Me and You and Everyone We Know
Just got finished watching this movie, and I'm still trying to process it a little.
One of the problems I have with Wes Anderson movies sometimes is that they're in-your-face quirky, as if he has a big neon sign somewhere in the movie telling you how artily clever he is. A lot of his movies also deal with someone's refusal to reach maturity or accept life as it really is -- in fact, all of them do. Not that I really have a problem with that; just that I wish it was a little more understated.
This one (that reminds me of Wes Anderson a tiny bit), while it had its really funny moments -- particularly about a whole ongoing thing involving a little kid and his chatting on the computer about poop -- is mostly a slightly sad love story about how everyone has their own secrets, pain and problems, and it's about that human need to find someone who'll take you in despite all that. Definitely not a romantic comedy as it was sometimes billed I guess, but an odd little movie that doesn't try to hit you over the head with its cleverness.
There's a recently-divorced dad who manages to set his hand on fire in front of his kids in the first scene, and who is desperate to try and have a relationship with his two sons, and screws up in spite of himself; there's the video artist (what would you expect from a movie directed by a performance artist, anyway) who wants her work to be seen but is extremely embarrassed and put off by the politics involved in the art world; there are the dad's two sons, who seem to spend a lot of their time typing out ASCII pictures on the computer, having filthy chats with random people over AIM, and being harassed (literally and sexually) by the local teenage girls; and the little girl who keeps a secret hope chest in her room stuffed with merchandise.
And it's a romance, but definitely not in the crappy tried-and-true romantic comedy sense; the leads are real-seeming enough, even though their characters are dealing with loneliness and pain.
Like I said, really weird and really quiet, but it's still making me think, which is more than a lot of movies do for me. (And the scene at the end is really affecting. Not Lost in Translation affecting, but affecting.)
It won scores of awards and is on a lot of critics' ten best lists for 2005, but I'm still not really sure why. It was good, but I wouldn't say it was that good; it's too weird for that. But again, I'm still thinking about it... which is probably why it won those awards. It's very different and yet affecting somehow, and being different stands out.
(She has a number of projects, it looks like. I particularly like this web-based one, with its assignments. You can even get "grant" money!)