Dispatches from the Deep (September 16 - 22, 2024)
Welcome to the Lesbian Sex Mafia
I’m in New York right now, a city I don’t like but find myself in all the time for various reasons. The words this week are Lemuria1 and maudlin.2 There’s lots to report on this week, so let’s get into it.
The only Internet reading worth sharing this week was this article about how Maggie Cheung retired from making movies and everyone is sad about it except her. Like most normal people with good taste, every movie I’ve seen her in has been a 5-star film. She’s one of the greatest to ever do it. And in this article, you see these names of people who don’t just work in the film industry but are true artists (e.g., Tilda Swinton). That is to say, the genuine article—the kinds of artists for whom film is a transcendental medium.
At one point, her ex-husband Olivier Assayas is like “I kept on telling her, ‘Maggie, look at the French star system. Look at Isabelle Huppert, look at Catherine Deneuve, look at Fanny Ardant. They are the major movie stars in France, and they are doing some of their best work and no, they are not 25. There's life beyond, the world has changed, acknowledge it, give it a chance.’” Well, if September 2024’s hottest release, The Substance, is any indication, the French are absolutely fucking insane when it comes to older actresses, so I think Cheung got out at the right time. More on that later.
Fresh Kill (1994, Shu Lea Cheang)
When I got into New York on Thursday night, I wanted to watch either a comfort movie featuring New York (Michael Clayton, 2007) or a New York movie about how it’s terrible to live here (Fresh Kill, 1994). Since Michael Clayton is more of a movie to watch with Alice when we both need a comfort movie, I opted for Fresh Kill. It’s a movie with a ton of ideas that felt totally overwhelming the first time I saw it, but felt more manageable this time. It follows a pair of lesbians and their friends and family in the midst of an ecological disaster that’s turning the cats green and making things disappear. It’s a movie about how people who work in finance speak in tongues and intentionally destroy the world for profit. And also about how Staten Island used to have the world’s biggest dump (not anymore, it’s a park now). It’s like if the Amy Poehler character in Southland Tales was played 100% earnestly and got a whole movie for herself. I love it, and I will need probably one or two more watches to really “get” it, but then I will probably never watch it ever again.
Like Nothing Happened (2003, Ryûske Hamaguchi); Thirdworld (1997, Apichatpong Weerasethakul); and Xiao Wu [Pickpocket] (1997, Jia Zhangke)
Like Nothing Happened is Hamaguchi’s student film about an annoying guy who can’t stop being mean to his friends and gambling on horses. Thirdworld is about something, but I don’t really remember what because I kept falling asleep, which is a common experience for me with Apichatpong’s work. And Xiao Wu, Jia’s first feature, is about a guy who pickpockets, even though all his other pickpocket friends do other things with their lives now. I’m putting these three films together because I watched them all for the same reason, which is that they’re all early or first works by prolific and accomplished filmmakers. As a result, the seams of the film are quite obvious, but not in the way that they’re obvious in, say, The VelociPastor (2017).3 Each of these directors is deliberate with his choices, even as he must make do with limited resources, and those choices become more obvious because of the limited resources. For instance, the sound design elements are clearer, as I can see and hear that none of the sound is recorded live, and so I’m primed to pay attention to how a director is using the sound of traffic, background dialogue, or voice-over to create an effect. It’s been a fun exercise, and one I intend to keep up.
The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat)
Have you heard? There has been a slight misuse of The Substance. This is a movie about how taking Shrek Ozempic is a Faustian bargain that’ll put you into the 2001: A Space Odyssey star gate sequence blender that turns you into a Cronenberg monstrosity. Because the French are very stupid and love the truly next-level misogyny they’re cooking up in the “New French Extremity” movement, this won Best Screenplay at Cannes this year. As a woman who famously also underwent a stupendously invasive feminizing medical procedure, I felt a lot of sympathy for Demi Moore. That is, until I learned she is not actually 5’11,4 after which I feel like I am more sympathetic towards Margaret Qualley (5’8) karate kicking her through a glass table. In another twist, I’ve learned Margaret Qualley is married to Jack Antanoff, who I dislike on principle, but did work on my second favorite Lana Del Rey album, Norman Fucking Rockwell. I’m not sure how to integrate this knowledge into my feelings about The Substance, but will report back if I think of anything.
Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021, Sally Rooney)
As meaning totally melted away during the pandemic (remember that?), postmodern anxiety festered, mutating into a special kind of depression. This depression is the core of Sally Rooney’s 2021 novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You. I’ve heard mixed things from friends about this one, but I will be the brave counterculturista who says it’s good. Liking Sally Rooney is one of my most millennial qualities. Unfortunately, all her books come to me at exactly the right age, written in moments that map onto my own life with ease. After reading one of the worst books of all time (Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us), it was also very refreshing to read something preoccupied with things I’m also into: being an idle communist, theorizing about mid sex, managing anorexia, and loving people who smoke cigarettes. Some late-twenties women, Eileen and Alice, have sex (mid and otherwise) with hot guys and no one really knows where life is headed. It’s one half epistolary, in emails between the two women, and one half filmic, in a third-person non-omniscient narrator operating from the perspective of a film camera. I’m a great fan of the epistolary novel, and the film style was a technique I found pleasantly unexpected in prose. That earns it a perfect score of 8/10. Now, onto Intermezzo!
New Mistakes (2024, Clement Goldberg) Launch Event
On Friday, I went to a book launch for a book I’d never heard by an author I’d never heard of published by a small queer press I’d never heard of. This, of course, was all because Torrey Peters was in conversation with that author and I really wanted her to sign my beat-up copy of Detransition, Baby. She did! I was only a little (extremely) awkward around her and gave a very bizarre answer to the question “are you a writer.” However, we talked about fountain pens and she said it was a pleasure to meet me, so I count it as a big win.
Luckily, that wasn’t the only thing that happened. The person working the front desk took one look at me and asked “lesbian sex mafia?” To which I replied, hesitantly, “yes?” It turns out that was the name of a different event, but they did help me find the book launch. Goldberg is a transmasc who moved up to Vermont from the Bay Area and does a ton of shrooms. They’re really into UFOs and want all the cool people to be receptive when UFOs appear because otherwise, the human ambassador to the stars is going to be Marco Rubio. Also, cats can communicate telepathically in the book. Needless to say, I had to buy a copy, and got to have a quick chat with them about Lemuria (see above and below), which they somehow incorporated into the story as a metaphor for queer life. I will let you all know what that’s about when I read it.
Elden Ring
I’ve mostly been puttering around the DLC, trying to collect enough “Scadutree Fragments”5 in order to not get two-shot by basic enemies. The DLC map is very beautiful, but there’s a ridiculous chromatic aberration filter everywhere that it’s sort of hurting my eyes. This has made it unpleasant to play in long stretches, which is how I had been playing the main game. While I’m slowly working through that, I’m also playing Balatro, a gambling addiction goon cave simulator for female jokers. I’m having so much fun!
Oh, Mary! (2024, Cole Escola)
The last time I went to see a play on Broadway was for Come From Away the better part of a decade ago. Come From Away is a musical about how some (38, according to the Wikipedia page) of the planes that got diverted on 9/11 landed in a small town in Newfoundland and everybody aboard learned a little bit about coming together during hard times. If this sounds like premise that’s somehow even more insane than The Substance, you’re on the right track. At one point, “a Muslim traveler, faced with increasing prejudice from his fellow passengers, undergoes a humiliating strip search prior to boarding.” This moment occurs during the joyous climax. So yah, it’s terrible. This musical, coupled with Hamilton, which I did not see, has formed the majority of my opinion on Broadway for many years.
How surprising it was, then, to learn about Broadway’s hottest new one-they drag play, Oh, Mary! Cole Escola plays Mary Todd Lincoln, the alcoholic wife to a gay guy president whose kept her under lock and key in the White House. She dreams of a triumphant return to the stage as a cabaret performer (we learn this is where she actually met Abraham, played by the hot Mr. Darcy character from Fire Island and the gay law student’s hacker boyfriend from HTGAWM.), despite the machinations of her gay husband and her ice-cream-fetish-having companion/babysitter. Then, she meets a sexy, down-on-his-luck actor named John Wilkes Booth, whose been hired to give her acting lessons. They fall in love and plan to run away together to “Canada,”6 but alas, JWB is also gay, so Mary Todd must take matters into her own hands in order to put on the most fabulous cabaret medley this side of the Potomac River. There’s a lot of physical comedy and lots of jokes about gay, and you get a huge audience laugh every thirty seconds or so. I won’t say it ~restored my faith~ in Broadway, but it certainly was a treat to watch a star-making performance from one of today’s preeminent non-binaries.
Dahomey (2024, Mati Diop) & Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971, Robert Bresson)
Wrapping up with New York Film Festival news: I will be back in New York next week because I am a quirky girl who loves the movies and am willing to take a trip up here to watch two movies in a day. As an Amtrak frequent traveller on exactly one route, I have developed a robust outline of the trip. I know the stops and their relative distances from one another and I recognize the skylines of different cities. I count Wilmington, Delaware as the best spot to see the work of skilled graffiti artists, but know there’s plenty on bridge underpasses, the walls of buildings and other things, train cars that don’t move very much, and the various metal structures housing electrical equipment along the way. But there’s really only one thing I love—the multiple crossings of the Chesapeake Bay. There’s bridge crossings, of course, but what I’m talking about is the low crossings where the train is only a few feet from the water. When I was a rower (lol), placidity of water was the virtue I most valued. However, as evidenced by these crossings, I don’t think too much of that anymore. When the water has a bit of chop to it, the sunlight glitters brilliantly as the train moves past. So basically, it’s a good thing to be taking four trips on the Northeast Regional in ten days.
Avid readers of Dirt Blue will recall my excitement about Dahomey. It’s going to be great, Mati Diop is a great genius of film, let’s hate those French, etc. Not too much French hate, though, because I get to close the loop on a lovely poem by Robert Creeley about Bresson’s filmography with a 4K restoration of the one that isn’t Lancelot of the Lake. It’s restored by Éclair, which means it’s going to be extremely blue, but that’s fine because I already imagine Paris at night as blue.
Thanks for reading, see you next week!
xoxo,
Daniela
Lemuria (n.): A hypothetical continent stretching from Africa to Southeast Asia, formerly supposed to have existed in the Jurassic period.
Maudlin (adj.):
1.a. † Given to tears, lachrymose. Obsolete.
1.b. Applied to eyes, tears, etc. (esp. in later use coloured by senses 2 and 3). Also figurative.
2. Having reached the stage of drunkenness characterized by tearful sentimentality and effusive displays of affection; characteristic of (the behaviour of) someone who has reached this stage. Also † to drink maudlin (obsolete).
3. Characterized by shallow sentimentality; mawkishly emotional; weakly sentimental.
One of the worst movies of all time. I wish I could go back in time and make whoever gave the director $36,000 give it to me instead.
I was thinking of Brooke Shields, who might even be 6’ and/or 5’10.5.
Scattered? Shadow? Get it??? This game is like 50% squishing together words like this.
Mary Todd insists she looked it up and confirmed that Canada is a real place, but I took a look at the evidence and simply do not believe that there’s a more British America above Vermont.