BEFORE: I can't believe we're already halfway through April, it feels like it just started - but at least the weather's finally starting to get nice for more than a day at a time, and that's good, unless we have another earthquake or something. All through March, it felt like we'd get three days of rain and/or clouds at a time, and we all just got used to not seeing sunlight. That's some serious S.A.D. - season affective disorder, and I'm told that's a real thing. I spend most of my time indoors, anyway, but I find as I'm working at the theater that I can open the side exit doors and stand there for a while, at least then I get a little fresh air. Oxygen becomes kind of important every once in a while.
I interviewed for a higher position at the theater, not sure if I'll get it because I'm the oldest one there, which I think is a good thing and a bad thing. I have the most experience, but also, I'm old and I don't have as much energy as the other people who are half my age. And yeah, of course I found a way to mention that during the interview, because my ability to self-sabotage is apparently stronger than my desire to advance in my new career. I find self-deprecation very helpful in conversation with my co-workers, but really, I need to stop doing that during job interviews.
Idris Elba carries over again from "Beast".
THE PLOT: A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.
AFTER: Of course, I remember stories about genies, from when I was a kid - you find an old lamp, polish it up, and then before you know it, some spirit floats out from inside and offers you three wishes. Then there were TV shows like "I Dream of Jeannie" and movies like "Aladdin", all riffing on these tales from the Middle East about genies or djinns or whatever. They're kind of like Arabic leprechauns, if you find one it's a shortcut to fortune and fame because you can wish for anything you want. Except for more wishes, apparently, this film is very firm on that point, that you can't game the system. COME ON, three is the agreed-upon number, and if you can't be happy after getting what you want that many times, then there's just no satisfying you. Either way, there should be no point in gaming the system, if you could wish for more wishes then the first person who ever found a genie would never be done with the wishing, and nobody else would ever get a turn.
Then there were like a million jokes told about genies, most of which start with "This guy finds a lamp..." and then usually ends with him asking for something vulgar like for certain parts of his body to be, umm, bigger, if you know what I mean. Or the joke explores some weird codicil beyond the "more wishes" thing, asking for something impossible or gross or overtly sexual and , well, those jokes probably never end well either.
But it's rare to find a dramatic non-animated film about a genie or a djinn, and this somehow is that film. A woman who is an academic "narratologist", which is just a fancy word for a storyteller or someone who studies stories, attends a conference in the Middle East, and happens to buy a trinket from a market, and it's a little antique bottle that she happens to knock over into her sink, and it pops open and a flood of purplish gas comes out, and then there's a giant genie in her hotel room.
(I'm open to the idea here that the lead character is hallucinating or imagining the whole thing, because before this happens she does have two encounters with demonic-looking beings, one who tries to steal her luggage cart at the airport (here in NYC we call those "homeless people") and another she imagines in the front row at her lecture. So it's possible that this woman has gone crazy in the summer heat of Istanbul, and perhaps the Djinn character is not really there at all. Just a theory.)
The Djinn proceeds to tell her his whole backstory, in three parts, which take place over 3,000 years, from ancient times to current day, with long long stretches where he's inside the bottle, not really alive but not dead either, conscious of the passage of time but unable to escape or do anything about his situation. Apparently he used to work for the Queen of Sheba, and kind of fell in love with the boss, but then King Solomon came into the picture, and Solomon used magic to imprison the djinn for the first time, in a brass bottle that a bird then drops into the Red Sea.
Centuries later, fishermen find the bottle and the Djinn finds himself in the possession of a concubine in the palace of Suleiman the Magnificent - he grants her two wishes, but there's so much conspiracy and murder in that palace that she gets killed before her third wish, which puts the Djinn into a sort of limbo state. He wanders the palace as a spirit for 1,000 years before he can convince anyone to look in his bottle hiding place, in the spare palace bathroom.
During the reign of Sultan Murad IV, he's finally able to get one of the palace concubines to break the stone and reveal his bottle. (The sultan's brother had a thing for very fat women, and one of them slipped and broke the stone with her body.). The Djinn tries to force her to make a wish, but he came on a bit strong so she wished him back into the bottle at the bottom of the sea. Whoopsie. The last part of his story takes place in the 19th century, when he's found by the young wife of an old Turkish merchant, and he grants her all the knowledge of the time, she wishes to study science and mathematics and become one of the world's great geniuses, which is not a thing that women were generally allowed to do back then, and he gets her books and they fall in love and conceive a child, but he keeps putting pressure on her to make that third wish, and again, he comes on just a bit too strong, and she wishes she could forget about him. Whoopsie again, she not only forgets about him, but she forgets which bottle she put him in, so he's stuck again with no way out.
The modern woman, Alithea, being a story expert herself, seems to be aware of all the pitfalls here, she treats the Djinn as if is he a trickster god, which he may well be, and she's also familiar with the stories about genies, where people didn't wish carefully, and always paid the price for being impulsive or not thinking things through. But after listening to his tales of woe and his ability to fall in love too hard with the females he's been in the service of, and over time it seems she falls in love with him, because after careful consideration, she uses her first wish, and she wishes for the genie to be in love with her. It's kinky, and I've never seen this angle on a genie story before. Too bad this wasn't made as a late-night Cinemax movie, there's some story potential here - surely there must be a porn parody called "I Cream of Jeannie" or something.
Well, before you know it they're in a relationship, and he agrees to move back to London with her and live in her flat, and they'll just get to those other two wishes someday, but for now, why not enjoy co-habitation and fine Turkish desserts and what's on the telly tonight, luv? They settle into a routine and the Djinn helps Alithea deal with her annoying neighbors, and she teaches him about all the wonders of technology, but since he's like a giant electronic transmitter himself, it's all just a bit much for him, this modern world. Still, while she's lecturing he's zooming around the world to learn about brain surgery and super-colliders and, well, all of the modern world things. But soon his electric body starts to suffer ill effects of being in a city full of tech, and she has to use her second wish just to cure him.
Eventually Alithea realizes she made the first wish out of selfishness, because love isn't something you can force on somebody, it should only be given, not taken, so she mentally gets herself to a place where she can use her third wish to free him, back to the land of genies or wherever he belongs, which isn't a very specific wish, but at least it comes from a good place. And this is just the thing for him, though he promises to come back and spend time with her every once in a while, you know, just keep it casual, no commitments, very modern and let's-see-where-this-goes, which seems to be the best arrangement.
I can't help but think this is all some giant metaphor for something, though I can't exactly say what. Something about relationships, for sure, and maybe how many of them aren't exactly equal, like there can be one person who determines what the relationship is going to be, for lack of a better term that person is the alpha, and then the other might be one more likely to make sacrifices, who maybe doesn't earn as much but also doesn't mind going on more grocery runs or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that, nothing at all, because a relationship between two alphas is perhaps doomed from the start, I think we see that in some celebrity couples that break up, you have to imagine with two strong personalities maybe that relationship became something of a competition, and that just isn't going to last. You look at couples that last longer, maybe one is working on films while the other one cares for the kids, and they can take turns with this, work out a schedule where they rotate every six months, or whatever feels right for them. Because if you don't have this, then sooner or later they flame out and one if them's only seeing the kids every other weekend, right?
Or maybe the metaphor's about how if you've lived alone for a long period of time, then when you finally find a partner it can feel magical on some level, that's another way to look at this other than to just treat it as the "woman has sex with the genie" movie. But if that's your thing, it's fine, no judgments here. Maybe it's just a simple story about a woman who'd been alone for a while and just needed some action. If it were possible I bet you'd see a lot more people booking trips to the Middle East and searching the markets there for bottles to rub. It's an innovative topic for a movie, sure, but I have to deduct a point for three out of the four flashbacks being so damn boring.
Also starring Tilda Swinton (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Erdil Yasaroglu, Sarah Houbolt, Aamito Lagum, Nicolas Mouawad, Ece Yuksel, Matteo Bocelli, Lachy Hulme (last seen in "The Matrix Revolutions"), Megan Gale (last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Alyla Browne, Ogulcan Arman Uslu, Kaan Guldur (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Jack Braddy, Hugo Vella, Zerrin Tekindor, Anna Adams, David Collins, Burcu Gölgedar, Vincent Gil, Melissa Jaffer (also last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Anne Charleston, Danny Lim, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, Seyithan Ozdemir, George Shevtsov (last seen in "Dead Calm"), Pia Thunderbolt, Berk Ozturk, Anthony Moisset, Abel Bond, Peter Bertoni, Lianne Mackessy, Khoury Matthew, Botan Ozer, Georgiou Thomas, Arshia Dehghani, Rellim Egroeg, Lulu Pinkus, Karen Ainley, Aska Karem, Melissa Kahraman, David Paulsen,
RATING: 6 out of 10 hotel bathrobes
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