harlem laundromat

The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

I have yet to see ‘The Informant!’, but this alternate cut of GFE is better than the theatrical release. This is all very Godard mostly because of the self-reflexivity. So it is some kind of intellectual exercise on the building of self through narrative.

There is a journalist that interviews our main character throughout…possibly for a biography. He looks for stories, and the emotional rationale behind them. Unfortunately, the stories she tells are simple, her conflicts are voiced naturally with reservations, so there never really is a connection from us to her narratives. We may assume that they are partly “real” because the actress is some kind of sex worker in real life…but who really cares about that when the movie itself doesn’t take us places.

But it does takes us to some. The small space of narrative constantly referring to itself. But there is no movie world, only the characters. Story is people in this case (hello Italian cinema). So the main character is into personology. She falls in love with a client who is a screenwriter. He gives her a ‘painting’ as a present, something that looks like a doodle, a sketch, maybe abstract, something very similar to this draft-essay-film. An ‘escort critic’ played by a real life movie critic, Glenn Kenny, gives her a bad review. Everyone is involved in running their own businesses, looking for independent capital. There are many talks about economic depression and investment opportunities. In the final scene, she soothes the urges of a client, a hasidic jeweler (yes in the Diamond District, NY), simply by undressing and letting him hug her. A metaphor for his Hollywood producers? And there is a trip to Vegas that is constantly postponed…Ocean’s 11 anyone?

I like to watch this kind of stuff. Small personal essays that masquerade as real movies.

julep orange

Closest thing Montreal has to a Coney Island hot dog stand.

any old thing you say

High up on a dream and I don’t want to drop

In Vanda’s Room (2000)

gramps with the hearing aid

its as clear as day, gramps gone away
gramps with the hearing aid and the clear tube when he urinate
he didnt remember shit but he knew my face
the last time I saw him I was twenty eight
he was ninety-eight, now I’m twenty nine
and he was ninety-nine when he had to die
a few years shy of a hundred and five
i figured if anybody coulda made it under the sky
it woulda been him with the lunch that he buy
‘eat healthy u get to live till a hundred and five’
Yeah, he said that while I was munching this fry
and while I had fruit punch on the side
Okay I get it
when you’re born you just die
But the time to get there is fly, or just fly, so hop along for the ride
im cruisin, scoot over on to the side,
i do my thing in the sky, but we all stars, yeah all of us die
this rap shit is what I muster inside
and its deep, so I wonder what keep all of you busters alive
gramps was a hustla and all hustlers thrive
so lets celebrate the spirit of a hustla tonite
let me bust out a rhyme, let me cuss out the mic
rest in peace, let me bust out the pipe

a record for scale

it is deeper than people

trash tumblers

Mizoguchi – Sisters of The Gion (1936)

In Zita’s Room

Rest in peace.

In Vanda’s Room (2000)