BEFORE: Tig Notaro carries over from "Your Place or Mine", and I'm hoping for a film that makes a little more sense than yesterday's - so, really, any logical sense at all would be greatly appreciated. I'm home today and that means chores like emptying the dishwasher, laundry and going out to get lunch, but I'm happy to do all that if if means I get to sleep until almost noon and then spend some time later catching up on some TV. Hey, the snow's really melting so maybe some weather that's not so cold is in our future. A good day for a walk to go get lunch, and there's a film crew set up two blocks away, they took over the bar on the corner so I wonder what they're shooting.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 13:
Best Cinematography Nominees:
6:00 am "Algiers" (1938)
8:00 am "Waterloo Bridge" (1940)
10:00 am "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939)
12:00 pm "Kismet" (1944)
1:45 pm "National Velvet" (1944)
4:00 pm "Jungle Book" (1942)
6:00 pm "King Solomon's Mines" (1950)
Best Cinematography Winners:
8:00 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1943)
10:00 pm "The Black Swan" (1942)
12:00 am "Phantom of the Opera" (1943)
2:00 am "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)
4:00 am "Cries and Whispers" (1972)
Wow, it feels like TCM dumped a bunch of random movies on us today, this is a category where movies ended up that just couldn't fit into the other day's schedules, it seems. Maybe I'm just bitter because I've seen only one of these, the Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" - and if I hadn't chosen to focus on Bergman films back in 2021, I wouldn't even have THAT. You know my story, I've seen versions of "The Jungle Book", but not this one. I've seen "Kismet", but I watched the 1955 version, not the 1944 one. And so it goes...Another 1 out of these 12 brings me to 57 seen out of 160, or 35.6%, I have a feeling it hasn't been my month, or even my year.
THE PLOT: When a young loner becomes the gestational surrogate for a single man in his 40s, two strangers come to realize this unexpected relationship will challenge their notions of connection, boundaries and the particulars of love.
AFTER: OK, so it's not a traditional romance, it may not even count as a romance at all, but the synopsis seemed very ambiguous so I dropped this one into the chain to make the required connections. Maybe if I'd known more about the plot I would have found another way to get where I needed to go, but then the downside would be that this film would have stayed on the list, when the goal is to get films OFF the list and make room for new things, or old things I never got around to before. 2021 was the last year I had access to Academy screener DVDs, and I know this because I have a separate list of films from that year that I was trying to get to - it started out at like 100 films and now it's down to just 24. Sure it's stupid and I could just STOP maintaining that list, but that list has "Coda" on it, also "Cry Macho", "Old", "Army of the Dead" and "Red Rocket", so maybe when I watch all of those films I can retire that list? It's got a few films from a couple years before, but I don't think I'll ever get around to watching "Roma" from 2018, there's just no way to get there, and anyway it's been 6 years now.
(BTW, when is the next edition of "1,001 Films to See Before You Die" coming out? There was one every two years, and I got in the habit of updating my progress on that list, but there's been no sign of the 2023 edition, and it's already 2024. Maybe someone stopped updating that list? Or they got tired of adding 10 films to the end of the list every year and then having to remove those ten, instead of removing the shitty films from the 1920's? Just wondering.)
Anyway, tonight's film is about modern relationships, which, thanks to modern science, don't even have to involve love any more. This story is about Matt, who's a tech guy who designs apps, some of which help other people meet and/or fall in love, and he's got so much money that he can pay for a woman to be a surrogate mother, or more correctly, a gestational surrogate. It's his, umm, genetic material combined with that of an egg donor, and he hires Anna to just bring the baby to term, as she's got a "womb to rent" (it's funny if you say it out loud). This is a business transaction, but after the interview process they have to spend time together, he goes to her pre-natal check-ups with her, she helps pick the colors for the baby's future bedroom, that sort of thing.
It's an unlikely friendship, perhaps, because the two people are so vastly different, he's in his forties and she's in her twenties, he's successful in business and she's trying to raise the money to finish school, that sort of thing. Since they're united for this common cause, of gestating this baby, there's the chance here for some kind of situationship, possibly romance, but it's just as likely that she'll fulfill the terms of her surrogate contract and then they'll go their separate ways, especially if Anna's going to use the money she earns to focus on school. So they spend time together but they're not TOGETHER together, get it?
So many decisions to make, do they want to know the gender of the baby before it's born, and if not, what do they call it, (or do they just call it "it"?), should they talk to the baby, play music for the baby, is it OK if Anna spends the night in Matt's house, that sort of thing. Everything becomes something of a negotiation, and they are forced to establish boundaries, but in many ways, that's true for ANY relationship. Even when two people are in love they have to work out who does what when, and how to live together without driving each other crazy - hey, if it were easy then simply anybody could do it, and we know that some people can't. All of life and all of love and all of romantic movies is based on the simple fact that some combinations of people work better together than others, and some don't work at all.
Matt and Anna see a therapist together (or maybe it's his, I don't know) and they work on their issues, even though they're not really a couple, plus they also go to group therapy, but separately, not together, because that would be weird. Then there are birthing classes in addition to all those check-ups, Anna still works in the coffee shop, so really, there's a lot to do, all day every day, while that nine-month clock is slowly advancing. Then of course the movie ends with the big birthing day itself, and unfortunately we don't really know what comes after that, or do we? It's a bit of a copout that we the audience have to try and tell the future for these characters, but hey, every movie has to end somewhere, and not everything can be summed up neatly with "And they lived happily ever after." Chop off those last three words and you'll see something more like most of the endings we get, but perhaps rightly so.
I heard a comedy routine last week, I think in a Taylor Tomlinson Netflix special, where she pointed out that nobody has both their work life AND their personal life in order. If you're focusing on your career, then your personal life is probably a mess, and vice versa. And if somebody does somehow have both their work life and their relationship going well, then at least their parents need to be divorced, or something like that. I think that's kind of how screenwriters work, they feel the need to create characters whose lives are in shambles, and once they figure out how their characters are damaged, then they put the wheels in motion. Matt had some relationship fails and is now alone BUT his career seems to be going well, while Anna dropped out of college and is floundering there, BUT she finds boyfriends fairly easily AND also she's not in touch with her family because she got pregnant during high school and gave up the baby for adoption. Meanwhile Matt's parents are divorced, but they each have new partners, so they function as sort of a foursome. It's great to know you can find love at any age, or have a baby at any stage in this modern world, but naturally, there's also a potential down side to every move you make.
Also starring Ed Helms (last seen in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"), Patti Harrison (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "The Starling"), Nora Dunn (last seen in "The Oath"), Fred Melamed (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Timm Sharp (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Bianca Lopez (last seen in "The High Note"), Vivian Gil, Julio Torres, Evan Jonigkeit (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Sufe Bradshaw (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Travis Coles, Jo Firestone (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), David Chattam (last seen in "Almost Friends"), Heidi Mendez, May Calamawy, Greta Titelman, Tucker Smallwood (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Terri Hoyos (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Anna Konkle, Ithamar Enriquez (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Gail Rastorfer (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Caitlin Kimball, Lucy Kaminsky, Ayla Rose Barreau, Johnathan Fernandez (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Alicia Roca and the voice of Ellen Dubin.
RATING: 5 out of 10 color samples
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