It's been a few days since I caught Sarah Polley's
Take This Waltz, and I finally figured out how to describe the plot. It's
Twilight for CBC listeners! Seriously, Michelle Williams' Margot - Toronto cred proved by her
Pages tote bag - is torn between nice guy
werewolf cookbook writer
Jacob Lou, and the dangerously sexy
vampire rickshaw artist
Edward Daniel. To be fair to Polley,
Waltz does have moments of genuine emotional honesty where
Twilight has troubling gender politics, but there was still a main character with problems she would prefer not to solve. So the slow motion and golden lighting started to feel a little much. As endearing as Michelle Williams can be, my sympathy to any character who will gain mournfully into an oven door while sweating buckets is minimal.
Fellow Torontonians might appreciate spotting beer bottles from local breweries, or triangulating the location of Margot and Lou's apartment using local cafés and cinemas for guidance. My guess is Little Portugal.
2 comments:
I think you're being a little harsh here. We're used to seeing movies where characters have everything figured out, or, conversely, movies where characters, especially women, can't get their shit together (i.e. Bridesmaids).
I thought it was refreshing to see a movie that deals with the complexity and difficulty of making a decision. I don't think Margot was necessarily indecisive; I think she knew what she wanted, but she didn't know how to go for it without causing a great deal of pain to herself and her husband. So in that respect, Take This Waltz was almost a coming to consciousness film, and about recognizing that what we want or need to do may be painful.
Also, to disparage this movie by comparing it to the Twilight series negates the fact that those books may have fulfilled a similar function for their teenage readers: how do we do what is right for ourselves, even when our actions hurt other people? Sure, those books aren't written particularly well, but they do allow a certain audience to recognize the inherent humanity of their desires--meaning that we are not alone in our struggles to make complicated decisions.
The oven scene was definitely a bit much. It was summer! In Toronto! Who bakes muffins during a heat wave?!
But I liked the movie. Mostly the awkward, sexual tension-filled scrambler scene set to "Video Killed the Radio Star." Drunk Sarah Silverman was pretty priceless too.
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