Spring Break
Confessions of a Schizophrenic Mind
Fernando F. Croce
Senior Staff Writer
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There is an old joke about how God gave man a brain and a penis, but not enough blood to run both at the same time.
Everybody has an intellectual side as well as a libidinous side -- that much is universal. What distinguishes one person from the other is how much weight he or she gives to each side, or maybe how creatively the two can be tangled up.
For me, when it comes to reasons for watching movies, the spiritual and the fleshy don't so much exist side by side as they blur, continually leaking into one another. Part of me is always ready to drive down to a revival of Luchino Visconti's "La Terra Trema," while another part just wants to settle down with a video copy of "Spider Man" and peek through Kristen Dunst's wet blouse.
The two usually compromise and some sort of double-bill is arranged. Sometimes, however, the severe aesthete and the decadent hedonist in me argue into the night over the merits of a movie.
The following is a transcript from parts of the ongoing argument between Horny Fan Boy (A) and Serious Film Analyst (B).
A: Seen anything interesting lately?
B: Just caught Andrei Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia."
A: Oh boy.
B: Tarkovsky is difficult, but his stuff is incredibly beautiful. It's all about the mystery that his visual compositions have, and the moral consequences of his camera movements.
A: Uh-huh. Anything livelier?
B: Yeah. The DVD of "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne," the Robert Bresson flick.
A: You like suffering, don't you? Tarkovsky, Bresson...
B: ... and Mizoguchi, Antonioni, Dreyer, Ozu, Rivette, Angelopoulos. Yeah, I love all the so-called slow, boring directors. I don't need to have fireworks exploding in front of me every two seconds to be intellectually stimulated.
A: Fair enough. So you must have loved Gus Van Sant's "Gerry," which is just two guys walking in the desert for almost two hours.
B: Well...
A: Aha! You don't practice what you preach do you, Smarty Pants?
B: What have you seen that's so great?
A: I saw "Femme Fatale" for the fifth time last night.
B: The Brian De Palma movie?
A: No, the Rebecca Romijn-Stamos movie. That should have been called "One Thousand Ways to Look Up a Hot Chick's Skirt."
B: Is that a recommendation?
A: Oh hell yeah! The most likable thing about it is that De Palma doesn't hide his little-boy libido -- the movie is all about him beholding this uberslut in various states of undress.
B: Actually, I thought there was a lot more to it.
A: Maybe, but it's refreshing to see a movie that aims to satisfy bellow the bellybutton.
B: Is an attractive woman enough to make a movie a must-see?
A: Always has, always will be. Jean-Luc Godard once said that the art of film boils down to boys taking pictures of girls, and over the years I have acquired a personal treasury of movie crushes.
B: How about an example?
A: How about ten? Louise Brooks, Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Anna Karina, Gloria Grahame, Hanna Schygulla, Charlotte Rampling, Lena Olin, Julianne Moore and Emily Watson, just for starters. I will brave any clinker for them.
B: Doesn't sound very intellectual.
A: Well, you have your directors, I have my actresses.
B: Fine. Anything else?
A: Not much, I'm still recovering from Nicole Kidman having won the Best Actress Oscar for her Virginia Woolf bit in "The Hours." Nowadays it seems like all a beautiful actress has to do to win an acting award is to pretend to be plain and dowdy.
B: It worked for Grace Kelly in "The Country Girl."
A: And for Julia Roberts, and Hillary Swank, and Halle Berry. Whatever happened to roles that would accentuate an actress' natural assets, instead of dampening them?
B: I hear Charlize Theron is jumping on that bandwagon, and has already gained weight for her next movie.
A: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
B: We are getting off the subject here. What are we going to watch?
A: How about something with Eliza Dushku or Selma Blair? Those WB starlets are so eager to escape their wholesome TV images that they're ready to peel at the drop of a hat.
B: If we are going that route, why not something like "Revenge of the Nymphomaniac Catholic Schoolgirls From Hell"?
A: (grinning) Saaaay...
B: You can't live on chicks-trying-on-bikinis montages alone.
A: And you can't live on metaphorical camera movements alone.
B: Tell you what. I will look for expressive directorial purpose in your women-in-prison flick, and you can look for gratuitous shower scenes in my Swedish art film.
A: All right. Why should we limit ourselves to one or the other? After all, the cinema is large enough for both at the same time.
B: Amen to that.
