BEFORE: Just one week to go until I can take a bit of a break, I'm already thinking I can try to get some comic books filed away during those five days, which is a huge undertaking. I've got about 8 longboxes of comics that need to be worked into my collection alphabetically. Last weekend I took four boxes to my storage space, so that created a little bit of room to work with. Still, it's a very small window to move a lot of heavy boxes around, it may take longer than 5 days to do it. But since the weather's started to cool down, that's a bit of a help, at least I won't sweat as much while doing it.
Probable SPOILERS AHEAD, so if you want to watch this film someday without knowing what happens, please stop reading. You can come back after watching the film if you so choose - I'm usually hardcore anti-spoiler, but I think tonight there's no getting around them.
Ellen Page carries over again from "Flatliners".
THE PLOT: A teenage girl raids a man's home in order to expose him under suspicion that he is a pedophile.
AFTER: I've been trying something new at work, which is getting me more involved in the production side of animation. Since one of the studios I work for is short-handed on interns right now, I've started scanning pencil artwork, which is just about the most basic job that there is. Really, it's below my pay grade, but since there's nobody else around to do it, it's falling to me to keep the production moving forward, once I'm done with my other clerical and accounting tasks, that is. Well, I wanted to start learning more about the digital side of production, which didn't exist when I went to film school, and this is one way to do it. My experience with scanners and programs like Photoshop is very limited - I've scanned documents of course, and finished art if it needed to be e-mailed out, but never the pencil drawings before, which will then be cleaned and colored on the computer. I've used Photoshop for very basic things like cropping photos, or reducing them in size or resolution, but never to stack layers of these pencil drawings to create a file that digital animators can use to create movements or walk cycles. I'm still a newbie at all of this, even though I've worked for 25 years for studios - when the digital production came along I ceded tasks to younger people who already knew the digital technology, and I didn't take the time to learn any of it, not until now.
But something funny happens when I scan these drawings, and I'm looking at just one scene out of thousands, and it doesn't even move yet. It's like one tiny piece of an enormous puzzle, but my brain wants to try to figure out what's happening in each scene, something that would be much easier if I knew each shot's place in the storyline, obviously. And without movement, it's so hard to tell - is that man caressing that woman's cheek, or slapping her in the face? (The animated film in progress is something of a relationship-based drama, so it could be either one.) Is he lying down in bed next to that woman, or is he forcing himself on her? Sometimes you can tell by the character's expressions what the mood of each scene is, but so much is hard to understand at this stage.
And that's a bit like the opening scenes of this film, with a teenage girl flirting with an older man online, and then meeting him in a coffee shop, where they flirt some more. There could be several different things going on here, but when things start to get more serious, it seems like none of those possibilities could be good. The most obvious, of course, is that this older man is going to take advantage of this teenage girl, and as the conversation seems to turn more sexual, and he maneuvers the conversation to get her back to his house, we naturally suspect the worst. The prominent missing person flyers posted on the wall of the café also hint that something dangerous is about to happen.
Even if this man has the best intentions, which seems unlikely, something still doesn't seem right. A man shouldn't have any sort of sexual-based conversation with a 14-year old girl, even if he's acknowledging that he's willing to wait four years for her. Yes, but they're talking about sex NOW, and that itself feels very inappropriate. Buying her a t-shirt and telling her how great she'd look wearing it (or worse, taking it off) all leads us to think that this relationship is headed down some very dark road. Then to top it all off, she gets in his car, goes back to his house with him, and mixes some screwdrivers for both of them. Should a 14-year old girl know how to mix a cocktail?
But of course, things are not what they seem, there is a twist, which you probably already know if you've heard anything about this film, or even read the basic synopsis. Which is a shame, because I also felt like I knew too much about it from the start, and it's now almost impossible to view this film without knowing about the twist, so really, it's more like I'm seeing it for the second time and I'll never get the chance to experience it the way it was meant to be seen, which means having no knowledge ahead of time that there will be a twist. Really, the only people lucky enough to see it the way it was meant to be see were in that first audience at the Sundance Festival, but even then, there was probably a brief description in the festival program, so those people may have known what was coming, too.
So there's no way forward for me to discuss this without letting on that this girl was trying to seduce this man, she flirted with him online for weeks and set up the meeting with the intent of going home with him so she can drug him and tie him up. That's all I want to say about the plot, but obviously this teen girl character is coming in to this with some advance knowledge about this man that we the audience don't have, although it's not that hard to guess what it is. The girl represents all women, who are sick of this man's objectification and sexual misconduct, and she's going to strike back on behalf of those who can't.
The subject matter couldn't be more timely, with all the press that #MeToo and #TimesUp has gotten in the past year or so - if anything, the subject matter is more relevant than it was back in 2005. As much as they tried to leave this storyline open, like, is he really guilty, or possibly not - I think now people might watch this film and be much more likely to believe he's definitely guilty, and not just admitting to things he didn't do, just to try to get out of the situation he's in at the moment. But then, why would an innocent person admit to anything, or try to cut a deal with his tormentor or accuser? Like, that didn't work back during the Inquisition or the Witch trials, so why would it work now? This girl seems damn sure that he's done something wrong, even if we're not 100% certain. (You don't suppose it's related to that missing person flyer, do you?).
The poster shows the girl in a red hoodie, and she's seen wearing one at the end of the film - this is a very blatant reference to Little Red Riding Hood, which of course was another sexual predator story, even if it was all done in metaphor. (And we all know what the wolf met-her-for...). Now there's a fairy tale that has it all - the sexualized male animal, cross-dressing up as Grandma, waiting in bed, Little Red complimenting/flirting with the wolf, pretending not to recognize him (come on now...) and then the frenzy of molestation combined with eating her (somehow swallowing her whole) and then in some versions, the noble woodsman shows up to kill the beastly wolf, somehow rescuing both Red and her Grandma, who miraculously avoided being digested. Wow, there's a lot to unpack there, and I'm sure it's been nightmare fuel for many young children. Sleep tight kids, we're going on that hike in the woods tomorrow, hope we don't see any sexy wolves...
Also starring Patrick Wilson (last seen in "The Founder"), Sandra Oh (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Jennifer Holmes, Erin Kraft, G.J. Echternkamp, Cori Bright
RATING: 5 out of 10 safe combinations
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