Stuart Murdoch
2014
111 minutes
This is another film you're watching on the recommendation of a hostess who briefly worked at a bar you like to go to. The woman who recommended it to you was a bit quirky and odd and very friendly. You had a few good conversations with her that usually ended with her expressing the need to go home, smoke a bowl, and take her cat for a walk. Literally. She apparently had a harness she would put her cat on and take him for short walks around the neighborhood so he could safely do his business outside. He wanted to be an outdoor cat, but this was very unsafe in your neighborhood, so he settled for grudgingly wearing the gear and taking advantage of the bit of freedom he was allowed by his owner. You found this very amusing. She seemed insteresting and pleasant to talk to, if a bit strange, but she was suddenly let go under mysterious and somewhat sordid circumstances before you could talk much more to her. Since you were actively looking for new movies to watch, she suggested this film--a 2014 musical/romance written and directed by the guy from the band Belle and Sebastian, who had an album from 2009 of the same name.
This movie stars Emily Browning along with some dweeby likeable guy who looks like he would be the lead singer of a sad bastards band from the 2000s. It also co-stars Hannah Murray from Game of Thrones who played the chubby guy's supposedly-homely girlfriend. Hannah Murray happens to be a model in real life but is regarded as plain and funny looking by bourgeois American audiences who find anyone without perfectly straight mandatory-braces identical smiles to be a grotesque monster worthy of pity and scorn. The exception to this, of course, being a certain breed of manipulative pick-up artists who would find this a perfect tool to "neg" on the poor girl and let her know she'd actually be kind of pretty if she didn't have fucked-up hillbilly teeth and then swoop around to collect on the self-esteem deficit they had created. The hostess gushes that Hannah Murray's character is "adorable" in this film, which is actually pretty accurate.
For better or worse, this is like watching a Belle and Sebastian video as a full length film. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that this is not a film you would have found or given a chance yourself if someone hadn't suggested it to you and if you hadn't vowed to give other people's suggestions an honest chance. This makes you all the more glad for watching it. The woman who recommended it to you loves the soundtrack in a way that you merely like. She told you she would throw this movie on for background music while relaxing or doing chores. It's atmospheric and re-watchable in that way. You tend to approach movies very differently. Re-watching a film often feels like a waste of time to you, time you could have spent doing something else and having a new experience. You have a tendency to sink your teeth into a movie, suck as hard as you can on it until a withered husk is all that remains, and then discard it until you may later have some very good reason to come back for a reviewing of it because you've watched something else in the meantime to compare to it. You try not to go through life only repeating the experiences you enjoy, but this isn't always the best strategy.
You will only have one more chance to discuss this beloved movie with the odd woman who recommended it to you, at least for the immediate future, before her dramatic and unexpected firing makes this unlikely. Perhaps this isn't so unpredictable for someone whose favorite film from ten or fifteen years ago starts with a young woman getting discharged from a mental hospital, but no judgment here. You will agree that the soundtrack is pleasant and it's nice to see a low-key story about three mostly-just-friends making music together. You'll end up recommending The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in return to her, which she'll write down. And later you'll forget her name altogether. For a moment though it's good to try to see something through a stranger's eyes.
Time to choose something different: