KWIF: Tootsie, plus Do Revenge (+3)

 Kent's week (or two) in film #5:
Tootsie - 1982, d. Sydney Pollack - Criterion Channel
Do Revenge - 2022, d. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson - Netflix
Caro Diario - 1993, d. Nanni Moretti - Tubi
Tampopo - 1985, d. Juzo Itami - Criterion Channel
Sharper - 2023, d. Benjamin Caron - AppleTV+

---

From moment one, something didn't sit right with me about Tootsie. I mean, it's Dustin Hoffman, an actor I've never particularly cared for, playing a character that is recognizably Dustin Hoffman the actor, ergo a very difficult person nobody wants to work with (I'd forgotten about the multiple accusations of sexual predation which makes the irony of the film's intent even more distasteful). That unease I started into the film with never left me throughout the viewing.

It's the early 80's, and there's still a battle of the sexes going on, and Sydney Pollack wants to tackle it head-on by putting a womanizing, arrogant, self-involved actor in the shoes of a woman, in order for him to play a female character role on a soap opera, because the actor thinks he can do it better than any woman could. Throughout the film, Hoffman's character uses his disguise as armour while he performs his perception of a tough (but not in a manly way), independent (but not in a manly way), no-nonsense (but not in a manly way) woman. In the most unbelievable reach of the film, Pollack asks us to buy into Hoffman going off-script on a soap opera on.the.regular. They wouldn't have lasted a day in reality. One warning at best before they were turfed.

In its day I'm sure its very binary perception of gender roles and gender politics seemed progressive, but at the same time we had "nerds" who were "revenging" on the cool kids by having non-consentual sex with women for comedy. This is an equally unamusing and toxic film. 

The binary perception of gender roles here cannot sustain with a modern lens, and I cannot turn off my modern lens in watching it. There are trans, drag and other queer lenses this film is unintentionally filtering through, and since I don't think for a moment Pollack had them in mind, he's not addressing these demographics in any satisfactory way. Nor is he even having the characters reasonably question their own roles and identities, at least not beyond a knee-jerk-reactionary homophobic/transphobic-for-comedy way. It's ugly. But also, it's the 80's, so ugly is expected. So of course we wind up with a story about a cisgender, heterosexual white male who lies and uses pretty much everyone around him and succeeds as a result. It's probably the most truthful thing about the film.

Taken even at just a base, binary comedy with a love story sub-plot, it fails. I don't want Jessica Lange to be with him. I want her to despise him and let him know that he abused her trust, her dad's trust and the trust of everyone they work with for his own selfish gain, and that his love means nothing to her. There's nothing he can do to repair that trust except to respect her wishes and leave her alone. But who am I, a cis-het white man to tell another cis-het white man what the woman he's writing should or shouldn't do with her love life.

Really, kinda fuck this film, y'know. The soundtrack and score are godawful, it's not funny, it's certainly not romantic, and I just don't buy into it. But also fuck this film mostly because it's pretty insidiously watchable despite everything I said...but maybe I kept watching just hoping for a comeuppance that never really happens because 1980s.

---

With Do Revenge, I found myself with mixed feelings watching upper-crust high schoolers "do revenge" on one another, in what could be an expanding whirlwind of destroying people's possible futures and trajectories in life. It can happen so simply. But at the same time these are the asshole kids of rich asshole parents (parents we never meet or see) who generally cannot see past their own wants, amusements and ambitions. They are, as reiterated numerous times, sociopaths, and it's hard to feel sorry for them for having to experience any sort of complications in life.

So the film relies upon us seeing these charismatic leads (twenty-something-year-old stars from Riverdale and Stranger Things) as complex people, not just snobs or psychos (though they are respectively each that), despite their Strangers on a Train-like bargain.

Camila Mendes' Drea, despite being the "poor kid" at school, has entrenched herself as a queen bee academically and socially, but her boyfriend Max (Dash and Lily's Austin Abrams)-- the most elite of the elite offsprings attending the school-- coaxes her into sending him a cam vid which he then shares with everyone. But, being the elite of the elite, he successfully spins himself as victim leaving Drea an outcast. During summer tennis camp she meets Eleanor (Maya Hawke), an outcast lesbian who will be transferring to Drea's school in the fall which means she will encounter the girl who maliciously branded her a sexual predator a few years earlier. The plan is to do revenge on each other's offenders.

Though we recognize Drea's elitist, selfish tendencies, we see what she has done to survive, thrive and elevate herself above her contemporaries, with none of the resources they have. She's an inspiring figure, though one clearly having lost perspective and empathy as a result of their status, but earning our support as victim of what is an actual crime. Yet her casual ability to just destroy mean girl Sophie Turner at tennis camp is a really frightening side to her personality. Eleanor has developed anxiety and keeps herself at a distance from most people so it seems like a real coup for her to befriend Drea, but the unease sets in when she becomes too comfortable blending in with Drea's old crowd. Are they a bad influence on her? Is Drea? 

The film doesn't sit with these questions for too long as it has a few tricks up its sleeve, as the revenge they do don't go so according to plan, and they have unintended consequences... but not enough for my liking. This film is entertainment, not a morality play, but I wish there was more fallout to the events at hand. Even nth degree shitheel Max, upon receiving his comeuppance, will probably just wind up backpacking around Europe with his camera (likely coaxing many European women into nude photography that he'll share without their permission) and dad's money and (unfortunately) be just fine.

Both Drea and Eleanor provide voiceover during the film, but its used inconsistently and not always effectively, and I wonder, if I actually paid attention on a rewatch, if these POV shifts would actually break the film.

Do Revenge is fun, surprising and quite engrossing, but I question if it is smartly using its elite-class setting or if it just thinks it is.

---

I thought for the longest time that Caro Diario was a film I first watched on the Canadian cable channel "Showcase" back in the late-90's.  It's a small Italian film with no real narrative, just kind of a travelogue/slice of life, and I really connected with it back then.  Rewatching it on Tubi (of all places), I had a potent sense memory of sitting in the theatre watching certain scenes and realized that Caro Diario was one of the movies I watched at Thunder Bay's first film festival held by the North of Superior Film Association (which I'm happy to see is still a thing) back in 1994.

'94 was a big year for me in film. It's when both Clerks and Pulp Fiction hit and my brain exploded, realizing there was more to movies than I ever thought or new, and the NOSFA film festival was another big part of that awakening. Caro Diario holds a special place in my heart and brain as a result.  

It's a sweet, often funny picture that finds director/writer Nanni Moretti playing a version of himself as he, through narration of his diary entries, first, rides his Vespa around Rome, contemplating architecture, dance and cinema, and having a chance run-in with Jennifer Beals.  His second diary entry finds him trying to find escape to focus on work, jumping from one island to another, never to find peace (but with comedic results).  The third entry is more serious and personal as he finds himself sleepless and itchy only for it to take a year of medical examinations before a cancer diagnoses is given. This isn't documentary, it's not a drama or comedy, but somewhere in the center of the venn diagram of these.

It's not the monumental, life changing picture I remember it being, but I'm not in that same place or time I once was. It's a charming, often amusing, and serene picture that doesn't ask much of the audience except to try and enjoy the world as Moretti sees it.

--- 

Directors du jour The Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert of Everything Everywhere All At Once) have cited Tampopo as having a direct influence on their filmmaking style, which I guess we could call an "anything goes" style.  But "anything goes" undersells the craft of actually selling the "anything goes" style, of telling a story where "anything goes" but within the frame or context of the story so that it all hangs together.

Tampopo is, as far as I know, the sole entrant in the subgenre of "ramen western", and I think that label does the absolute best job, simply so, of describing what this movie is. It's set in an unnamed city in Japan in its current-day 80's, following a truck driver who inadvertently becomes "sensei" to a ramen shop widow who wants to figure out what she's doing wrong and become the best ramen shop she can.

This is a food porn movie before food porn was a subgenre, but it maybe invented it? There are interstitial scenes, disconnected from the main plot, that feature bizarre eroticism involving food (among other, non-erotic adventures in enjoying one's meal), including one particular moment where an egg yolk is sensuously(?) passed from mouth to mouth between two lovers until the female climaxes from the sensation, breaking the yolk's membrane and dripping yellow goo everywhere.  But it's mostly about finding the ramen recipe, the Japanese noodle soup I can not partake in due to onion and wheat sensitivites (one makes me barf, the other I break out in hives). In total, it's about the pleasures of food, but with a spaghetti western pastiche. (Disclaimer, there are scenes of a turtle and prawn being killed on screen but for the purpose of food preparation...still, rough stuff).

---

If the opening sequence, "Tom", were a stand alone short film starring Justice Smith and Briana Middleton, it would be a pretty compelling piece. The attractive leads have great chemistry but also there's a sense of "why are we watching this" that just underlines the whole thing. Knowing the basic plot of the film from trailers, it unfortunately cuts this seemingly stand-alone bit right off at the knees. And there's a reveal, a reveal you know is coming from almost moment one as this type of film has you questioning everything you're seeing all the time. 

Sharper stars Smith, Middleton, Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan and John Lithgow, which is a curiously intriguing cast. If you know nothing about the film and have not seen a trailer, and this cast does curiously intrigue you, maybe stop reading, and go watch it.. as I think it might play fairly well if one watches with no prior knowledge.

Buuuut...[now spoilers] even then, once you catch onto what the film is, which is a movie about grifters who are just scamming, scamming, scamming one another, it becomes somewhat obvious to see where it's going. It's the inevitable flaw in a film about grifters, it becomes a very binary picture where you either trust everything you see on the screen or you trust nothing. After its first three acts (of five), the film has taught you not to trust anything about it and so whenever it tries to surprise you, you're never surprised because you're already anticipating it.

It's a really good, often great looking film (director Caron, comes into his feature debut after working on expensive and ambitious TV projects like Sherlock, The Crown, and Andor), often cloaked in hard black shadows contrasting against the fairly spare and flat aesthetic of the nouveau riche.  The contrast between Tom's cozy bookstore and his father's sprawling, contemporary, sterile apartment are so telling of the differences between the characters. It's got an interesting structure, but the nature of the story makes it hard to invest in almost any of the characters (save Tom who disappears for a long stretch), and thus makes it difficult to really enjoy the film.  Caron surely will have much better features in the future.