BEFORE: Another storm, another cable/internet outage, another two Nets games and another two difficult treks home late at night. I've got the day off tomorrow so I plan to sleep until noon, I've got a big weekend coming up with the New York International Children's Film Festival starting up on Saturday. Maybe tomorrow, Friday, I'll watch a double-feature to finish off the month because I'll be working all day Saturday.
Gerard Horan carries over from "Much Ado About Nothing". And here's the line-up for Day 15 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", tomorrow we'll be past the halfway point. The themes for Friday, February 27 are "Oscar Goes to Sea" and "Oscar Goes to Court":
6:30 am "Captains Courageous" (1937)
8:30 am "One Way Passage" (1932)
9:45 am "Romance on the High Seas" (1948)
11:30 am "Now, Voyager" (1942)
1:30 pm "The Last Voyage" (1960)
3:15 pm "Billy Budd" (1962)
5:30 pm "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935)
8:00 pm "12 Angry Men" (1957)
9:45 pm "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957)
12:00 am "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961)
3:15 am "Adam's Rib" (1949)
I think I'm hitting for 5 today, "Now, Voyager", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "12 Angry Men ", "Witness for the Prosecution" and "Adam's Rib". So 5 seen out of 11 is almost half, and brings me up to 67 seen out of 166, or 40.3% - yeah I didn't expect a big increase.
THE PLOT: A newlywed bride becomes infatuated with another woman who questions her sexual orientation, promoting a stir among the bride's family and friends.
AFTER: This movie is bound to be triggering for me to some degree - I almost don't have to watch this because I kind of LIVED it, my first wife came out of the closet after we'd been married for four years, and at first it seemed like maybe we could make something work, like she swore up and down that realizing this about herself wasn't going to change anything, but that's pretty ridiculous because that itself represented a very big change, so you know, too late. We tried to hold it together for another year (OK, I tried) but then it just wasn't going to work, was it? To continue to be with me would mean denying that new part of herself that she was just getting in touch with, and you know, the cat's out of the bag or the bird's out of the cage or the toothpaste is out of the tube, and really there's no going back.
I know, I know, we're supposed to celebrate when people come out, or finally realize their sexual identity or whatever you want to call it, and generally I agree with that, I support people coming out and being their true selves or finding unconventional love and all that, but it's a bit different when you're the straight husband being left behind, or essentially being told by the person who wanted you as a lover now has a new plan and you're not part of it. If you think it's tough to be the person in the middle of the love triangle, try being just one of the corners and the losing one at that. The married woman who suddenly realizes she's gay, or bi-sexual, or bi-curious is in a difficult spot, of course, she has to think about what other people are going to say if she leaves her husband in order to have a girlfriend or a wife. If she's lucky she'll have support from family and friends, advice from a therapist or what have you, just don't expect support from the husband, that's all.
Heck, the husband here, knows he's lost the battle and steps aside, because he doesn't want to stand in the way of Rachel following her heart, realizing her true nature or at least exploring this new opportunity - and really, that's the only way this story could proceed, if Rachel acted on her attraction to Luce and then suddenly had to STOP feeling that way about her, then she'd be denying herself with every day she continues to stay with Heck, and the balance of power has already shifted, it's too late for Heck to fix things, because Rachel's going to regret staying with Heck, for sure, and if she doesn't pursue Luce, she will always question whether she should have.
Sure, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Sure, the path not taken always seems a bit more attractive than the safe, boring one you took, get it? There's also the possibility that getting married WAS the trigger, as soon as Rachel took those vows and said "forsake all others" and "until death do we part", that's a bit too final for some people. Rachel maybe felt the walls closing in on the day of the ceremony, and Luce the florist was RIGHT THERE, looking like she looks, right around the time she was forced to wear a white dress and state publicly that she was never going to have sex with anyone else. An impossible situation has been created, as this film describes the conundrum about an unstoppable force meeting with an unmovable object. Well, that's a contradictory thing, because something has to give, either the object is going to move or the force is going to be stopped.
Still, this movie was released in 2005, it's twenty years old and I think it's already antiquated in the simplicity of the situation. The solutions here are binary, Rachel either stays with Heck or runs off with Luce. Why are those the only two options? These days we have people who are bi-sexual, trans-sexual, a-sexual, and poly-sexual. There are thrupples and presumably quadrupples too, there's no longer just one way to live, it used to be you're either married or you're single, gay or straight, and there was no in-between. These days you can make your own in-between if you want, or just not play the game at all - figuring out what works for you can be part of the process. What if Rachel decided she wanted to live 6 months out of the year with Heck and then 6 months with Luce, would that be so outrageous? It probably wouldn't be fair to either Heck or Luce, but still, saying that she has to choose between one or the other seems like it maybe needs to go in the trash-bin with "gays can't get married".
I was for gay marriage when it was a hot-button issue, I know some people might be surprised by that, but only on the condition that there also be gay divorce. Just like it wasn't fair when straight people could get married and gay people couldn't, it wouldn't be fair if gay people didn't have to suffer the same consequences as straights when things didn't work out. Hell, that was probably a whole new cottage industry for divorce lawyers, gay separations and gay custody battles and gay alimony, presumably. Fair is fair.
Anyway, I knew how this one was going to end pretty soon after it started. Luce was acting as "the fun one" and Heck was always working. Once Rachel and Luce went out to the footy match and played "Dance Dance Revolution" together, there was no going back. But Luce said she didn't believe in breaking up a marriage to get a woman, but I guess that went right out the window because she sure seemed like she was eager to take that opportunity if she could. I know, I know, it's complicated and we all have to weigh our own happiness against the rules as we see them. But we also all have to live with ourselves and the consequences of our own actions, just saying. If someone's sexual orientation truly doesn't matter, just ask yourself if you're rooting for Rachel to leave her husband for a woman harder than you would if she were leaving her husband for another man.
Directed by Ol Parker (director of "Ticket to Paradise" and "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again")
Also starring Piper Perabo (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Lena Headey (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "Stoker"), Celia Imrie (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Anthony Head (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters"), Darren Boyd (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Sue Johnston, Boo Jackson, Sharon Horgan (last seen in "Man Up"), Eva Birthistle (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Vinette Robinson (last seen in Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Ben Miles (last seen in "Speed Racer"), John Thompson, Mona Hammond (last seen in "Kinky Boots"), Kellie Bright (ditto), Rick Warden (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Ruth Sheen (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Philip Bird (last seen in "Napoleon"), Justine Mitchell (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Angel Coulby, Ben Willbond (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Krishan Naidoo, Sharon Duncan-Brewster (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), James Thorne, Tom McKay, Andrew Dunford (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Carl M. Smith, Carolyn Morrison,
RATING: 5 out of 10 adult films in the video rental section
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