idiotic thoughts along with it if you'd like to see. If you've ever wondered what sort of person I am, I am the kind of person who tweets about the Crime of M. Lange cinematography and chef!Shezza feels in the same film. Most of those thoughts really are idiotic though, so don't blame me if you click on it hoping for otherwise.
Non-spoilery writeup first, behind the cut for its obnoxious length.
I'll go ahead and state that I was interested in this film initially primarily because Loo Brealey is in it. To just make a general statement, I like her choices in project; I believe they have a certain feminist ethic to them and I want to see Loo in projects beyond Molly Hooper in Sherlock. She's lovely on twitter, adorableness and sweetness incarnate (when she isn't being snarky and real), and her writing is intelligent, introspective, and touching. See this and this for examples of things she's written.
Second to that, I learned that Michael Price was an executive producer, and then thirdly I learned that the director and writer is a woman. A woman I'd never heard of, but honestly -- female directors of any sort are automatically interesting to me. How did you come to be in this world? There's a story of how this film got made, there has to be, simply because the director's female. Films with female creative leads don't just get made.
And somewhere in me learning about these things beyond Loo's involvement, I watched the trailer.
Upon watching the trailer, I had these things to say about it when Mid0nz asked about the film for her upcoming interview with its director.
These are more or less my unedited thoughts on the film from just watching the trailer. If there's any way you can take a more professional interview question out of these points, then bless. I'm not too sure that's an easy task though.
The thing that grabbed me about the trailer was the eating disorder Loo's character has or is hinted at having, and that doesn't come until after you get the Guy Moves Into the Big City for a Chance at the Big Boys' Table film that you're pitched first. Eating disorders are an issue that's near and dear to my heart, and immediately I just taken with it appearing on screen at all. It's a big deal to me when it does come on screen because it tends to just take over the entire film: this is a film about eating disorders, in the way that this is a film about mental illness or this is a film about having cancer. You rarely just find a character with an eating disorder where the eating disorder is somewhat incidental to the rest of the story (love story, action story, whatever the case may be). I can really only recall one time that that happened, which was in Pushing Daisies, and it threw me as much as it thrilled me. (Exception to this: anorexia or bulimia is thrown in as an off-color joke or jokey reference to a skinny Barbie type with an otherwise perfect life.)
And because of that, I really wasn't sure how I felt about the tone of the film (based on the just the trailer). The film looks like it's supposed to be a foodie film, something light with kinetic kitchen shots and loving overhead shots of couture dishes. But then Loo's character starts getting more of a reveal (in the trailer) and...I don't know. The first thing that I thought of was magical healing cock, only with foodie/junior line chef male lead. And it was just a knee-jerk reaction on my part, a shiver that went through me that felt like suspicion; I wasn't angry or railing or anything, and it makes me curious to actually watch the film. Because I do think that a film like this doesn't just accidentally get created, and I wanted to know more about how they were going to handle this story.
Rewatching the trailer to write this up, I think I was just so so thrown that the eating disorder part of the story seems very much secondary, almost like a bait and switch. Fully one minute of the two minute trailer is about Jacques, the bumbling New Guy at the restaurant, and then he stumbles upon the pretty but distrusting neighbor. And then the line that really clues you into the eating disordered part of her, "She won't eat any of that you know. / Why not? / You haven't noticed?" doesn't come past the halfway point of the trailer. And then, the lines, "One meal, that's all, that's what I'm asking for" and "A decent meal will put everything into perspective" and "There's only two things in life worth a hoot: love and a good hot dinner" and then a shot of two leads kissing...Those are nice ideas but, as the film just said (in text), "There's no easy road to recovery."
So I'm curious about the film; I'm certainly not writing it off and I'm very mindful of the low budget indie-ness of it all and how it really probably couldn't do half the things that it wanted to. But I think my initial shiver of distrust is tempered by the amount of good will that Loo Brealey has built up in me over months of years of getting to know her through the Sherlock fandom. I've read her writings on feminism and art and being an artist, and I feel like I have a certain faith in her to do good art (in the words of Neil Gaiman) and to pick good projects.
So -- sorry -- I'm trying to describe my visceral reaction to the film trailer while putting up disclaimers that I want, with all my heart, to give this film a fair shake. But things that I want to know, if the creators can at all address them: please talk about Loo's character. I want to know more. I want to know how they characterize her arc, her recovery, what they think of foodie culture and eating disorder triggers, what they think of films where food is shot sexily and skinny women are shot sexily and what that does to the viewing culture. I want to know how and if they separate the character's personality ("not an easy woman, complicated, sometimes unlikable") from her disorder and whether her problems make her a shrew to be tamed, a problem to be solved, a mountain to be conquered. I want to know more about that.
Because I'll be honest, the male lead's character seems like a replacement level male lead. Kind of doofy and clumsy, made fun of at work and generally being the pitiful new guy; has aspirations but we don't know what really drives him (but we do see him steal food from work, so apparently love is going to overtake his professional ambitions). Loo's character is the only one that I sat up for.
Also subsequent to the trailer watching and the above brain splat, I read the fairly in-depth synopsis of the film that iTunes put up of it, which I screenshotted for mid0nz here. At which point I realized that there was a fairly decent disconnect between the trailer and the synopsis. Jacques the bumbling, struggling new kid on the block vs. Life, London, and Stella's Demons was a fair cry from this backstory of a son searching for a dad and the long winding path of Stella's spiral matching up with his.
Below the cut is a review of sorts. But I'm somewhat terrified to post it, because it's not a great review. And I mean that both in quality and in assessment. It's a rambly and generally negative reaction to a film. I'm sorry about that, I really am. I feel very much like a killjoy posting this, and I tend to stay away from critique in fandom for a reason. But I thought I owed at least Mid0nz an honest reaction.
Cut for, again, obnoxious length and for spoilers.
I'll get some technical and aesthetic aspects out of the way, considering it's what hit me first (see the livetweet). This is despite the fact that I am not keenly qualified to comment on these things, so take it for what it's worth. To be very honest, after (1) reading the term "micro-budget" attached to this film and (2) seeing the tweet that said that the film was put together for less money that it cost to buy a house and (3) being not overly impressed with either the trailer or the released scene of Patti sticking up Jacques with a baguette in the courtyard, I wasn't expecting the film to look as good as it did. The crane shot in the beginning when Jacques is leaving St. Pancras actually made my eyebrows shoot up. I found the execution of this film far beyond what I thought was possible for "micro-budget." I could see that it was a labor of love, and I'm glad that it was made.
Having said that, I think the movie that was filmed, while pretty and well executed (and on Loo Brealey's part, extremely well acted), was not the film that this script and the characters of Jacques and Stella really needed it to be.
I didn't find this an easy film to like. I like the idea of it and the fact of it and certain disparate themes in it a lot more than I liked it. Even though it's marketed and shot and lit and musically scored as a light film, a romcom, it's really not one. It just occasionally happens to hit similar notes. Having stewed about it for a few weeks now, I think I'd rather this film just embrace the dark comedic moments and be an actual black comedy, rather than a spread-in-different-directions film that wants very much sometimes to be a romcom with foodie shots.
Let me backtrack a second and lay out my bullshit film critique cred. It's total shit and I don't know why you'd listen to me. I've watched a lot of capital G good or great films without actually liking them; they often do nothing for me. I appreciate that they're technically good or great or visionary or well constructed (and I mean it: Citizen Kane, Third Man, and The Wild Bunch come to mind) without actually being invested on any personal level. But I absolutely fall in love with fare like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Clueless and Fifth Element. I have a very difficult time liking films that have unlikable protagonists. (They can be problematic all they like, like Sherlock, but I want to at heart like them.) And I realize that protagonist doesn't mean hero, I do, but to me, Jacques is nothing short of a hopeless shithead. I'm not invested in his love story or his wellbeing; I'm not interested in his history or his dysfunction. And I have a hard time articulating why. I've honestly started wondering if it's his face that irks me.
Jacques shows increasingly poor judgment as the film goes on. He's oblivious in all the wrong ways and the journey means nothing in the end: he doesn't learn. And I don't find his obliviousness interesting, just grating (compare: characters on FX's Fargo). He's also, in that protagonist way, promised to be something of an underdog but I find that storyline entirely empty because chef Victor isn't actually tempted to fire him. We even get chef POV interspersed throughout the film just to let us know that he pities poor Jacques. But even early on in the kitchen scenes, we see that he knows Adolf was just sabotaging the new kid (and hello, I cannot believe that the jealous kitchen rival's name is fucking Adolf). So there was no danger there.
I felt little sympathy for Jacques that he was sleeping in the street. His plan to arrive in London with nothing but a small backpack really didn't strike me as smart to start with, but even then, he gets rescued from his idiocy and the mugging fates -- by Sully. The female line chef who has an immediate soft spot and attraction for him. And that irked me as well. Probably disproportionately.
Sully was never meant to be Jacques' love interest in much the same way that Molly Hooper isn't meant to be Sherlock's. Some feelings are destined to be one-sided in film and this was clearly one of them. It's almost a checklist of qualities:
- small/petite but not a firecracker personality-wise
- bangs but not manic pixie girl bangs (perhaps one needs coloring like Snow White for this and to look about 25), undramatic "everyman" coloring generally
- age difference with the object of affection with the woman being older (Finty Williams is 41, Nico Rogner to the best of my googling abilities is 35-36 but clearly playing much younger)
- uncomfortably intent gazes with unsteady eyes
- solicitations in the direction of woman to man with no sass, no expectations/overconfidence
- uninteresting/overtrying banter/overeager woman (the Adam and Eve riddle??)
- the list goes on.
So, right, I did warn, right? I'm probably fixating.
Anyway, Jacques continues his story and one of the first things that happens is a Jacques/Sully and Jacques/Stella parallel. Sully asks him if he wants to have a meal together sometime (he doesn't) and then Jacques asks Stella if she wants to have a meal with him sometime (and she doesn't). But whereas Stella looks sad and doesn't attempt it again, Jacques of course takes Stella's rebuff as a challenge.
J: You want to get something to eat?
S: What, like in a restaurant?
J: Well, yeah.
S: I don't do restaurants. [enters flat, door starts to close behind her]
J: [calls after her] What about takeaway?
S: [comes back out] Mystery meat, like globby sauce? No thanks. Shame you can't take away decent restaurant food. Then you wouldn't have to suffer all those miserable couples sitting in silence.
From then on, Stella is the conquest, even to the detriment of his previously dogged pursuit of approval by the man Jacques is supposedly convinced is his father. The very next scene is Jacques in the restaurant, seizing the opportunity to take home the untouched meals left by one such miserable couple. Stella's all he has on his brain.
And Stella's established as a difficult character at this point. "Agincourt, 1415. We're English; we never forget." / "We're not friends, comprendez vous?" On their walk home from the store, she explicitly discusses failed therapy and her outlook that "life's tragic." She clues him into her self esteem issues with her remark, "I shouldn't have been terrorizing the neighborhood with my fat arse" and his response is simply, "You aren't fat."
At the flat, upon being gifted with Michelin-star takeaway, Stella kisses him. For the record, I have no problems with Stella at this point. I think she's fine as the opaque antagonist, taking her fill of Jacques and showing a sliver of vulnerability while doing so; I don't find this odd at all and I don't question her choices. Bad taste aside, I think she's more than allowed to make the move on Jacques. But the come on falls through and...the next scene, Jacques is stealing hundreds of pounds' worth of food from the man he suspects is his father. What. The. Fuck.
Chef: Do you know how much this truffle cost me?
Jacques: Well yes. But she's worth it!
That sound you didn't hear just now was me gagging all over again. I can't. I can't brook with this. I don't even know how to articulate how stupid I find this, how stupid I find him. And maybe here is where I really did rebel at the idea that Jacques is the protagonist of the story, because this kind of infatuation with Stella, this shallow understanding of her actual issues and a superficial attraction to her as a person (because, again, Stella is fairly opaque to us and she ought to be to Jacques as well), strikes me as deeply antagonistic; he's happening to her; she's not happening to him. And the fact that he threw away the reason he was in London to try to fix her makes me want them to stay the fuck apart, not see them together.
I feel distinctly anti-romantic at this part of the film.
Jacques then finally suffers some fallout with his would-be father figure over his misguided attempt to help Stella. And I side with chef more than Jacques. Damn it all, this is where I have a Little Mermaid moment. Ariel's an idiot, Triton; I'm so sorry teenagerdom is terrible; I don't know how you cope. Jacques is an idiot, chef; you should definitely fire him and report him; I'm not sure he'll learn but his actions deserve consequences.
Just parallel to this, music starts up and the binge scene starts: antagonist(?!) Stella gets her own point of view, and we see all the locked box of snacks, the alcohol, the smeared makeup, and the sad coffeehouse accoustic. Loo's acting is beautiful here, and I'm glad the camera just stays on her, lets her work her way through this scene.
Meanwhile, Jacques is filmed running -- tracking pan shots the whole way home. Coming to save her? But I've strayed so far from Jacques at this point, I don't care what he's doing. When he gets violent with a bicycle, I just don't care. In fact, on first watch, I actually got angry he was trashing someone else's property. Fuck you, Jacques. Seriously.
Stella's retching, sobbing, drinking. She's self-destructing. She's deep in a pit, and I am adamantly not of the opinion that love or Jacques or a good fuck or a hot meal are going to help her. I'm not rooting for Jacques, not even rooting for love. Help and love are not the same thing.
Jacques finally gets home and hears Stella's music start up, and his frustration with that is not something I want to see or hear. He then breaks into London's least secure flat to look in on her, and the next extended scene is Jacques trying to forcefeed Stella and making her prisoner in her own home. Foodie cinematography notwithstanding.
This could've been its own movie, right here, and I think that's the part that kills me. This part that starts after the halfway point and takes up about 25% of the film. It could've simply been a one-location film, set entirely at Stella's flat. It could've started with Jacques introducing himself, trying to get her to eat, coming onto her, a failed one night stand, and then locking her up and trying to forcefeed her. This film could've had the same dark moments: their attraction, the potential, her binge, his break in, her screaming, her threat of arrest, his reveal of his prison backstory and why he's in London. It could've kept the absurd, insulting line, "No, your body is a theme park; it's Disneyland," and then kissing her like that's at all normal. It could've kept that terrible conversation where Jacques says it's no wonder Stella doesn't have good sex, since she denies herself all pleasure.
And that film would've been free of the mugging, the daddy backstory, Adolf, and the Sully vehicle. And it would be hopefully free of Patti's sage advice too, which I don't think I'd miss. (Her last line to Stella was the worst. I cringed, not so much because a doddering neighbor told a bulimic woman to consider the joys of a hot meal and true love, but because Stella's response to that was so positive. Oh really.)
At this point on the rewatch, I realized: I apparently want a dark fucking comedy out of this film. I don't even really like that genre and I definitely didn't start the film wanting a black comedy, but the characters have convinced me that this is what the story wants to be.
I wanted a film that shows Jacques thinking he's in a romcom. In a foodie film, even. It'd even be fine for him to think he's the helper of helpless girls, the protagonist in his own film. I don't want the film to try to delude me into think that's what he is, but I think it's interesting if he thinks it. I think it's fitting, given that he doesn't learn any lesson whatsoever by the end of the story. I want his actions to have consequences. I wanted him to be the Lester Nygaard of this story and I wanted the story to own the fact that he's a shithead who gets what comes to him. And it never happened.
I wanted Stella in a wholly separate film: a Christopher Guest/Coen brothers nightmare, dealing with the absurd violating doesn't-get-it fucktwit that is Jacques in her flat and her eating disorder on top of everything else. I wanted her story to be one of a nascent love based on dubious consent, Stockholm syndrome ambiguity meets the alternating clarity and denial of Girl, Interrupted.
After much consideration, I've come to the conclusion that I wanted something akin to a less romantic, more adult themed, much more abusive, but romantically inchoate version of The Fault in Our Stars. I wanted two fucked up people to have a terrible experience together in that flat and then come to the brink of almost working it out despite it all. And I did get that, a bit. My problem is that that's only 25% of the film that got made.
Certainly, your mileage may vary, and I absolutely hope that it does.