BEFORE: I've got a few days off in a row, it makes sense, I had five days working in a row, and now comes some down time - this is the peril in having two temp jobs, there are going to be times when neither place of operation is open. The Brooklyn Nets are away on a two-week road trip, and the circus is coming to the stadium, only I don't work concerts or circuses just yet. The theater's going to be closed for five days for some repair work, so I'm not schedule to work again until next weekend. I could go on-line and try to pick up some temp work somewhere, or I can just relax a bit and catch up on some streaming shows, log in some comic books, that sort of thing. Most likely I'll slack off and then wish I'd looked for another temp job.
It's been a weird week already, it started with the Super Bowl and it's going to end with Valentine's Day, with a Friday the 13th in-between. And then the Olympics are going on at the same time, I'm tuning in occasionally, for like curling and ice dancing but I'm not going to make. a regular habit of it. And then next week is both Lunar New Year and Mardi Gras - we sometimes go to a Brazilian churrascaria on Ash Wednesday because it's a day some religions don't eat meat, therefore less competition. But we went once on Mardi Gras, which is also Carnivale, and regretted it because there were scantily-clad dancers shaking their stuff a little too close to the buffet, it was a real strip-club sort of atmosphere, and that will kind of kill Date Night. We may go out for meat night halfway between Valentine's Day and Carnivale, you know, just to avoid the crowds. But that would be Monday, which is President's Day. Damn, all the holidays are running together, but I don't think a lot of people go out to eat on President's Day, so we may be OK.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, I just finally scanned through the Pre-Game show, which was itself four or five hours long. This is when you'll see the next level down of ads, companies that couldn't afford to advertise during the game itself, so there were just regular, non-FX heavy ads for Domino's Pizza and Chunky Soup, some medications I've never heard of that only cure ONE thing instead of two (like Skyrizi does) and some of the cheaper mobile plans - for some reason every other ad starred Zoe Saldana. And yes, there were some ads that promoted the more expensive ads that would air later in the day, during the big game. So those were ads that were ads for other ads, this is the world we live in now.
Laura Dern carries over again from "Lonely Planet".
THE PLOT: A woman filming a documentary on childhood rape victims starts to question the nature of her childhood relationship with her riding instructor and running coach.
AFTER: We've got another problematic film tonight, which kind of puts this one under the "relationship" heading rather than the "romance" one. The main character here recalls a complex relationship she had when she was a young girl, one she wrote a story about, and the relationship was between an older man and his girlfriend (who was married to a different man) and let me be completely clear here from the start - any sexual contact between anyone under the age of 18 and an adult is wrong wrong wrong. Honestly I don't even see why I have to mention this to proceed, but I guess I do, at the very least I'm not comfortable even discussing this film without this as a disclaimer. It's the MOVIE itself that seems to do some back-pedaling on this point, and it kind of doesn't help that the director here is telling her own story, this is based on her childhood, so she's the one who seems to have some ambivalence over whatever happened back in the 1970's.
Which is weird, because if she just came out and started with how WRONG that all was, we the audience would already be on her side, like WE'RE not the ones who need convincing that something very wrong happened, that this relationship was rooted in deception and illegality from the start, it never should have happened, instead it feels like the director made the film to convince herself that some very nasty things went down, though they felt beautiful and honest at the time. If anybody needs to be brought into the light and made to understand that bad people do bad things and there are repercussions for bad actions, even if those people seemed like extremely charming, loving and nice enough people. Yes, yes, of course there was an era of free love and a sexual revolution, however in now way was the freedom ever extended to minors. OK, are we all clear on this point? Even the director?
Well, at least I'm seasonally appropriate tonight, because this is another film that premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2018, and that's a January thing. And the real-life sexual abuser (referred to in this film by another name) was a two-time Olympic medalist and a nine-time Olympic coach - OK, in rowing, that's a summer sport and the winter Olympics are going on right now, but really, I'll take any tie-in right now to justify this film being exactly HERE, like 1/4 of the way through a chain devoted to love and romance. I did have a chance to watch this last year, it could have fit in-between "Trial By Fire" and "Citizen Ruth", but I held this one back because I needed to hit Mother's Day in time. This film isn't really about mothers, but you know, "Citizen Ruth" was about a pregnant woman, so I guess that one fit and this one didn't.
The film is about Jennifer Fox, a director of documentary films and a college professor, who is contacted by her mother, who found an essay that Jennifer wrote when she was 13, one that discussed being in a relationship with an older boyfriend. Jennifer dismissed the relationship as just something she hid to keep from upsetting her mother, however her mother knows (as we do) that regardless how Jennifer felt about the relationship then, or how she feels about it now, that in all ways legal and social, this was a form of rape. There's no possible way a 13 year old girl can be considered mature enough to give her consent for sexual contact, society came up with this rule at some point, and it's a pretty good one.
The relationship began when she attended a horse-training camp with three other girls, and the woman who ran the camp, Mrs. G, insisted that the girls all go running every morning with her and Bill, an athlete and coach. At the end of the summer, Mrs. G and Bill reveal to Jennifer that they are lovers, even though Mrs. G is married to someone else - but sure, it's the 1970's, remember. Jennifer kept visiting the camp because that's where her horse was, and over time she was sexually groomed and lured into a relationship with "Bill". It's very likely that Mrs. G was recruiting many girls for Bill, and this all sort of feels like a Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell sort of situation. If you wonder how this all comes to be, you start with a couple of very charming people who know how to find young girls who hate their parents, and things kind of snowball from there.
The adult Jennifer starts to recall her childhood experiences, perhaps with rose-colored glasses, as they say, but after re-meeting some of the other girls from camp as adults, as well as the older Mrs. G, she starts to realize that maybe she wasn't as in control of the whole situation back then as she thought, and that these very nice people were perhaps deceiving her about their intentions, though they just claimed at the time they were all about love and being honest and in favor of self-expression and personal growth. Well, a pair of serial child rapists really wouldn't be expected to present themselves as such, right?
Jennifer refuses, on some level, to admit that she was groomed or raped, because she didn't want to think of herself as a victim. Through imaginary conversations with her younger self, however, she gradually starts to understand now what she didn't understand then. Her boyfriend and mother keep encouraging her to investigate the situation further and talk to more people, because perhaps if she realizes how many girls the couple was taking advantage of, she can finally think of herself as someone who was deceived and stop thinking of the events as something beautiful and wholesome. Again, we were all already there, it's just like waiting for the main character to catch up and join us.
Finally, Jennifer remembers having anxiety attacks after every encounter with Bill, and she's able to put the pieces together - then she "broke up" with Bill right before the couple had planned a group encounter with her and another girl. From there things could have easily escalated to Jennifer being filmed, or trafficked or even sold into slavery, but at least she listened to her body's reactions and ended things before they went any further. Years of denial or intentional mis-remembering of the facts could then be counter-acted with therapy as an adult, perhaps. However it's just as likely that as an adult Jennifer would be incapable of having a normal relationship if she were unable to resolve or understand the events in her past.
So yeah, we drew a tough one tonight, it's never easy when you learn that somebody you thought cared about you and said you were special was a complete liar, and that they were only interested in their own pleasure and took advantage of your innocence. The best I can offer up tonight is that we can gain a little bit of understanding about HOW this sort of thing comes to be, and we can extrapolate from here to maybe understand current events a bit, especially the Epstein Files. Understand, not forgive or explain away. OK, I'm going to move on now and try to get set up for all these holidays approaching.
Directed by Jennifer Fox
Also starring Jason Ritter (last seen in "Swimfan"), Common (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "Vita & Virginia"), Jessica Sarah Flaum, Laura Allen (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Juli Erickson (last seen in "Bernie"), Matthew Rauch (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "Faye"), John Heard (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Dana Healey, Aaron Williamson, Shay Lee Abeson, Isabella Amara (last seen in "Vengeance"), Jodi Long (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Isabelle Nelisse (last seen in "It"), Daniel Berson (last seen in "War Dogs"), Chelsea Alden, Frances Conroy (last seen in "No Pay, Nudity"), Tina Parker (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Scott Takeda (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), Noah Lomax (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Grant James (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Madison David, Tarek Bishara (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Gretchen Koerner (last seen in "Irresistible"), Jaqueline Fleming (last seen in "Contraband"), Jacob Craig Bullock, Logan Chadwick, Cadence Lee, Kristi Taylor
RATING: 5 out of 10 family photo albums
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