profile

Would YOU eat garlic toast you've just dropped face down on the kitchen floor? If I'd bothered to ask myself this question right before that first bite, I'd have said, "Garlic! Toast! Hell yeah!" And right after, with butter glazed lips and pungent breath, I'd have added, "A little cat hair never hurt anyone." But if I'm wrong about that, at least I know better than to cough up a hairball in the middle of my favorite rug.

Last week I watched:

Naked (again)

It's one of those films that stay with me for weeks after seeing it. This has to be Mike Leigh's most unforgettable character study. Who's the more gifted here? Mr. Leigh or David Thewlis? Thewlis' Johnny might well win in a debate, but I'm going to call it a draw. I think _sturge_ knows what I'm talking about. What is it about a totally loathsome and repellent guy who hasn't bathed in days, or eaten in as long, except for the bits of tobacco off the ends of his chain-smoked fags, that is so damned sexy?? His words are a convulsion of philosophical rants and bitter darts that never miss their mark if you're listening at all, and not mesmerized by his long delicate, dirty fingers. And though he looks like complete dog shit, he treats you as such, and you've fallen pathetically in love with him inside of a few hours. That is, if you're anything like Sophie. Though I might dress like her on occasion, I think I'd have behaved more like the waitress who brought Johnny home. So stunned by his genius wit and randy boy charm that once he's done with all that and has moved on to humiliating the girl for the evening, all she could do was be the doe he instinctively knew her to be, frozen in his menacing headlights. I might also have been as stupified as the older woman he stalked and would have let him do me at the same time he was so smartly pointing me out as a completely wasted human life. He made them all feel naked, even if he didn't actually get them that way.

This movie affects me physically every time I watch it...and disturbs me mentally for days after.

(Not unlike eating food off the floor.)

previous / next