Total Recall - Maybe they could help me with my memory problem

The beginning of this post would be a good place to compare the current Total Recall to the Total Recall from 1990.  Except there’s a problem…I can’t remember much about the original.  I guess I need Rekall Inc. to help me remember the movies I’ve seen.  That’d be cool.  I do remember the original being comically over-the-top.  I remember faces changing or melting or something.  And of course I remember the lady with the 3 boobs.  But that’s about it.  I’m a purist by nature and feel Hollywood should leave well-enough alone.  The only reason to remake a film, when one gets right down to it, is money.  There was no reason to remake Psycho but they did and they blew it.  There was no reason to remake Karate Kid but they did and they actually didn’t blow it (though the title is wrong since he learns kung-fu but I’m splitting hairs).  There was no reason to remake any number of movies but it won’t stop so quit your whining.  (I’m speaking to myself here too.)  I understand wanting to leave movies alone, even if they’re goofy, sci-fi classics.  But I also kinda understand wanting to offer up a different version of something, especially if it was a goofy sci-fi classic.  I’ll tell you my rule of thumb…never see a remake without seeing the original first.

So what I do know about the original is that it was directed by Paul Verhoeven and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone.  Mr. Verhoeven is known for such cinematic genius as Showgirls and Starship Troopers.  Ok, the director of the current Total Recall, Len Wiseman (aka Mr. Kate Beckinsale), isn’t much better (two Underworld movies and Die Hard 4) so we can’t really compare the directors.  I will say that I liked the world that Wiseman created better.  I also appreciate that he took a movie that was goofy and tried to give it some gravity.  I’ve read the Phillip K. Dick short story, “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale,” on which the original is based and the Schwarzenegger version is closest to that source material because of one thing…Mars. But that's all I'm gonna say about that.

So what did we end up with in this version of Total Recall?  Well first off the effects were way better.  And as I mentioned earlier, the world created for this film was pretty cool looking.  It was dark and dismal and I can see why Colin Farrell’s character, Doug Quaid, longed for something more.  Speaking of, the story is this: Doug Quaid, factory worker and husband to Kate Beckinsale’s Lori, dreams of escaping his boring life. Doug finds himself at Rekall, the place that implants memories of a bigger, more interesting life.  The only problem is, Doug had a bigger, more interesting life or did he?  No, he did.  So he spends the rest of the film trying to figure out who he was and why his wife is trying to kill him. Jessica Biel and Bryan Cranston are in it too and both try to pull Doug to their side of the scuffle.

If it were a better movie it would have gone into the whole 'struggling with identity' thing but it wasn’t so they didn’t.  I guess they didn’t have enough time, what, with all the shooting and running and stuff.  The acting was what you’d expect from an action film.  I do so love Farrell and will never hold these types of movies against him when I’ve seen things like Ondine and In Bruges.  Biel I can take or leave.  She just doesn’t do it for me.  Beckinsale is fine and really the best thing about her and, honestly, the best thing about this film was her hair.  She has the best freaking hair!  Plus it flew around all slo-mo style as she’s chasing Farrell down.  I covet her hair.

If it were a better movie they may have addressed some of the logical issues, like how the un-breathable air stays away from the inhabitable part of the city.  But it’s not a better movie.  It’s a fun, action flick perfect for summers.  So go, enjoy Kate Beckinsale’s hair on the big screen and try telling me I’m wrong about it being the best part of the film.

In the Land of Blood and Honey: A War Movie that Remembers the Women

If you're anything like me, you know far less than you should about the Bosnian War in the mid-90s. Angelina Jolie is here to change all that. The plot of In the Land of Blood and Honey, which Jolie wrote, directed, and produced, is pretty much given away in the title. There's going to be horrific violence and there's going to be moments of sweetness made all the more perverse by the carnage that surrounds and produces them.

The film opens with a very successful date between Danijel, a Serb, and Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim. Their flirtatious dancing is blown apart by a bombing, and they find each other again at a detainment camp where Danijel is a commander and Ajla a prisoner about to be raped. He saves her, and they begin a relationship that lasts the duration of the war. It's complicated doesn't begin to cover it.

The two are clearly metaphors for the way war both imposes and exposes the fictionality of nationalist and ethnic boundaries between people. Though the two actors are excellent, I'm not sure the film itself knows how to play their relationship. The tentativeness of the love story is preferable, though, to the clunkiness of the exposition. Jolie knows she's dealing with an audience that is probably under-informed about the conflict, but the expository speeches and conveniently placed radio news reports is not the most elegant way to keep us apprised of the intricacies of the war.

What does not only work in the film, but makes it desperately important, is the unflinching way it details how women's bodies are literally and figuratively used as battlefields and human shields in warfare. This is a reality which most war movies literally and figurative do flinch away from exploring. The closing text reveals that Bosnia marked the first time sexual violence in and of itself was prosecuted as a war crime, and presents us with some truly staggering statistics about the number of women who were raped during the conflict. Jolie's war movie recovers the experience of women in war--how they're used, how they're wounded, and how they manage to survive--scenes that too often get left on the cutting room floor.

"Reprise" (Angel 2.15): Why You Shouldn't Booty Call an Ex During an Existential Crisis

Remember the earlier prefixed "Re" episodes form this season? "Reunion"? "Redefinition"? They were all a bit Darla-centric, yes? Well, this episode is called "Reprise" for a reason. As Jenn puts it, there's only one big "DON'T" in this ep, and I referenced it in the title of the post. But before we get there, quite a few RElationship hazards are REhearsed in this Angel guide to getting your heart broken fifty ways from Sunday.

DON'T nurse a crush on a vengeful vamp. Poor Lindsey. Poor, poor Lindsey. He's still carrying a flame for Darla, though she's just using him for a place to crash, regrow her skin, and drink all the free blood he provides for her. In some ways, Lindsey the Whipped is making the same mistake as Angel--believing Darla can be REdeemed.

She's rolling her eyes at his despair. It's fairly hilarious.

Jenn also points out how this episode reminds us that Lindsey really struggles with his evil responsibilities at W&H. Whereas it comes as natural as breathing to Lilah, angsty Lindz has to shower after work everyday. And this seems a good place to note how much I look forward to when he sings at Lorne's.

DON'T fall for a girl who can't handle the heat. Poor Wesley. His rich and hot ginger gf Virginia gets out gets out of the kitchen in this episode. Wes's recent gunshot wound from the weak sauce zombie cops makes her realize that she can't love someone whom she very well might lose.

Your loss, Ginny.

DON'T be snookered by a dead man. The climax of this episode is, for me, both very cool and a bit of a cheat. Angel goes to some trouble to REtrieve a magical glove to defeat an embodied blah blah blah; what he wants is to visit the "home office" of Wolfram & Hart. And who shows up to guide him? None other than Holland Manners!

Death becomes you, big guy!

As they take a long elevator ride down (natch), accompanied with a cheeky instrumental, HM gives Angel the standard "we're the embodiment of evil" speech. It would have been nice if he quoted his soulmate and deflated the diatribe as Buff did to the First in "Amends": "All right, I get it, you're evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?"

The big REveal is that the home office is . . . Earth itself! Everyone's unredeemable and fallen! Angel's quest is doomed! And while I like the shock of the elevator opening to the same street scene they left, I think Angel's walk through L.A., hearing people fight and whatnot, isn't quite enough to sell the idea that everyone is crap. I mean, hasn't he seen enough of love and sacrifice at this point to look for and believe in the best in people? People with souls? But the main point is his REsponse--getting laid.

DON'T, well, see title. My freshman year in college, my friend Dana told me that the two words I should get comfortable with using were "fuck" and "it." Angel responds in a similar manner to his newfound existential despair.

And by "it," I mean Darla.

He figures that if we're all screwed (pun intended), well, why not just be Angelus already?

I don't mean to be glib (much). It's a huge moment in the series and in Angel's psychic development. And just in case anyone isn't familiar with the REpercussions of this little assignation I won't reproduce the chain of events Jenn details, but trust me, it ain't good.

Gross case in awkward point.

Oh, and Kate might have killed herself and Cordy is heading to her certain doom. It was a rough week.

Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present: I have a new girl crush

I'm still reeling from watching HBO's documentary on "the grandmother of performance artists" Marina Abramovic (on HBO Go(d) of course--thanks Nat!). The only thing I knew about her going in was her legendary piece at MoMA in 2010, which also gives the doc its title, in which, during every hour the museum was open for three months, she sat in a straight-backed wooden chair and gazed at any museumgoer who cared to sit, for however long they cared to sit.

I'm the definition of an introvert and hate to be watched if not teaching, but I would give anything to have done this.

After spending an hour and forty minutes with her last night, she's one of my new icons.

Abramovic has been performing since the early 70s, and her interest in gender, the body, pain, and love are expressed through radical and, at times, self-destructive pieces. She has cut herself with knives, accidentally and on purpose; passed out from smoke inhalation after leaping into a burning pentagram; run headlong into a wall; and sat for six hours surrounded by various weapons and invited the audience to use them on her. And she did most of this naked. Her 2010 MoMA retrospective, which prompted the titular piece, included young artists re-enacting or re-performing her most famous works. At first this idea made me a little uncomfortable--isn't part of the point of performance art its ephemerality and resistance to reiteration? But then, when I was reading some more about Abramovic (told you--girl crush), I learned that one of her pieces involved her taping herself and then attempting to immediately recreate her movements and mistakes (this is one of the ones with knives--she plays the Russian game where you stab quick and rhythmically between your fingers). So I guess inviting others to reinhabit her body and art is very much in keeping with Abramovic's interest in repetition, as well as in supporting and promoting young performance artists.

Before the film documents "The Artist Is Present," it spends a good deal of time investigating the decade-long relationship between Abramovic and another performance artist, Ulay. The two were clearly soulmates, making art together and traveling around Europe in a van for five years to give them more time and energy to create. One of their most notorious pieces involved the two of them standing naked in a doorway, close enough that the audience has to physically touch both of their bodies to pass. It's a pretty ballsy (so to speak) challenge to the traditional divide between spectator and spectacle, audience and artist. Ulay and Marina split up in the late 80s amid mutual charges of infidelity, but they clearly are still deeply connected to each other, and their reunion prompts one of the most moving moments of the documentary.

***Spoiler alerts and fair warning. I usually don't worry too much about spoiling documentaries since they chronicle events that, you know, already happened in the world, but a great deal of the pleasure of watching The Artist Is Present comes from discovering how people respond to Abramovic's gaze during "The Artist Is Present".***

The last third of the film is dedicated to chronicling the emotional and physical demands and rewards of "The Artist Is Present." Abramovic trained for months to acquire the muscular strength and mental discipline to sit silently for nearly seven hundred and and forty hours. Maybe it's just the power inherent in the act, but the artist's face and eyes, kind and accepting, bring forth all sorts of reactions in the spectators. The piece itself neatly flips the hierarchy of the aesthetic gaze: rather than being looked at, Abramovic is unflinchingly looking upon her audience. Between each participant she stares down at her hands, and only establishes eye contact when her partner is seated. That means she doesn't realize that Ulay is one of her first sitters, and her own response to seeing his face is breathtakingly moving. As the months go by, Abramovic becomes more interactive with her partners, mirroring their movements, crying at their pain, and smiling at their happiness. It's heart-swellingly beautiful. And then, of course, fucking Franco shows up. But his pseudo-intellectual post-sit analysis is somewhat tempered by his interlocutor acting him if he's an actor. It's awesome.

Get your hands on this documentary, or at least Google Marina Abramovic. This woman is a legend, and attention should be paid!

"I Was Made to Love You" (Buffy 5.15): How set up one of the greatest episodes in TV history

It makes sense that I would open the post that discusses the fifteenth episode of the fifth season with mention of the sixteenth. Up next is "The Body," one of the most critically acclaimed episodes not just in the Buffyverse, but in broadcast television history. Because "The Body" is such a monumental achievement, "I Was Made to Love You" often gets overlooked. But this Jane Espenson-penned show knows exactly where it's taking its characters--to the kind of grief and loss that cannot be slayed. My thinking about this episode was profoundly altered by an essay I read while researching some other topic years ago, and now I can't find it or recall the name. So if this rings any bells, thanks to the author and pass me the link! But in the meantime, please accept my apologies for this unintentionally stolen Buffy guide to setting us up for a gut punch.

DO change your tune about Buffy's love life. But it would be nice if you admitted as much, Xander. Both Jenn and I noted his rather abrupt turnaround. For example:

• Xander Quote from "IWMTLY": "The problem is not you."

VS.

• Xander Quote from "Into the Woods": "But you missed the point. You shut down, Buffy. And you've been treating Riley like the rebound guy."

 AND

[In response to Buffy's fear that she's too self-involved]

• Xander Quote from "IWMTLY": "I don't think you're like that." 

• Xander Quote from "Into the Woods": I think you took it for granted [Riley] was going to show up when you wanted him to, and take off when you didn't."

Maybe the puffy sumo suit blunts some of that self-righteousness.

Okay, now that's out of my system.

DON'T think love is something you can control. This episode concerns itself with a robot named April who has been created by some dude named Warren to be his perfect girlfriend, except, of course, when he meets the right girl, he abandons her. She comes to Sunnydale looking for him, and wreaks some havoc at some sort of luau-themed party at The Bronze.

Havoc-wreaking here takes the form of throwing Spike through a window.

Which begs the subsidiary question, why is everyone, including Ben, ostensibly a grown man with a job, hanging out at an all-ages club packed with highschoolers? [**Update**: Jenn has just informed me that this party doesn't take place at The Bronze, but rather at UC Sunnydale. Oops. Though it's still strange that Ben's there, yes? And the question below still stands.]

And why is Willow wearing a turtleneck to a luau?

But no mind. The primary question is, how can you protect yourself from losing love? Warren's interested, Spike's interested, and next week Buffy's going to learn the answer: You can't.

DON'T make my mistake. And assume this episode is in any way a throwaway. Not only does the poignancy of watching April's batteries die as Buffy sits with her guide us into a much more devastating and personal loss in "The Body,"

Makes sense she's on a swing set, since these are the last moments of her childhood.

but Warren and a robot that looks like a chick

As well as Spike's continued failure to heed the Do's and Don't's of this episode as well as "Crush."

 are both going to have serious and wide-ranging implications for the rest of this season and the next.

Next week: The pain is brought.

Jenn calls attention to April's last words, which also will be resonating for quite some time. Here's her take. April: "It's getting dark. It's so early to be getting dark." --> I could not help but read this line in terms of how the episode ends. Somehow I don't think we're meant to. She is so prophetic even if she's a robot because of Joyce, Glory, and "The Gift." It would definitely explain why she dies before she can finish the cliche about it getting darkest before it gets better because it won't. From here until Season 7 it is just one long 30 episode descent into darkness.

And of course, the word that April doesn't say to finish that cliche is "Dawn." This re-watch is really reminding me of how crucial Little Bit's appearance is in the show as a whole.

We Need to Talk About We Need to Talk About Kevin

So this is the second time in recent memory that I went into a movie expecting a sociological investigation of character and motivation and got a horror flick. We Need to Talk About Kevin takes as its subject the unspeakable nightmare of a mass killing at a high school, and tries for about 50% of the movie to delve into the question it's almost impossible not to ask: Where were the parents? The other 50%? Straight-up The Bad Seed.

Because the film jumbles the chronology of the life of the main character, Tilda Swinton's Eva, Kevin's mother, it gestures towards replicating the psychological upset of trauma. This is one of the hyper-stylized directorial choices that work. Many do not. I was not a fan, for example, of the filmstrip-esque rendering of Kevin's unplanned conception, on a cellular level, or of the hackneyed and obvious trope of Eva washing her hands of red substances--tomato sauce, paint, hamster blood. We get it. She feels responsible for the deaths. However, I didn't feel the film's argument about Eva's complicity in Kevin's crime was completely earned, or completely baked. Blaming the mother is a slippery slope, especially if her frustration with her newborn over interrupting a life of bohemian travel and New York City fabulousness is represented as both selfish and unavoidable.

In fact, several explanations are put forward to "explain" Kevin's behavior along with Eva's verbal  and physical expression of her resentment: undiagnosed autism and pure sociopathy. Did Kevin kill his classmates and brag about it because his mother never bonded with him? Because she physically abused him? Or are some people just born bad? The movie seems more interested in a screechy soundtrack and playing hide and seek with the audience than seriously investigating this question.

And the thing is, it's an important question. I know that every perpetrator of a massacre is different: It is naive and ignorant to equate Charles Whitman with Seung-Hui Cho with Jared Lee Loughner with James Holmes. But asking serious questions, and positing serious answers, about what contributes to this type of psychopathology through fiction can, ideally and hopefully, give us a way to interrupt its development. We do need to talk about Kevin, just not in a sensational or lazy way.

Amelie vs. Black Swan: Steel Cage Match

Two pixies enter the arena: only one can exit. Black Swan bumped Amelie from the latest edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Natalie and I weigh in on the justice of this decision. Check out our discussion over at Docs on Films.

Tiny Furniture: A Little Lena Dunham Goes a Long Way

Once Natalie bestowed HBO Go(d) upon me, for some reason I didn't hit up the latest season of Game of Thrones or finally catch up on Deadwood. Instead, I was drawn to Girls, billed as a latter-day Sex in the City but with a more realistic depiction of both New York City and the (sex) lives of young women. I've watched the entire season one and a half times, and though it isn't as groundbreaking or edgy as a) it's marketed to be or b) it sort of wants to be, it hits me where I live. So while waiting for season 2 (which according to Twitter will feature Christopher Noth perhaps as Mr. Big! Meta!), I turned to writer-director Lena Dunham's equally autobiographical first movie, Tiny Furniture, as Girls methadone. And it was about as satisfying.

Let me begin by saying I have a lot of admiration for Lena Dunham. Though plenty have spoken about the advantage, unfair or otherwise, that Dunham and her costars share in the industry, she did write and direct a feature film at twenty-five. And for my money, she does a better job translating the Apatovian trope of perpetual adolescence to a female sensibility than Bridesmaids. She is also a fearless physical actress, and I find Girls compulsively watchable.

Though several Girls regulars show up in Tiny Furniture--including Alex Karpovsky, who plays one of my favorite characters and Jemima Kirke who plays essentially the same free-spirited and irresistibly charming narcissist she does on the show--there's something about the film that wasn't as appealing to me as the series. Which is surprising, as the film is much more ambitious. Rather than focus entirely on Lena Dunham's avatar (a wry, insecure, not as charming narcissist) and her friends and boyfriends, Tiny Furniture is equally, if not more, concerned with Aura's relationship with her mother and sister (played by Dunham's real-life family). As Aura languishes in her artist mother's fabulous apartment after college graduation and halfheartedly tries to find a job and full-heartedly tries to find a boyfriend, she reads through her mother's journals from the 70s, when she was also in her 20s. The conversation the two have at the end of the film, when Aura finally gets the invitation to share her mom's bed that she's been angling for the whole movie, is both a moving representation of how mothers and daughters begin to become friends, and also a fairly unsettling indication of how little Aura has grown.

I think the reason Tiny Furniture left me a little cold and a little annoyed was that Girls reminds me less of Sex and the City and more of Seinfeld. The four girlfriends share the same casual and witty self-involvement of Jerry and Co. that lead them to solipsistic statements and actions that would be staggeringly obtuse at best and borderline sociopathic at worst if they weren't so sincere about it all. Girls is nowhere near as funny as Seinfeld, but I think it shares a similar ethos--and similar limitations. Thirty minute situations highlight these character types to their greatest effect. Tiny Furniture, with its hour-and-forty-minute run-time, gives you a bit too much opportunity to get frustrated and bored with the characters making the same mistakes and the same justifications. So unless you really want to hear "sweat the bed" used in a sentence, I'd stick with the series.

Moonrise Kingdom!

Wes Anderson’s movies aren’t for everyone.  Maybe that’s why I like them so much.  I’m a huge fan of quirky, off-beat, occasionally hapless but always hopeful, and sometimes downright odd.  I get his humor and I have since I fell in love with Bottle Rocket in college.  I’ve tried to get others to love it too but to no avail.  There have only been a couple of times that I feel like Anderson may have missed the mark ever so slightly (Life Aquatic, which pains me to say, didn’t do it for me) but it’s such a personal opinion that I can’t fault the guy.  And actually, that’s kind of his deal.  His movies are well-written, his characters are fully formed (in Anderson’s mind if not in their lives), and his movies are well-made.  There’s no denying that the guy can write and direct.  But sometimes his films fall flat with even his biggest fans.

This is not the case with his latest offering, Moonrise Kingdom.  This movie is special.  It’s special in that way that you want to ask it out on a date, take it to a nice dinner, and love it for the rest of your life.  Imagine Romeo and Juliet meets The Great Escape with a dash of Rushmore and a hint of Blue Lagoon while somehow still managing to be completely original.  

 

The story is: there are these 12-year olds (a boy called Sam and a girl called Suzy) who fall in love and attempt an escape from their lives apart in order to be together.  Sam and Suzy have problems in their separate lives but together they make sense. A search for Sam and Suzy ensues bringing together most of the fictional New England island of New Penzance where Suzy lives and Sam is camping with his troop of Khaki Scouts..  Searching for Sam are his fellow Khaki scouts, none of whom actually like Sam but live by a ‘no man left behind’ way of life and are led by Khaki Scoutmaster Ward.  They go after him, hilariously armed to the teeth, and have to be reminded by Scoutmaster Ward this is a rescue mission and they are not to harm him.  Searching for Suzy are her parents, played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand, who have multiple problems of their own. Searching for both kids is the slightly dumb but very sweet island police captain played by Bruce Willis.

One thing that really worked for Mr. Anderson this time around is spicing up the folks with whom he works.  Often, as some directors do, he’d work with the Wilson brothers, Bill Murray, Angelica Huston, etc.  This time around he used some new folks and it was just what the film needed.  Edward Norton was fabulous in the role of Scoutmaster Ward that, once upon a time, probably would have gone to Owen Wilson.  Frances McDormand was excellent in a role that could have been handed to Angelica Huston.  Wilson and Huston would have been great in the roles but at this point in Anderson’s career, would have been expected.  I’m so glad he chose to branch out and work with these folks.  In fact they fit in with his material so well that I’m surprised they haven’t worked together before.

Joining a completely astounding cast including the aforementioned Murray, McDormand, Willis, and Norton are folks like Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel, and newcomers Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman, the latter two as Suzy and Sam respectively.  Both Hayward and Gilman were fantastic and played the star-crossed lovers with such panache. 

The film itself was lovely.  There was always something to look at and I adore Anderson’s aesthetic.  He borders on incredibly kooky but somehow is able to reign it back in before he goes overboard.  I feel like I’m rambling but I can’t say enough about this film.  I’m so glad I got to finally see it and I can’t wait to buy it on DVD.  Then I’ll be counting the days until Criterion gets their hands on it and releases it in their collection.

Sleeping Beauty: More Like Magic Mike Than You Might Think

As someone who writes on gender and the body, I practically *had* to see Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty, being, as it is, about a woman who agrees to be heavily sedated in a room alone with paying customers. What I expected was an extended version of the bizarro masked ball/orgy in Eyes Wide Shut. What I got was a pretty clear-eyed examination of how bodies, beautiful or no, get consensually commodified.

The film follows Lucy (Emily Browning, who you might remember from Sucker Punch, aka, the movie I kinda liked that the rest of universe hated), a university student putting herself through school with the help of several odd jobs and without the help of her alcoholic and thieving mother. Early on, she demonstrates a detached relationship to her own sexuality. One scene has her deciding which stranger to sleep with in a bar and when based on a coin toss. Therefore, when she answers an ad in the student paper (!) for a job in the sex industry that involves a full-body inspection and a threat about the consequences of indiscretion, she's not too thrown.

Lucy begins her new job by wearing lingerie at dinner parties and serving wine and brandy to tuxedoed old men, and is eventually "promoted" to the role referenced by the title--she drinks a tea spiked with the mother of all sleeping pills and lies naked in a room where clients are ushered in, admonished not "to penetrate or leave marks," and left alone with her for unspecified amounts of time. If this sounds at all erotic, I'm not explaining it right. We see what a selection of the men do (it ranges from the poignantly mundane to the pathetically, and ominously, dominant), but Lucy remembers nothing, and earns enough for a sweet penthouse apartment.

And here's where the comparisons to Magic Mike come in--Lucy, baffingly, despite making major bank, does not quit her other jobs as a waitress, copy girl, or university research subject. (The latter requires her to be, ahem, orally penetrated by some sort of esophageal balloon.) The reason, I think, is a not-quite subtle indication to the audience to realize the work is basically the same. All of it requires Lucy to disassociate herself from her body because the jobs are so soul-crushingly repetitive (and/or physically unpleasant) and to disassociate herself from her mind because she doesn't need a brain to do any of it. Herbert Marcuse, with his theory of surplus repression, would have a field day with this movie. The late great Frankfurt school philosopher argued that the modern world had to repress the body over and above what was necessary for social development because if it didn't, we would all go freaking crazy over how unsatisfying and unappealing our jobs are. To translate this argument into the sphere of erotic freelance work, which is supposed to be about pleasure, is actually pretty interesting.

Also, much like Channing Tatum, it matters that Emily Browning has a beautiful body, and the camera does not refrain from lingering over it, naked and clothed, for a good 30% of the movie (ballpark). Which, of course, implicates the audience in her objectification, and possibly her exploitation. Though Claire, the icy madam, promises her clients they are "safe" in the room with Lucy because "no one can see," of course we can. But Lucy can't. Her inability to connect with the experience in any way begins to drive her mad, indicating that the less literal iterations of alienating work will have a similar outcome. Sleeping Beauty is a pretty clever and cutting economic critique in an erotic fantasy's lingerie.