What I Watched Week 3
Congratulations on making it to the final Monday of January this year! Make sure you do something that makes you happy.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Stan) by Jacques Demy is perfect. Catherine Deneuve gives a dazzling performance in this very French musical. This was an hour and a half of delightful music and stunning imagery, presenting melancholy in a dreamlike state. If you liked La La Land, this is a minimum of 10x better.
Bay of Angels (Stan) is also by Jacques Demy. In contrast to the dreamlike state of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Bay of Angels is more of a nightmare state. Initially, Jean is presented as controlled but eventually slips and spirals. Gilded with extravagance, we see the wins and the losses of Jean and Jackie day in and day out in a painful story of terrifying addiction. Although the film concludes on a happy note it is unclear as to whether this is absolute or just another win at the roulette table.
The Neon Demon (Stan) directed by Nicolas Refn seemed like it wanted to make some sort of statement about the measurement of female worth based on beauty. However, I felt that the film somehow missed its own point and was vile to a point that I only finished watching for the sake of providing a fair review. The film possesses a whole host of issues that it continually fails to address. The protagonist’s character is left plainer than untoasted white bread, undergoing zero development throughout the film. The next issue I’d like to discuss is the boyfriend character of the protagonist, Dean. Dean is an adult male (I’m assuming since he has a car) who is dating a 16-year old model. I couldn’t help but pick at the irony of him stating that he thinks it’s what on the inside that counts. The final key issue for me is the denouement. This section genuinely made me feel ill. The use of necrophilia and cannibalism were redundant and I feel like they were included purely for the shock-value. All in all, I wouldn’t watch this unless you had almost two hours to waste and really want something to hate.
The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix) is a well created exploration of female desire and obsession in a bingeworthy drama. Despite this, there are a couple of gripes that I had with this miniseries. First I’ll address everything that struck a positive chord with me before moving onto the negatives. I absolutely adored the outfits and the cinematography of the entire series. Furthermore, as someone who possesses absolutely zero knowledge of chess, I am in awe at how entranced I was by the wins and the losses. I am embarrassed but still willing to admit that I am also guilty of signing up for a chess.com account and playing very poorly. Anya Taylor-Joy does a fantastic job on her character as Beth and I can’t wait to see what else she has in stall. Now that I’ve sung my praises, I’m going to be a bit nitpicky. This is probably just me being pedantic but I am growing rather tired of the skinny white female protagonist thing and The Queen’s Gambit doesn’t help with this one bit, propagating this alongside the “I’m not like other girls” trope. On a more serious note, I was not a fan of the way the series glossed over some serious issues that I felt could have had a lot of potential if addressed. With approximately 6.5 hours of screentime (plenty to address problems), the series overlooks even the issues that it brings up. To me, it also seemed like there was some sort of commentary that they were trying to facilitate, and yet, they never seem to tie this together. Hopefully we’ll see a Season 2 come some time soon and I have high hopes that it will not only be just as enthralling but also answer to some of my issues with the series.
That’s all for Week 3.
Thanks and enjoy your week!
