Interlude

It's a million degrees and I'm in the city again, fixing up some deal from a Swiss client with the Perth Mint.

The Gold Price is running hard, and the person's IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is not 'clicking' the list of numbers the Mint holds that it is allowed to deal with - except it is UBS and they deal with a large number of those clients.

It's hot out there.

That's not Kidman but it's like
Kidman (kinda was).

I have some time to 'waste' and I don't want to leave the place right now and lo and behold, right in front of me is the Palace Cinema Complex, in the heart of the city and that place is air-conditioned to the max.

I'm going in there!

What's on? Now that's going to be a problem because I seriously detest modern movies and I've already seen the only one doing the rounds that is any good as far as I'm concerned (Widow Clicquot).

Jeeezus. The only thing on is this Kidman 'click bait-y' thing - Babygirl.

I've read no reviews and I'm not going to.

So anyway I'm going to watch it now and I can walk out if I can't stand it (which is what I'm expecting).

Movie starts and I've gone through my 'medium' Fanta or whatever thing it is that it is supposed to be, from the actual soda fountain.

The start seems cringe-y to me. The opening 'orgasm' scene looks faked (but don't make a hasty judgment here; I'll tell you why in a minute as you 'get' what this is about).

Frankly although I don't think most other people are going to say this about it but the start scenes are slightly unpleasant to me - the characters are not empathetic. At least I don't think they are.

I notice this kid actor Esther Rose McGregor, right away out of the blocks is a quality item; delivery outstanding, a small sentence and steals everything from big name actors Banderas and Kidman.

There's one scene where the 
guy sends Kidman a glass
of milk - and she drinks it.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to
be drinking a 'glass of milk'
that I sent anyone!
LOL

This is a very difficult movie, very hard to direct, very difficult to perform by the actors - I realize they are doing a stellar job though...

This is a severely flawed movie but only in the perfectly characteristic way that all modern modern movies are flawed: they need to get you over the 'propositional' gap - the disbelief that would attend a real-life situation but which you must suspend because they want to tell you a story and they have no time to tell it. (Nobody has any time these days).

One of the lines in the movie that occurs twice is when Kidman's character tells this 'intern' that he has 'seven minutes' of the ten scheduled because she has no time.

She is playing the character that is the CEO I think of some huge and tremendously successful robotic warehouse technology corporation whose whole objective is to 'liberate people using AI and robots in order to give people back time.'

LOL

Was a good line and a bright idea.

Unlike in past days, movies now are about sex and 'relationships' (usually problematic ones) whereas previously they were about murders and spying and only incidentally with the 'spice' of adult themes thrown in over the meat and potatoes.

And unlike Widow Clicquot, this remains a 'difficult' movie virtually all the way through although I begin to realize this is being carried by the staff (the actors) and Kidman should win awards for this and so should the kid.

The male protagonist who is not the husband (the husband is played by Banderas) is not good, but he is authentic in the portrayal of a 'contemporary' concept about some kind of post-modernista 'dominant.' As far as the directing and the intent of the movie, maybe it's better that he is not at all a sympathetic character; the movie might not make as much sense if he were.

I know this is feeling to me like a re-make of in part Demi Moore and Michael Douglas/Donald Sutherland's 'Disclosure' and something else that I can't place - but the ending lines are definitely things I have heard before. But it does have a contemporary twist that has to do with lots of nuanced things.

What ze actual f*! Oo iz zis guy Bill Smith?
I'm sure ah dohn no 'im...
U noh 'im, Bill?
You see 'im somewhere before
maybe?
'e look a bit familiar to me.

It's a much better movie than I was expecting.

In these pages here we have been talking about solutions not dysfunction without resolution.

You can't say I have no sense of humor because hey, I went to see this flick, and I really did enjoy (in a sense I enjoyed it...) it.

The basic theme is that (some, certainly not the husband played by Banderas) humans are tied to their deep core physical feelings, their senses - you could say it is a very sensual move, that is true enough - and there is no spirituality that can resolve anything after that.

An interesting line in the film delivered by Kidman is: 'you're confusing morality and ambition.'

I find that an interesting thought.

It's juvenile but it's still a thing that people 'act out' on.

And then there is a sort of movie-land resolution and it quite works and then all of a sudden, when taken as a whole, the whole thing works and some ideas revisited at the end dove-tail back to the start and you realize things were not exactly, necessarily as they seemed when you saw the opening scenes.

The husband is a successful stage director and producer and he was working on a season of the Ibsen play 'Hedda Gabler' and there you also have this dark(-er, slightly darker than it already is!) theme of suicide and what could lead people to do that.

Nobody commits suicide in the movie.

Everyone's quite rich and everyone's very successful and of course they seem to have time to f* up their lives but really, at the same time they have no mindset that can handle what is being presented to the viewer as this 'deep, dark. innate,' psychology thing that (some) humans have that make them interesting to all of us lurid voyeurs.

Nobody 'flies away on the 
nightflight' in this movie...

LOL

I didn't think Kidman was capable of doing this role at this time -, I did think she was maybe a bit 'past it' but then, that is not actually the character (the one I was expecting) she is playing here - she is openly playing an older person; a much older person. McGregor tells her (she is the daughter) that she 'looks like Grandma' and Kidman's character never blinks at it, not one time.

There are a few 'modernistic' gender aspects present (with the daughter) but the movie is not preachy in any way at all. Which is different to what you get everywhere now.

It's a good movie, it's a very valid set of ideas in there and people deserve to get awards for this - I think it would have been very difficult for people to act in and the director and producer to make properly. But they do it.

It resolves nothing of course. 

We resolve stuff in here.

...I leave the cinema, it's still a million degrees outside in broad daylight, and so hot that I am not even hungry.

The reality is Kidman is getting richer but she is not getting any younger.

I am getting younger.

LOL

Fact.

It's partly a time-dilation thing but then at some point...

You know the rest of the story or at least by now you should do.

I'm not going away anywhere yet though so don't worry. There is a lot more 'delivery' to achieve here. As well as a lot more monkey business.