Getting to the "Bottoms" of "Wicked Little Letters": A Women Behaving Badly Double-Header

Hey everyone,

I am DELIGHTED to share two absolutely excellent movies I watched recently.  While by pure coincidence these films share some major thematic similarities, they also differ dramatically aesthetically.  Yet both fully deliver in enjoyment and emotional uplift.

The two movies are: 

"Bottoms" (2023) tells the story of Josie (played by Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (played by Rachel Sennott), high school best friends who are both gay.  They hatch an elaborate plan to start a girls-only fight club, which they tout as a self-defense/feminist self-empowerment group, with the ulterior motive of climbing their school's social hierarchy from the bottom of the barrel (hence the movie's title), and to thereby gain greater access and appeal to the two popular cheerleaders on whom they have crushes.

What follows feels like "Booksmart" (2019) meets "Kill Bill" (2003) with a hit of acid.  The world PJ and Josie live in is just surreal enough to feel like a weird parallel universe version of ours, in which rivalries between high schools turn literally bloodthirsty and hero worship of the football team's histrionic and entitled quarterback is unabashedly and in equal measures zealous and thirsty in an altogether different way.  The movie only barely acknowledges its own strangeness, which feels like a massive compliment to its audience; you feel cool for being along for the ride without needing it explained to you why Marshawn Lynch's history class is only 5 minutes long.

Thankfully, another way in which "Bottoms" leans into its surreality is through the relative cartoonishness of its violence.  While people do get bloodied and bruised--it needs to be clear that the blows these girls land hurt--the movie isn't all that graphic, which makes it easier to watch and also to not miss the point of the movie.

"Wicked Little Letters" (2023), on the other hand, is set in post-World War I suffragette-era England and centers on an opposites attract friendship gone awry in the wake of particularly vulgar poison pen letters.  Edith (played by Olivia Coleman) is an unmarried woman living with her elderly parents under extremely strict religious and gender role expectations imposed by her domineering, sexist, and humorless father.  Rose (played by Jessie Buckley) could not be more her opposite: she is an unrestrained and loud single mother who is fully at ease with a range of profanity and prioritizes playing darts, drinking, and sleeping with her devoted boyfriend over wasting her time with tedious housework and maintaining propriety simply to appease her nosy and uptight neighbors.  The trouble is, her neighbors are Edith and her parents.

When Edith receives the latest in a parade of libelous anonymous letters, her father finally decides to involve the police in pursuing Rose as their suspected author.  While at first she attempts to refuse to participate in the investigation for fear of taking the judging role she attributes only to her god, Edith eventually relents under her father's pressure and suddenly becomes the unintended victim-heroine in a highly publicized and swiftly escalating poison pen scandal.  As the stakes quickly rise for all concerned, it becomes increasingly clear that Rose might not be the actual culprit.

"Wicked Little Letters" matches the surreality of "Bottoms" with a comparative realism, down to the outhouses and shared washbasins that were typical of the era in the UK.  It is nevertheless leavened with a heightened silliness, often telegraphed through the highly communicative facial expressions of the group of women that form the heart of the film.

Taken together, these superficially different movies center on the same powerful core themes, including friendship and solidarity between women, the power and protection that can be drawn from found family, and the revelatory liberation that follows when women openly, even violently when necessary, flout restrictive gender and sexuality norms.  They're also both extremely funny, well-acted, and well-constructed movies that move along briskly and thrive in no small part because of their excellent scripts--and they're both directed by women: Emma Seligman directed "Bottoms", while Thea Sharrock directed "Wicked Little Letters".

I loved both of these movies so much, and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a good time and affirmation for being a misbehaving woman.  I gave them both a 5.

{Heart}

New Car

We got a new car today.

Despite the misdirect of that opening line and title, I want to talk about my old car.

My old car, an 11-year-old sedan, was tired.  It traded in for a pathetic $1500, dwarfed by the evidently over $10,000 it would have cost to restore it to true roadworthiness.  Among its many ailments, one of its headlights had water trapped in it, and one of the inner door panels--the rear driver's side door, of all options--had started to fully separate from the frame, making the door stick every time it was opened.  If it was a smart car, it was smart in the sense that single-celled organisms are smart: no futuristic amenities like a back-up camera or blind spot sensors, instead the most it could muster was the damn voice commands to get my bluetooth to play that had an almost 100% failure rate (oh lord the horrific names I called that poor robot voice when she told me, "You can say USB" when BITCH I *DID* SAY USB).

But my old car, named Little Car, was a good car.  He (because he was a boy, unlike my girl car before him) was a work horse.  We put over 100,000 miles on him, which means he could have driven around the world over 4 times.  He had good pick-up, and excellent maneuverability--he could do the tightest u-turns and squeeze into tiny parallel parking spots with just a bit of finesse.  He kept me safe in multiple (thankfully minor) accidents and weathered countless mild to moderate repairs.  His penchant for flat tires for a stretch while I lived in Massachusetts got me skilled up quickly in changing them, even in work clothes, even on work trips.  I liked the little song he played to remind you to take the keys out of the ignition or buckle your seatbelt, and the anxiety with which he alerted you on the rare occasion his trunk was ever open while he was in motion.

The last few years of our time together, I'll admit I was always a bit ashamed of his state.  He was perpetually coated in a layer of smoothie packet crust, pretzel stick shards, granola bar bits, desiccated french fries, dust, and hair (HOW so much hair??).  The interior of his windshield was always accumulating an alarming film of unknown provenance that would at a minimum generally look crummy but at its worst seriously impact visibility when the sun was at just the right height in the sky, which was always when you were either driving to or from daycare with one or both children along for the ride.  Random spots or splotches of food or drinks would remain, punctuating the upholstery, for a deeply undignified amount of time.  All of this high level of baseline mess persisted because, with two very small children, truly who has the time, energy, and delusion to waste on the Sisyphean task of cleaning it up?  And maybe it doesn't hurt to have a little daily humbling in your life, especially such a low-stakes humbling as a dirty car.

And yet, Little Car was a refuge.  After getting over a normative amount of anxiety while learning to drive as a teenager, I have always loved driving (except in Boston).  I love being in motion, I love being in my agency.  I love being sequestered, contained, yet still out in the world.  I love listening to what I choose.  I love going exactly where I want to go.  I love reflecting.  I love dangling my hand out the window when the air outside is hot.  During the pandemic, our only outlet was to drive, and we would flee north up a long, winding road into the county where houses got farther apart and the trees at times were dense and green, or through a state park to our southwest, or through a nearby historic smaller city.  At least that way we could be out in the world without risk of getting sick.  At least that way we didn't feel so trapped, and we could be reminded that the world was still big.

Over the decade he was my car, Little Car was an escape.  I drove as far north as Ogunquit and as far south as Raleigh-Durham.  I drove to Sylvan Beach, Long Beach, Cape Cod, tiny cabins, covered in cream cheese and bagels crumbs on my way postdoc, over bridges and onto ferries, back and forth from the city where I trained to the city in which I was destined to live to plan my wedding, then back again and again to the city where I trained after we moved away because I still loved it.  

Little Car empowered us at major life turning points.  He helped us move 3 times across 3 different states.  He drove us on a 3-hour round trip to get our then-pathetic-and-meek little mutt, and now majestic, beautiful, good-most-of-the-time medium-sized mutt.  He took the unnecessarily long way to the hospital the second time around, and he drove both our babies safely home from the hospital.  He drove me to interviews and first days of work, to weddings and baby showers, and then always home.

When I got Little Car, almost exactly 11 years ago, I was nearing the end of my 20s and the end of graduate school.  I was about to start my internship, which would require 3 hours of commuting by public transit every day.  Having done that commute 3 days a week during my third year of grad school, I knew doing it 5 days a week with a 40+ hour work week while trying to finish my dissertation would break me.  It was time and energy I simply did not have to spare.

Thankfully, my Mom and Stepdad came to visit, and spent one day of the weekend they were in town at a Ford dealership negotiating a lease for me.  My Stepdad took advantage of the salesman stepping away for a moment to dip behind his desk to verify that they were, in fact, giving me a good deal.  In the midst of these negotiations, I called my Dad to let him know how things were going and tell him the terms of the lease.  I'd previously told him I'd be getting a car and why, and now that we had numbers, I asked if he might be able to help me with part of the cost of the down payment.  I'd been living off tiny grad student stipends and student loans for the past 4 years and my internship stipend was on trend: not generous.  Any little bit would help.

I don't remember what he said, but I remember that he was so relentless in berating me for asking that, sobbing in front of the dealership where I'd fled when it was clear the call would not go well, I simply begged him to say no.  "Dad, you can just say no.  Please, just say no."  But something in him just needed to punish me for asking.

As we were trading in Little Car, with my kids' handprints still on the rear windows and the indentations of their carseats still pressed into the fabric of the seats, with the air of over a decade of conversations, singing, laughter, and also tears and silence still dissipating, I thought about the photo that was taken of me and Little Car when that lease was finalized.  In it, I've draped myself along the top of the driver's side door with a huge, showy smile on my face, telegraphing jubilance at suddenly being a lady with a car, stuffing down the heartwrenching, sick, confused, bombed out feeling that still managed to catch me by surprise back then.  I was really good--although definitely not perfect--at blotting out that feeling when it was called for.  

I took that photo again as we said goodbye to Little Car.  In some ways, it's the same photo: I made sure to pose exactly the same way, extending my arm along the curve of the front driver's side door as if I was slinging my arm around the shoulders of a friend and putting on a big smile.  In some ways, it's different: for one, it was pouring rain, and I am visibly soaked.  I'm also almost 40 now, and Little Car looks significantly less shiny and new.  But also, the smile isn't fake.  It's poignant, taking stock of how much this little car has seen and the end of its chapter, but it's sincere, and it's not covering up for anybody.  By design, I just don't have cause to do much smile-faking anymore.

I know the car is just a thing.  My mind keeps toying with seeing letting go of Little Car as if we're returning an old pet to the pound, but thankfully I have my wits about me enough to know that come on, it's not that.  But of course even objects have a bit of a life of their own in part because they sometimes accompany us through so much, and because of the meaning with which we imbue them.  Little Car was a talisman of so many things--independence, freedom, adulthood, excitement, adventure, efficacy, possibility, and love--but of course, like any complex thing, they weren't all good.  Sometimes, moving on to a new chapter, even if you're not completely sure you're ready to let go of the old one, is the strongest, bravest, healthiest, and most hopeful thing you can do.

{Heart}

"Babes" and "Brats"

Hi everyone,

I've continued to pick up the pace a bit on watching movies this month, which is a welcome change from the first third of the year.  Two of the three movies I saw in July (again, I emphasize I've been picking up the pace *a bit*) were:

 

"Brats" (2024) is a documentary directed by and starring Andrew McCarthy, who tediously makes the rounds of most of his fellow '80s teen movie stars to contemplate the ramifications of being labeled the "Brat Pack" by some jealous prick-y reporter and overblow the importance of the John Hughes suite of teensploitation movies that rocketed them to fame.  Those aforementioned ramifications were apparently to grievously and irrevocably derail McCarthy's career, a fate which he tries unsuccessfully to generalize to all of his Brat Pack brethren, the likes of which include Demi Moore and Rob Lowe (whatever happened to them, anyway?).  

And the impact of those films?  Look, I have a major soft spot for "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986) and "The Breakfast Club" (1985).  John Hughes clearly had a visionary impact on films for children and teenagers in the '80s and '90s, and as a child born and growing up during those years I don't know how I wouldn't have fondness for his work.  But here again "Brats" massively overreaches as it overdraws the boundaries while mapping the impact of what was ultimately only about a half-dozen films.  

(Also it will never cease to irk and confuse me that Matthew Broderick is never included as a member of the Brat Pack?  Just why??  It makes no sense!!)

#JusticeForFerris

Despite a short runtime of just 92 minutes, this film was so circular, repetitive, and preoccupied with vindicating its creator that it felt like it dragged on forever.  I gave this movie a 1.

I was excited to watch "Babes" (2024) given my deep and abiding love for Ilana Glazer and everything she does.  The film has a lot going for it, including a healthy dose of Glazer's unique comic delivery, a resonant contemplation of friendship between women in the context of adulthood and parenting, and some deep poignance about love and grief.

That said, "Babes" somehow doesn't achieve its full potential.  The comedy doesn't hit as hard as it could given the excellent core cast of Glazer, Michelle Buteau, and Hasan Minhaj, and some of the scenes feel a little stagey or under-finessed.  Perhaps "Babes" has the opposite problem to "Brats" in that it suffered from trying to stick to a typical comedy's solidly-under-two-hours runtime when instead it would have benefitted from a bit more room to breathe into the interpersonal and existential spaces it only just started to explore.

In any case, I gave it a 3.

In reflecting on these two films, in addition to every other film I've watched this year, I'm realizing that I've made it more than halfway through 2024 with barely any movies cracking a rating of 4 or higher.  I'm not completely sure what's going on here, although I think a part of it is definitely my overall emotional stamina being pretty depleted by the time I could, theoretically, sit down to watch a movie.  

The thing that really puts films at the top of my rating scale is that they pull a lot of emotional weight.  Lately, I'm just not in the market for more of that.  This is not to say I'm emotionally weighed down, but more accurately that I'm emotionally very full.  So while the movies I've been watching this year aren't exactly the most thrilling or satisfying things I've ever watched and there's definitely some disappointment that goes along with acknowledging that, I suppose this is also an opportunity to appreciate movies that tread lightly.

That said: I'll be looking for some chances to watch some real bangers before the year is done.

{Heart}

Movies on a Plane

Hey there,

I recently had the immense pleasure of taking a multiple-years-delayed international trip with Husband and our two children.  Between wrangling our kids and trying to get some sleep, our two flights gave me opportunities to (mostly?) watch some movies.  I say "mostly?" because I watched one without sound and the other two without sound but with subtitles, since baby-wrangling made having a headset plugged in would have readily delivered the losing combination of being both irritating and impractical.

This less-than-optimal viewing experience should probably majorly caveat the following reviews, so take them with whatever dose of salt you think they deserve.

Movie on a Plane #1: "Turning Red" (2022)

This was both a captionless rewatch and a movie I didn't finish for aforementioned baby wrangling reasons.  Given that I didn't think very highly of it the first time around (previously rating the movie a 2), I chose to watch it largely because it was a children's movie that wouldn't offend the prying eyes of my kids, it was a known quantity, and the animation is at least competent and visually interesting enough to provide a little diversion to pass the time on a long trip.  "Turning Red" nevertheless fails to exceed even that very low set of expectations.  I just don't think Disney is up to the task of skillfully constructing a movie about characters navigating early adolescence, and as a result this film is just kind of cringey and uncomfortable.  I don't mean to be overly conservative, but I just think there should be limits on little girls twerking in children's movies, even if they're temporarily transmogrified into a giant fluffy anthropomorphized red panda, and "Turning Red" somewhat mortifyingly exceeds those limits.

I continue to rate the movie a 2.

Movie on a Plane #2: "Bridget Jones's Diary" (2001)

I recall this movie being very well-regarded and enjoyed when it came out, and I must have seen it multiple times over the years because I remember a lot of it remarkably clearly.  It's nevertheless been quite some time since my last viewing, which might explain why its overt racism, fatphobia, and normalization of sexual harassment seemed especially egregious this soundless go round.  The anti-Asian racism, as well as other unappealing and problematic content, are front and center in the first five minutes of the movie, making them completely unmissable and placing a completely unnecessary bad taste in the viewer's mouth from the jump.  The fact that you never even meet the character the film's recurrent Japanophobia is targeting makes it all the more noxious and excessive--for some reason, this movie just needed to find an outlet for some random anti-Asian bullshit, and we're supposed to find it funny(??).  

I also can't overstate how much I *hate* that the main character repeatedly explicitly states her weight throughout the film.  It's a slap in the face to every woman watching every time Bridget reports her own (under-average at the time) weight.  Either we are tacitly encouraged to feel self-hating chagrin that we weigh as much as or more than her, or to feel perhaps a sense of unearned superiority or relief if we weigh less than her, but either way we are being subtly pitted against all other women and ourselves by this surprisingly mean-spirited movie.

And to boot, 2/3s of the main characters are aggressively small-minded, ignorant, shallow, self-absorbed people, and 1/3 of them is an awkward Colin Firth with an inexplicably bad picker.

I gave the movie a 1.

Movie on a Plane #3: "Serendipity" (2001)

I'd never seen this movie before, but chose it because a) why not watch another romcom in the hopes of cleansing my palate post-Bridget Jones and b) I like John Cusack.  And thankfully, it was fine!  For starters, Eugene Levy has a delightful silly supporting role.  Furthermore, I appreciate that the film didn't stick Kate Beckinsale's Sara with a boring manic pixie dreamgirl persona, but instead had her evolve into someone more discerning over the years between her first encounter with Cusack's Jon and their later, inevitable reconnection.  Jon also evolves during this period from being completely unconvinced of the reality of fate to upending his plans for marriage because he is so converted by his conviction that Sara is the fated "one" for him.  I like the ways in which both of the main characters adopt each other's view points over time to some extent, and that the film then playfully toys with them as they try to find each other again, flailingly yet ardently attempting to enforce their own wills over the will of fate.

That said, Sara and Jon both kind of suck in important ways.  They both are dating other people when they meet, yet spontaneously embark on a day-long date together after their chance meeting at a department store (where they are shopping for gifts for their significant others).  Sara is so obsessed with the concept of fate when she meets Jon that she creates a bunch of ridiculous tests to essentially force the universe to prove that they're destined to be together, which results in them unnecessarily losing touch for years.  She also later gets engaged to an insufferable and self-obsessed goober, which is a bit suspect.  Jon, though, is arguably much worse, as he spends the day before his wedding to a perfectly-fine-seeming woman rushing around New York City frantically trying to track Sara down.  The movie wants us to be so swept away in its contention that Jon and Sara are ~*~*~*DESTINED TO BE TOGETHER*~*~*~ that we look past their deep emotional infidelity to multiple partners, and I'm just not really here for that.  I think we deserve romantic comedies that don't necessitate majorly emotionally damaging innocent bystanders, even if one of those bystanders in an embarrassingly bad musician.

All that said, especially in the context of the very slim pickings on two very long flights, I gave the movie a 3.

In conclusion: hopefully managing to watch three movies even under these non-ideal circumstances means my movie-watching tempo is changing for the better.  May the fates be in my favor.

{Heart}

Compromise

Good evening friends,

Lately I've really been compromising on movie-watching time.  For the last few months, it's been hard to imagine where movies would fit into our lives.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem clear where that could possibly happen.

And sometimes, somehow, we manage to fit a full "Dune" movie into our lives.

So there's that.

Which means that, evidently, instead of compromising on movie time, I'm compromising on writing time.

I'll see you next month!

{Heart}