I love movies much more than I should. I find moments of greatness even in cheesy B movies. A few days ago I was watching Mona Lisa smile. which is not a good movie but has a moment that is worth the entire thing. In this scene, Betty Warren, the character played by Kirsten Dunst, is shooting angry insults to her “friend” Gysell Levy (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who I love) at the speed of a machine gun.
Betty’s world is falling apart. The perfect housewife life that she dreamt and obstinately built for herself is shattering, her husband of few months is already cheating on her, her icy mother sadistically denies any emotional support, and she has isolated herself behind a wall of pride and mean behavior. Gysell is the “bad girl,” sleeping around without apparently showing any shame for it, but her desperation is clearly showing up through the defiant surface. So, Betty is viciously attacking the easy target Gysell. Gysell at first tries to defend herself and attacks back. But suddenly, she sees through Betty’s anger and aggression and feels the absolute desperation behind the perfect and obnoxious surface. Gysell stops at mid-insult, gets close to Betty (for a moment you fear or hope she will punch her in the face), and hugs her.
Connection. When a movie manages to express honestly and powerfully the experience human connection or the need for it, I am hopelessly and lethally wounded.
I cry a lot at movies. It’s really annoying and kind of embarrassing. I’m such an easy target for sentimental clichés in movies. Sometimes I even cry listening to the news on NPR, when I drive to work in the morning (what an interesting view for bored morning commuters).
But there are some movies that hack straight into my soul through some kind of sentimental backdoor. They don’t just make me cry, they make me sob for hours after the end of the movie, and in the days following if I think of them. They lure me in with some laughs or some kind of hope or lightness, and/or some connection with my experience, so that I am completely open and vulnerable when they finally punch me right in the stomach and expose the total, desperate, naked need for human connection. Of course, there is some kind of harmonic resonance at work, so these movies might not do anything to you, even if you are emotionally vulnerable. For me, these are movies such as Edward Scissorhand, Amelie, Dancer in the dark, and Bianca (an Italian movie directed by Nanni Moretti, probably never distributed in the US). I am not even saying they are great movie (some of them are), they just have the power to dig a hole in my soul, like an alien probe.
Last night I watched another of such movies, Peter Del Monte’s Compagna di viaggio (translated in English as “Traveling companion”). The protagonist is Cora [Asia Argento] another defiant and apparently independent and free character, hiding a lot of raw and unresolved pain that surfaces as restlessness, anger, and self-destructive behavior. The movie has a light and sweet tone at the beginning, but its mood becomes much darker at the end. I was reading the (two) reviews on imdb.com and I realized how Cora’s behavior might leave the viewer puzzled. I didn’t need any lengthy and didactic explanations to get it; everything was brutally clear at a physiological gut level. I knew exactly how Cora felt when she jumped from the bridge or slept with men even when the disgust made her (literally) puke. Maybe I can understand Cora because I was raised in Rome, had a depressed mother, had problems establishing deep and reliable human connections, and learned the rules of sexual social interactions in Italy. Or because I just know, first hand, how people sometimes act up when they feel lost and isolated.