Chanel. Coco Chanel.

I never really understood why people insist separating a celebrity’s name and last name. What is “Coco before Chanel” supposed to mean? The woman is a person! If we start partitioning peoples’ names we cause mental conflict to everyone. Except for Ms. Chanel of course, she’s already dead...

Anne Fontaine had this astonishing and super original idea - never happened before - to present us the life and times of an important modern personality before the personality becomes important. So she director fulfills her duty towards all those girls that are complete ignorants of Chanel’s legend, that is to tell them about Coco.

The plot is set in 1893, when the little young Coco lives in an orphanage central France waiting her father with her sister Andrienne. Later, we see them in 1908 Moulin, singing in a decadent cabaret and building their “public relations”.

Just upon the nip before Coco hits a great career as a singer in a duet, her sister decides to marry Baron Balsan - power is sweet - and she’s left high and dry with her dreams. Coco’s ambitious nature however drives her to the luxurious headquarters of super rich Etienne Balsan.

She starts dressing like a man and consciously  acts against every social convention. She’s always serious holding a look as if her pants feel too tight. She’s generally a streak of negation. Well, ok, she’s been poor, downtrodden, miserable but we really don’t need to have the same.

In Balsan’s house, Coco learns about great love. His name is Arthur Capel, or simply Boy. She falls in deep love with him, he falls too, and they address each other in courtesy plural... I’d be very curious to see what kind of love this is. I mean, during the time they relentlessly fuck would he say “Oh, I can undress you so effortlessly”...  Ye, get her some tea and then dance a waltz as well you spazzing geek!

Coco’s affair with Boy disturbs Balsan, who eventually remembers his love-like feelings for Gabrielle Coco Chanel and wants desperately to keep her in his tower forever and ever. Dear Balsan, a lady Chanel can get over the fact you’re old, loser in bed, have badly dyed hair and a silly obsession with horse racing, but she’s never gonna forgive that unsightly awful floral robe in which you hang around at home. Show some mercy!

And finally at the end we naturally realize we haven’t seen not even once Audrey’s teeth. Laugh a bit woman! You’re about to be fabulously rich; get rid of your misery!

Without the slightest narrative climax, somewhere in Paris, Coco becomes Chanel.

A piece of advice to those girls who’d want to play Chanel’s style, either as Coco or as Gabrielle. You can only be a small fish in a small pond!

PS.: Miss perfume did something really useful by having her hair cut somewhen in the end of the movie.

 

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Fancy a magic music box?

His name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, but people call him Oz. Despite this intimidating twisted name, Oz is a total fail of a wizard. He’s so desperate that he can barely hide his incompetence in defining his professional orientation.

Even though magic doesn’t like him, it doesn’t mean pretty girls don’t either. In fact they fall for him quite easily after a bunch of whimsy and romantic babbling. Not a very good way for boys to learn how to hit on girls through modern Disney movies. Music boxes don’t exactly seduce women today so well.
Anyway. Something extraordinary happens in Oz’s life. During one of his fail tours, some macho man, boyfriend of a whining clown woman decides out of jealousy to smash Oz’s face for giving her a music box. Just when that bald jock was within a hair of beating the hell out of Oz, our wizard manages to escape on a balloon and reach the Land of Oz... oh yes, apart from his nickname it’s also a place somewhere on the planet or elsewhere.




In Oz-land then, people have a hard time coping with life. Good witches are at war with the bad witches and the population lives in torment and disarray. Oz’s visit looked like Obama’s coming to the US for many Americans!

Naturally, Oz’s daily stuff remains the same. He lies that he’s a wizard to become a king, he gives away music boxes that allegedly belonged to his grandma and generally peddling his charm. Ah, men... They don’t change, do they. The worst is every girl believes him! Witches my ass!

Theodora and Evanora are sisters, queens and witches simultaneously. Too much, no? Anyway - for starters they show up to Oz as the “good guys” (or girls) and assign him to defeat the bad queen of the dark creepy woods. But as soon as he and his butler head towards there, they reach a wretched village that’s got teapots for houses and porcelain dolls for residents... So that’s what folklore means! In a teapot they find a crying doll with a broken leg. Oz fixes it with glue - don’t do this at home! - and she explains to him that the freaks raided their pottery the night before. In order to convince him to take her with him she starts screaming, flopping and grabbing his legs.. Women!

After Oz and his monkey companion get deep in the woods they discover that the supposedly “bad queen” is actually the good one and that the witch sisters are the evil ones. Oscar level plot... Meanwhile, the ex-villain now good witch Glenda, used to be Oz’s girlfriend before he arrives in Oz and she doesn’t know it. This is the supernatural background of the film...

Oz and Glinda fall in love, to the witches’ bitterness. So the latter decide to take revenge by devouring some weird apples that make them even more evil. I eat apples for many years but I haven’t seen any change in behaviour or appearance.. What’s wrong with them? In fact Theodora, who is supposed to be half-evil, gets a facelift looking like a post-office clerk just before work knock-off.

And now we have the expected battle between good and evil. The good guys have no army - that’s why they are good.. They are dwarves, musicians, porcelain peeps, artists generally and all expect the wizard to do the job. In the end, every nation deserves its choices....

And the battle begins. I mean, this battle couldn’t be more gay - no offense to gays. The witches fight flying and wearing their dresses. Oz pretends to be a wizard with the help of visual effects made by dwarves. The sisters also think that he is actually a wizard and are somehow afraid; beneath them the people staring right and left, once hailing and once whining. Of course, the good guys win, so boring. Could for once a director to spare the villains and let them win? Some realism please. It’s to be done since the last session of Rocky Balboa...

And they lived happily ever after...


Dear Glinda, I tell you. He’s gonna cheat on you some day!


Other than that, a good film for kids, despite Disney can do and has done better.

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Mommy, you rock!

A father and husband murders his wife and takes away his two little daughters, Victoria and Lilly. In a very brilliant state of mind, he drives his Mercedes as fast as there's no tomorrow on a road full of snow along a cliff.

Naturally he walks out of the overturned car with a few bruises, as the accident is just an early directional trick to trigger suspense and drama. Deep in the woods the loving father finds shelter in an abandoned house, with ghostly feng-shui. Something spooky there and apparently more caring for the kids decides to get rid of the Boogey-Daddy before he gets rid of his daughters. 

Five years later Victoria and Lilly are found exactly where they were left, how convenient!, by their uncle. Lukas is to take custody of the girls, along with his girlfriend Annabel. Notably, Annabel is a rock fan, has a tattoo, probably worships Mick Jagger and close people call her "dude".

Both girls seem to go mental as they live with Lukas and Annabel (who wouldn't?!), acting like stars in a documentary on lion breeding. They walk at four, rarely speak, like to have dilated pupils and are manipulated by a black shadow they call "Mama", who feeds them big juicy blackish moths.


Lukas, being an original dumb ruffie, didn't get a wind of any part of this creepy show. And pays the price by finding himself laying on a bed in the hospital. Annabel however grasps the idea and is left alone to deal with madness. Mama lives in the walls, is extremely jealous of Annabel ( women...) and feels herself at home, entering any time she likes.

The psychologist watching Victoria eventually realizes the voices she hears might not be the product of her imagination. So he begins an investigation that reveals all the airs and graces of this decrepit and vengeful spirit, which was once a sinful but insane mother.

As another Helmut Newton, the psychologist wants to take live photos of Mama, having no hint at all that she is not Marylin and might not "cooperate" in posing for his ambitious pic picking. Like all "giant" scientists, he finds it very clever to go search for the hundreds year old spirit all alone...

The film ends with a teaching on compromise, rather unorthodox though, in which the man (Lukas) is a walk-on and a rock girl (Annabel) who never thought of being a mother, argues with the spirit of a crazy woman over mothering two troubled kids. All this mess, and we never got hold of how exactly the damn ghost thinks. No parenting pattern, no good rock music, no sex. Just Jaimie Lannister in another stupid fling.

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Hemingway & Gellhorn: make love, no(matter the) war

 

 

Having pretty Nicole on the foreground - not as she'd be if she hadn't met her best pal, who's of course her plastic surgeon, "Hemingway & Gellhorn" attempts to narrate writer Ernest Hemingway's life and his wife Martha, also a writer and a war correspondent.

You immediately grasp in the air you're going to watch good sex by the time these two meet in a filthy bar. Hemingway is married to a wretched catholic female human being, probably wet blanket, but always a fine mother and wife. She looks like a cleaning lady - with all respect to the job - she's got bad hair and is no way comparable with the unique beauty of Nicole (call me Gellhorn). Besides, she's not the star here.

Both Hemingway and Gellhorn make their first journey as writers in Spain to observe the civil war and make a movie out of it. Naturally she's attracted by his unshaved manliness and gets so thrilled that starts to break things and stare at butts like they're Picasso paintings (oh my, how pervert!). There they have sex for the first time while tanks pass nearby and some walk-ons get bombed on.

Wow, war is awesome in Spain! They fight in the morning and they dance and f*ck in the night. And there's the folklore; Gellhorn gets excited by scars and Hemingway has lots of them.

You realize that Hemingway is a man by those punkish quotes. "A man knows his friends". "I'm gonna take you like a horse, in your fucking fur coat". And of course by his shaggy chest that he incessantly shows off to chicks and gays.


You'd think he'd perfectly dump the bad-haired catholic to marry Gellhorn. No! How much of good sex can a man withstand? The man needs his woman to wash the dishes. Gellhorn is a fancy magazine cover with ambitions to travel to Russia, Finland, China, wherever people die.

 Hemingway's pissed off with this so he goes all the way with a silly blonde that's bad in bed but gets his slippers to him. Gellhorn thrives with her career around the world covering military stories - even her eyeliner remains intact despite her cry bursts.

So, Hemingway is a step from madness just before catching a swordfish and finding himself bedridden to be fed soups by the blonde. Gelhorn on the other side, gets wrinkles to be scorned by every ex-magazine cover's bestfriends; cats.

As in life, man dies first and the woman works till deep senescence. What's the meaning of all this? Don't ever break up with a catholic wife and mother for good oral sex. Lips, as well as dicks, eventually sag...





 

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