Turner. This isn't the fight.
Frankly a bit insane to make formal choices this severe restrictive and break them wide open to such emotional and intellectual extremes. The camera is constrained, but it liberates; it captures reality, but it also constructs it; the actor is not present, but their scene partner is looking into their soul. Elwood and Turner war with their own institutionalization, suffering, and agency for every second they are in Nickel Academy's grasp (not to mention its…
This is my dream.
This is my dream.
Are you guys okay with the fact that this is my dream?
A mammoth and utterly rewarding watch – desire, actualization, love, capital and transness mapped out on a social plain that isolates and fuses the characters in equal measure. The type of film where saying I can't be alone tonight may not be incorrect, but that doesn't make it true: it's a partial truth that papers over an honesty and action that is tough to grasp through a mental fog. Made me want to pour love into the world. A formal beauty, super funny and profoundly moving.
Mike Flanagan, Tom Hiddleston, and Chiwetel Ejiofor came out at the start to thank us for being there (hey no worries guys), how special the experience was, and how incredibly proud they are of the work. Tom especially – he still seemed very affected by playing Chuck and the shared experiential truths of the character. To which I now say: sir, you are barely in this film.
Enjoyable and affecting, and occasionally incredibly cinematic, but definitely only halfway there and…
Yeah I see it, more or less. Kind of impressive how little Chloe Sevigny and Simon Rex are in this, but the three junior film crew are strong and funny on-screen presences (Alex Wolff in particular made me want to die more than once from cringe) and it explores the utter artificiality of the subculture content industry in an amusing and observant way, though I never got the sense of any depth beyond what was immediately dramatized in the…
Happy to report this film is good, even very good, but I'm afraid didn't quite convince me of greatness. No-one has completely dropped the ball here, but there are these gaps in the script where Reijn dances something profound, something deeper than experiential and affecting, but I can't help but feel the most resonant parts of Babygirl are left for inference or just unrealised.
If you like to exercise total, perfect control in your public-facing life, then it's likely you'll…
