Sincere if ambling children’s adventure movie. The episodic structure of the film makes for good trailer cutting but robs momentum and ultimately payoff. There’s a bit of forced Wes Andersony whimsy but the lead kid is pretty awesome. Good characters. Decent silly movie.
A picture like a walk on a breezy, sunny day. Submissive, girl-crazy, young boy, early 20th century, French country summer. Bittersweet memories, the ghost of your childhood. A family uses a secret key to shortcut through the canals in the backyards of Marseilles’ wealthy elites. Most everyone is full of love and help but there are a few dickheads (just like life). Pages turn to dust, families turn to death. World War 1 looms, casts a shadow. Novelists cast a spell. This movie is a spell. This movie is sweet, sunny insects buzzing and river water lapping in concrete sluice.
The thrilling wrongness of being outside peering in. Men breaking boundaries, burdening budding sexuality. Men fantasizing about giving Alicia Silverstone a bath. Soapin’ up her back, oh yeah. A #yesallwomen picture. A classical piano score. If this movie were made today the quarterback in the diner besot by patriarchal temptation would be reading the Robert Coover source material as a sorta meta nod or easter egg rather than Catcher in the Rye, the go-to text of Hollywood for symbolizing white male angst.
I remember reading this thing once where J.G. Ballard said he didn’t get any boners when writing Crash. Like somebody was accusing him of writing a smut book and he was like, “Hey, I did not pop a single bone on it, ok?” Seems like a weird thing to remember, like maybe I made it up in order to feel bad about my own carnal reactions to creative endeavors. Aroused by baking cheesecake, by writing copy. James Spader dry humps wrecked motorists in dwindling twilight on the turnpike’s on-ramp. Everybody hot for James Dean.
This one was recommended to me by attractive marrieds. They’d come to see me drink menstrual blood and shake my butt under a big tent during an evening of orgiastic Klezmer and glitter and then they wrote to me via Facebook and suggested this Irish comedy about a quirky family and a teenage pregnancy. I fear I’m obfuscating the connection in an ill-conceived effort to be a wise-guy. The connection is love.
Jasper At The Movies 