Your sincerity is funny.

The Rules of The Game (Renoir, 1939)

Our love is honest, and lovely, with the tenderness of a dull blade. What grace we display, hand in hand, our vacant smiles, and uncaring glances from the corners of our eyes. Your body covered in silk, oh what a fantastic sight , like a drugstore postcard. I admire you for loving my flaws. Loneliness and desperation is without judgment, but yours is done with conviction. Our love is  like a dangling conversation, swinging between the separate beds of my spouse and I.

We will fulfill our love’s yearnings soon. We will test the long wonderment of the grass being greener, you and I, pushing further into the dark. My love, we will do our best to muffle our laughter in the face of convention, but our mouths will burst and spit like devious children. What great fun this will be, our clever ruse becoming real, but for now I am famished. Shall we go for lunch?

Yes, Victor, there is a Santa Claus.

Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)

The garden has grown green and full of regret. It’s full of ripened fruit, bitter with the taste of hollowed gestures, and the cold hands of phony love. On the lazy footpaths winding into the unseen corners of the yard is a frail and disturbed figure, shaken by the lashing of tongues, his skin hardening like a shell.  He’ll grow to become a faceless wrinkle of a man, emptied of the whirling sands of a soul.

But in the blue eyes of a ghostly frolic somewhere in his past, written in the curled ivy of wild hair brushed from her cheek, there are words, blurred from the dusty eyes of a dying man. But the only word, clear through a frustrated squint is that of “redemption”.

The Forsaken Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966)

My name on the course parchment paper is meaningless before the word of god, my king. But how I hate him, the lounging beast who has forsaken me so. He has thrown me naked to the cold hand of winter, plague, and cruelties of men, to test a faith, or weaken it? Through a gauntlet I wander. I will not be beaten. I will spite my lord, and hate him through my love, through images splashed across walls, my blind and foolish faith, clouds my eyes. Though my feet stay frozen in the muck of his earth, I will not bend to a will, unfaithful to his word. I will not be  subject. I will only follow. My spite, my fury in vivid color will fade long after my life has expired, and the eyes of so many will know my defiance.

You’re going to break my heart, aren’t you?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been drawn to the girls that were a little unstable, troubled if you will. I guess I’ve always been bored with the nice, emotionally stable woman, and often I’ve paid a price for this attraction. The women I’m drawn too in film are no different.

This is a list of my 10 favorite emotionally disturbed, troubled, and wounded female characters, woman whom I’d more than likely fall for, and wind up being thrown to the wolves. Please forgive me for taking personal license in assuming what a relationship would be with them.

10. Brigitte Bardot as Camille Javal in Contempt (Godard, 1963)

Camille and I would be very happy together, until I foolishly allowed her to spend some time with a sleazy associate of mine. Feeling betrayed, she would decide she no longer loved me, without telling me why, then she’d spitefully leave me for the sleazy associate.

9. Gena Rowlands as Jeannie Rapp in Faces (Cassavetes, 1968)

Jeannie would more than likely seek me out in some seedy bar, and we’d hit it off nicely. She’d take me home and tell me everything I wanted to hear with great sincerity, and I would tell her all the sweet things she needed to hear as well. But in the morning, she’d be overcome with remorse in remembering what she was, as she saw me to the door.

8. Shirley Maclaine as Fran Kubelik in The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)

Fran might be the only woman on this list that I would probably end up being happy with, but that is after a myriad of obstacles to get through, most notably being her on again off again relationship with a married man, and a failed suicide attempt.

7. Lynn Carlin as Maria Forst in Faces (Cassavetes, 1968)

Despite my best instincts I would pursue Maria. Eventually, she would reluctantly give into my advances, before breaking down with guilt over her betrayal of her loveless marriage. Then her crazy and unhappy husband would come home.

6. Barbara Stanwyck as Lily Powers in Baby Face (Green, 1933)

My relationship with Lily would be quite nice. We would get along just fine, and be very happy together, until my bank account was empty, and she was sleeping with my boss.

5. Jeanne Moreau as Catherine in Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962)

This would be the picture of a perfect relationship. Until Catherine decided she loved my best friend, and then decided she didn’t, and then decided she loved another guy, but didn’t really love him but she just liked the idea of him loving her, and then decided she loved my best friend again, and decided she didn’t, and then decided…

4. Bibi Andersson as Alma in Persona (Bergman, 1966)

Alma’s love would begin to blossom into a strange obsession. So consumed with me she would begin to mistake herself for her lover. Her jealousy, obsession, and loss of self would send her into a mad tailspin. But she is really pretty, and she gets along well with my friends, so I think I’ll stick it out with her.

3. Jean Seberg as Patricia Franchini in Breathless (Godard, 1960)

After a long courtship, and a few lucky flings Patricia would finally decide to be with me. But soon my rebellious ways and bad boy antics would cause her to question her decision. Eventually, she would reluctantly decide she didn’t love me, and curse herself for her taste in men.

2. Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus (Powell and Pressburger, 1947)

Nothing good can ever come out of a young woman abandoning her devotion for god and throwing herself at a man. Sister Ruth is a very jealous and unstable woman who seems capable of anything in order to feed her wants and desires. Would I be foolish enough to be lured by her?

1. Nastassja Kinski as Jane Henderson in Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984)

A heartbroken woman, haunted by ghosts of her past. Her’s is a fleeting affection like a shadow or a whisper.

The Little Lies of Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

All your little words flicker like candlelight as they escape your mouth. You speak lowly, and wish me a different man, almost unhuman, a figure, carved of soap wood, broken free from your fairytale dreams on your starched feather bed. What wonderful performances I conduct with rapture and pomp for you, this melancholy opera you so use to mask my guile and lurid wonders from your eyes. Some day you will let me slip like fading light into the darkness, and tip-toe silently back into the golden well of hollowness, where every intention wears a face. But in casual glances at the smudges of their character, you’ll hesitate and wish me there.

After Hours, or how I learned to stop worrying and tumble down the rabbit hole.

After Hours (Scorsese, 1985)

You’ve got a lot to do today, but why not let it wait a while? Why not ignore your instincts, and get angry with yourself? Take a fresh look at your reflection, and tell someone you’ve never met how much you’ve always loved them. Because the regrets that are blurry day dreams in your wood-paneled office, can only sustain your work week for so long. Soon your fingers twitch uncontrollably, and you grit your teeth, bracing for an anxiety you’ve waited so long for. You feel at home in a dizzy confusion, never certain of the lies people unfurl, and cover your ears in case they offer the truth. You try to look away from the beauty of women surrendered to their pain as they clench you so tightly. And you wonder, with the taste of fear salting your lips “have I been dreaming for so long?”

Where is our Mr. Baxter?

The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)

So tired are the meek and wearied tatters of love. Broken down and built again like wooden blocks. The edges worn smooth from so many tumbles. Lies warm our chests like wine, allowing us to dizzyly drift through one fragrant night after another. And one wonders, in a spinning dream with eyes half opened “If I were awake, would I be such a fool?’ But the warm body beside us gently rocks us to sleep, with the best impression of a smile, and sincere word.

Where is our Mr. Baxter? The white collared punching bag so easy to please, the rambling wreck of a sweet man tongue-tied gushing over the wounded bird before him. Where is he to nurse all of us through our failures, to fumble over his own two feet to catch us when we stumble? Where is he, and his awkward honesty?

Help support Von Samual and his friends.

Just sign in and give us some reviews.

 

http://www.massify.com/partnerships/killerfilms/onehotel/concept/entry/killedforcomedy

Zombieland, the heartbreak

Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009)

It’s all a last chance romance on parquet floors, swirling dresses made of green. A fool, you were lied to again, and now you crumble to the floor, the reflection of the spotlight off the chrome of the band is your halo, the death of a favor lingering at your feet. Watch her spin in the black dress that hung from her door for so long. You wondered why she had been saving it for this moment as you slip unseen behind the crowd.

Fleeting musings on The Lawnmower Man and a girl named Paulina

Lawnmower Man (Leonard, 1992)

You dangle before me, ghostly, cheeks like cherry blossoms. Let me tangle in your fingers like thread, so nervously you can spin, and pass over your lips. In a blue lit room, on an uncomfortable bed, you can laugh at your skirt being too high, the fantasies that were drawn like blood from a vein at the sight of your skin. Oh, you tease me, your kisses always forced, yet your smile seems so free and made of stone. I wonder what dreams you dream when you so carelessly drop my name in reference to the night before. Who gives me the slightest thought when you let them close to you? I wonder if they think you smell like candy too.

Oh, and The Lawnmower Man is pretty good, much better than I remember it being. In this day and age of communication and technology I found it to be much more relevant now than at the time of its release.