Under my head

A passel of young'uns snapping their whippers

As far as I can tell, the 2011 remake of Footloose is a pretty good for what it's meant to be, an excuse for tweeners to get out of the house and dream about how exciting it will be to be in high school.  (This sort of fantasy is always accomplished with the help of 27-year-old actors pretending to be 17.)  It is competently put together, with some moments of visual excitement which may be attributable to the skills of director Craig Brewer, who has made much more challenging films prior hereto (Hustle and Flowand Balck Snake Moan).  I am sure this was driven both by the paycheck and genuine affection for the original 1984 film, an affection I cannot feel, as I was already too old for the first film when that one came out.

Yet I see many films for which I am not the target demo, yet they reach me in some way.  I didn't mind Footloose, I didn't dislike it, yet I find it difficult to write anything about it because it felt like just a bunch of bits of film edited together so they would last an hour-and-three-quarters.  Nothing specific was communicated to me.  I know that was just me-- the film inspired both pleasure and displeasure from many, but I just felt a pleasant numbness.

What makes a film land or not land for any individual viewer?  I could say that I think the whole premise is phony and artificial -- that towns don't outlaw dancing, although specific religious sects do.  Director-co-writer Brewer tried to increase the plausibility factor by putting the fatal accident that triggers the repression at the front of the film (after a quite energetic title sequence), but a film like this is not meant to be believability, and such things almost damage the film.  I'm reminded of films that Laurel and Hardy made in the 1940s at the major studios, rather than the independent Hal Roach studio where they had done their best work.  The studios changed their make-up and lighting to be more natural and beelievable, and in the process destroyed much of what was charming about Laurel and Hardy.  They were always strange and fantastical characters, and to put them in the real world revealed them as aging, overweight men who seemed to be so simple that they should have been under medical supervision.  No longer golden fools dancing in the moonlight, they were old and pathetic.

Moreover, the film is not a musical.  Musicals I like.  Musicals I understand.  They have a special grammar and logic that appeals to me and bypasses the rational mind.  But Footloose wants to be rational.  The key, turning point scene consists of the villain and the hero making speeches.  Not singing, not dancing, but talking.  Talking about dancing.  But talking about dancing is not dancing.  This is an out-and-out confession that the filmmakers do not know how to make dance dramatic, or indeed even narrative.  Instead, dancing is appliqued onto a story of generation clash, and the same script could be used (and doubtless will be) for tagging, skateboarding or hang-gliding or whatever those wild kids want to get up to.  It would be unsurprising to see Tuesday Weld show up as a troubled teen.  In any event, the film is a romantic melodrama with comedy overtones and a lot of footage of young people dancing.  But not a musical.

The dancing, need I point out with overmuch emphasis (as Peter Cook said), is devoid of narrative content.  The boys and girls dance because they want to dance, because they are young, and because both in movies and the real world, dancing is a socially acceptable form of public foreplay -- almost communal foreplay.  Consequently, the single best sequence in the film is the "Let's Hear It For The Boy" montage in which the non-dancing comical sidekick gradually learns to dance, and with attitude and style.  That sequence alone gives me hope that Mr. Brewer will stop his flirtation with music and make a real full-out musical someday. 

Thus I think the best audience for this film are groups of happy 8 and 9 year olds watching the movie in large basement rec rooms watching the screen and aping the dance steps as they go along, although I shudder to think of the kiddie hip grinding that is likely to ensue.  Maybe the film should be issued in a karaoke dancealong version.

Ultimately the point is that there is no point in reading anything anyone writes about Footloose.  Because it is called Footloose, the name of a 1984 film, you know almost exactly what this is and you are capable of deciding whether you will like it or not, based on that fact.  That it is decent and professional is gratifying, but irrelevant, and people like me are irrelevant as spectators.

I hope it earns Mr. Brewer the privilege of making something closer to the heart -- his and mine.

All talk

Easy A (2010) sets out to be a modern gloss on The Scarlet Letter in which a woman who is actually a victim becomes an outcast for her presumed audacity; whereas the film actually corresponds more closely to another fictional work about Puritan New England, The Crucible, about the importance of honoring the truth, and the value of preserving one's good name.

It is also an hommage to the 80s teen comedies it explicitly references, especially in that the very prospect of a girl acknowledging having had sex causes a sensation throughout the school. I cannot imagine the high school in the United States in 2011 where this would be a sensation, nevertheless it is an essential premise of this story, without which nothing would follow. In fact, the entire film takes place in a strange make-believe world, which is probably what makes some unpalatable ideas tolerable.

Happily, this make-believe world is populated with superbly funny supporting character actors whose presence is clearly aimed at moviegoers older than the apparent intended audience. It is difficult to conceive that the lovable, affable hippies played by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson could have raised such a well-balanced character as Olive, but it is an attractive fantasy. (One wonders about the non-intuitive pairing of Tucci and Clarkson, who exhibit flawless teamwork until one learns that they are longtime close friends.) Thomas Haden Church, who used to excel at playing obnoxious jerks is here admirable, not least for the fact that his character behaves as if he was a jerk, not acknowledging how caring and funny he is. And Lisa Kudrow deserves a medal for consistently not giving a damn about her "image" and seeking out the interesting roles.

Finally, there is Dan Byrd, who has emerged from the mill of TV sitcoms and here lends an unexpected depth of emotion to what begins as a farcical solution to a farcical problem. As is typical for these films, the high-schoolers look old enough to be delivering their doctoral dissertations--one of them is actually identified as being 22, but he is hardly the oldest-looking "student" around. Some day someone will make a high school movie with 16-year-olds and the universe will probably implode.

But Easy A's greatest accomplishment is to have made a teen sex comedy without any sex, which brings me back to my initial point -- the story is about names, the names you're given and the name you make for yourself. At the outset, our heroine is Olive because she believes she is drab. Her girl friend is Rhiannon, a name nobody heard of until some celebrity turned up with that made-up concoction. Her gay friend is Brandon, who has both been "branded", that is, marked as gay (and therefore outcast), but also might turn out to be Brando, both a great actor and a celebrity (and leaves Ojai to find out). Her object of desire is not like other high school boys; although handsome, he is (T)odd. So I only wish that Olive, instead of adopting Hester Prynne's "A" which she has not in fact earned, had at the end, when she decides to start telling the truth about who and what she is had only repeated the words of John Proctor, who upon being asked why he will not sign his name to a false confession, thought it could save his life, tells his judge:

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

[My daughter praised the film for being an accurate reflection of what it is like to be an under-estimated over-achiever, the kind of girl whose accomplishments and good sense are so taken for granted that she can inadvertently be given the latitude to make the kind of serious mistakes that more average kids may never have. And such a person's abilities are taken for granted, his or her judgment may be over-estimated -- thus, they can find themselves over their heads without a real confidant or mentor to be relied on to dig themselves out.]

I was reminded of another sexless sex comedy based on a lie. Marriage Italian Style (1965) is a terrible title (meant to remind filmgoers of a prior success, Divorce Italian Style) for an adaptation of a classic of the Italian stage, Filumena Marturano. The story begins with a lie: Domenico's long-time mistress, Filumena is dying, and he needs to marry her before she expires and goes to hell. The marriage proceeds, the deception revealed and Domenico is furious, and seeks an annulment on the basis of deception.

This is the reverse of Easy A -- Filumena is being denied the name "Signora Soriano" although she is clearly entitled to it. She runs his household, keeps the books for his businesses, and, unbeknownst to him raised the son she had by him, along with two other sons by other men. Ostensibly, Domenico will not marry her because he wants to marry his younger girlfriend, but what that really means is that Filumena HAS already become The Wife -- the undesirable but indispensable life partner whose loyalty a man hopes to purchase at the lowest price possible -- even nothing, not even affection. (One wonders if the Latin man has a problem with this because he has been conditioned to love the woman who cannot be desired The Mother. Once The Wife becomes a Mother, either to one's children or to oneself, she is, by definition, undesirable.)

It is interesting to see Sophia Loren at this relatively early stage in her career (about 10 years as a star with 45 to follow--so far) playing the cast-off, the discarded woman; although of course, she is quite able to play the desirable young trollop in the flashback scenes. And Mastroianni was always the master of spiritual weariness. What is particularly striking is Domenico's odd formality with the three young men, any of whom might be his son. What frightens him and prevents him from showing genuine warmth is not the fear that they will make demands of him, but that he will feel attachment and need for his son -- or worse, for all of Filumena's sons. The fact that none of them want his money confirms it. Domenico cannot relate to a family member who is not a supplicant; and one who may give him something he can't admit needing: love and respect.

The film is not afraid to be abrasive, to make both Domenico and Filumena seem cruel at times, and one wonders what sharper, harsher directions Easy A could have gone in; a different set of parents, a girl with less sense of self. A girl who could let herself be victimized until the day...