Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios) (1988)

 

Kvinder på randen af et nervøst sammenbrud

Comedies about people going crazy rarely work for me and that special type of Mediterranean comedy with a lot of shouting and arm-waving tend to just annoy me. “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios) is both, but to my own surprise it totally works for me.

Pepa (Carmen Maura) is a voice actress of some renown who has been left by her lover, the middle-aged Ivan (Fernando Guillén). She is depressed about it and considers various ways of ending her life, including burning down her apartment. Ivan has broken up on an answering machine and left a message to pack his things in a suitcase. Upset, Pepa tries desperately to contact him, and she spikes a can of gazpacho with sleeping pills to pin him down.

 A friend Candelia (María Barranco) tries desperately to contact Pepa and leaves about a million messages on her answering machine, eventually showing up in person. Candelia has been sleeping with men who then turned out to be Shiite terrorists. Now she is afraid she will be named an accomplice. Pepa though has no surplus to deal with Candelia, until Candelia attempts to jump off the roof-top terrace.

Meanwhile, Ivan’s wife, Lucia (Julieta Serrano), a deranged woman recently released from a mental hospital, is looking for Ivan, convinced he is with Pepa. Her son, Carlos (Antonio Banderas) and his girlfriend, Marissa (Rossy de Palma), coincidentally shows up in the apartment, looking to rent it and Marissa drinks from the spiked gazpacho, falling into deep sleep. Trying to help Candelia, Pepa contacts a lawyer, Paulina (Kiti Mánver), who helped Carlos mother, only to learn, in turn, that Paulina is Ivan’s new girlfriend and they are on the way to Stockholm on the plane targeted by the terrorists.

What a mess.

Writing this synopsis, this all sounds like a soap-opera and I guess it is, except it is all so completely out there absurd, almost like the old sit-com “Soap”. These are all a lot of women going crazy. They are barely keeping it together, worked up as they are by what they perceive as extreme emotional stress. Lucia chasing her philandering husband, Pepa on first losing her lover, then trying to get rid of him, Candelia fearing the police and Paulina, running away with Ivan. Even Marissa, who sleeps through much of the movie is stressing out, not least because she find Carlos asleep with Candelia.

I would normally, as mentioned in the opening, not find this type of comedy funny, but here it is. All these crazy women are navigating in a seemingly normal world that keeps throwing curveballs at them and it is the absurdity of it that generates the comedy. In their own right the characters are actually tragic, it is misfortune that sends them out there on the verge of disaster, but in combination, the craziness becomes hilarious. These women are willing to go pretty far.

The men of the movie are largely uninteresting. Ivan is like the McGuffin, the object this is all about, but an empty cipher. Carlos is busy going the same way and the policemen, taxi driver etc. are merely elements in these women’s crazy situation.

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’” was nominated in the Best Foreign Language category at the Academy awards and made Pedro Aldomodovar internationally known. I am not a big fan of him as a person, but his career has since produced exceptional movies, and this one is one of the best.

I did not expect to like “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”, but I found myself loving it and it made me laugh. That is a success for a comedy.

Beaches (1988)

 

My wife wants me to see this: Beaches

It is a new year for me, 1988, and the first movie is in the category of “My wife wants me to see this”. The movie is “Beaches” and it is one of her favourite movies. I never saw this movie, so now I am fixing that.

In the frame story, a singer, CC Bloom (Bette Midler), receives a note while rehearsing for a concert. She abruptly leaves the stage and desperately tries to get to San Francisco as fast as possible. Most of the movie consists of her flashbacks while driving north from Los Angeles.

11-year-old Cecilia (CC) meets Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) on a beach in Atlantic City when Hillary is lost and CC is hiding under a boardwalk, smoking. They become instant friends. CC brings Hillary along to an audition and Hillary invites CC into her hotel for an ice cream soda. Hillary returns to San Francisco and over the years they write each other regularly.

Fast forward to them as young women. CC slums it out in Bronx and earns her living on small singing job. Hillary went to college, but is running away from her life in a gilded cage. Showing up in New York, she moves in with CC and for a time they live together. CC gets a break on a small theatre but the director, John Pierce (John Heard), seems more interested in Hillary, which causes some friction. Hillary returns to San Francisco when her father turns ill and stays there afterwards, getting married. Meanwhile, CC marries John and gets her big break on Broadway.

When the girls again reunite, there is a big fall out. Each accusing the other of compromising and they stay out of touch for a while. This changes when Hillary becomes pregnant and catches her prick of a husband cheating and CC is getting divorced and slumming it on terrible jobs.

11 years later Hillary gets a heart condition that dooms her. CC and Hillary’s now 11-year-old daughter Victoria (Grace Johnston) takes care of her in their beach house. The message CC received in the beginning is that Hillary has collapsed.

“Beaches” is a movie about friendship among women. The ups and downs, the ability to be friends despite differences and how important it is to be there for each other. It is natural that this would have a very strong appeal on women and maybe less so for men. As such “Beaches” therefore have a reputation as a “Women’s movie”, which probably explains why it always went under the radar for me, to the extent that I did not even knew it existed until my wife mentioned it.

There are some parallels to the slightly later “Thelma and Louise”, but the drama in “Beaches” is of a more personal sort. CC and Hillary are from opposite ends, literally. Geographically apart, socially apart but also in temper very different women. CC is a loud woman who wears her feelings on her sleave and is constantly looking for attention and confirmation. Hillary is a quiet type who suppresses herself to do what needs to be done and get there through persistence. That such people even has anything to say to each other is a wonder, but that is a point of the movie, that they are complimentary to each other and therefore need the other person in their lives. It is those differences that creates the drama and it is their friendship that enables them to deal with that drama.

The men in the movie are mere tools to this story. Not really import but there to explain elements of their lives. John Heard’s theatre director is the most developed of those, but his function is mostly to explain the character of CC and cause friction between the girls. Most sad is the fate for Dr. Milstein (Spalding Gray), who is there as a brief love interest of CC until she is called back to the stage.

There is no questioning the casting of Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as the friends in this story. Both are very convincing and Midler, whom I always like, handles the performance parts great. Her character grates on me, but that is likely more me being averse to this sort of extremely extrovert characters. Midler handles that character perfectly.

I am obviously not the target audience of “Beaches” and some of the elements fly by me with little impact, but I do respect and acknowledge what it is trying to do and believe it is doing a good job of that. While I may think it gets a little deep into melodrama and the telenovela genre, my wife tells me it holds up really well and is still a favourite of hers.

Wall Street (1987)

 

Wall Street

It is entirely fitting to review “Wall Street” and “Fatal Attraction” back-to-back. Both are iconic 80’ies movies, both feature Michael Douglas in starring roles and both are concerned with madness. In “Wall Street”, the madness is that of the financial markets.

Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is working in a stock market company doing cold calls to potential buyers. This is obviously a very junior role and with his fancy education and high ambitions, he is very hungry for more. He dreams of landing one of the big clients and few are bigger than Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Fox is very insistent on getting that crucial interview with Gekko, but when he finally gets it, Gekko is unimpressed. Only when supplying inside information on the Bluestar company, where Fox father, Carl Fox (Martin Sheen), works, does Gekko get interested.

Bud Fox lands Gordon Gekko, but on the terms that Fox finds “secret” information, things nobody else knows, to give Gekko an edge. This is highly illegal, but Gekko is very persuasive and Fox is hungry for the wealth and success. Gekko even “grants” him a nice girlfriend, Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah).

This lasts up to the point where Fox convinces Gekko to invest massively in Bluestar to turn the company around, only to find out that Gekko secretly plans to liquidate the company and cash in on the assets. Fox is not fond of that idea and sets out on a rescue mission.

One thing you need to know about Oliver Stone is that he always makes political movies. He is always going after something and in this case, it is the moral bankruptcy of the financial markets, symbolized by the New York Stock Exchange (Wall Street). Where his political points are sometimes a bit (or a lot) iffy, I would say he got one of his better cases with this portrayal of the players on the financial markets. I am a complete outsider, but whenever I meet these “golden boys”, I get that Gordon Gekko feel, that convinces me that this is not that far fetched. I think Stone was onto something here and that in terms of zeitgeist in the mid-eighties, this was right on target.

The Gordon Gekko character has become a by-word for an amoral financial shark. He is the image we get when we hear or think of crooks in high finance. In the movie he delivers several speeches outlining his extreme capitalist philosophy, which is a Darwinian survival of fittest where fittest mean cunning, daring and most unscrupulous. His speech at the Teldar general assembly is essentially the political program of the extreme liberal right and a defence of raw capitalism. It is delivered to create excitement, and this is how it is received, but when you look at it from a distance, it is truly scary. Douglas won an Academy Award for this portrayal and that was fully deserved.

As in “Fatal Attraction” we have a flawed hero. In “Wall Street”, the temptation is money rather than sex, but the effect is the same. Bud Fox willingly compromises his principles and it is only when his family is threatened that he gets his moral compass set. As Dan in “Fatal Attraction”, it is too late, Bud Fox must face the consequences, but he gets a chance to fight for the right thing. It is a deep hole to climb out from.

Daryl Hannah is a strange cast. She gets top billing, likely because of her name, but she is almost invisible in the movie. She is merely one of the perks Fox gets for working for Gekko. There is no chemistry or enthusiasm, and I get the sense that they could have picked any second-rate actress for this role and not an A-lister.

On the other hand, I was very excited to see John C. McGinley as Fox colleague at the stockbroking company. Ever since “Office Space” I have loved every role he has played. He is awesome and no less here.

I was also very happy to hear Talking Heads “This Must Be the Place” featured twice in the movie.

“Wall Street” is an iconic eighties movie, but it is more that just a symbol or a political manifest. It is actually a really good movie. Highly recommended. This is also my last 1987 movie. On to 1988.

  

Fatal Attraction (1987)

 

Farligt begær

This is a very hard movie for me to watch. Relationship dramas bother me. Triangle dramas in particular and if it involves philandering it gets really bad. Add to this some sweet children and I am shutting down. “Fatal Attraction” hits all the wrong buttons for me and only in the end with its phyco-bitch on the rampage sequence, I am getting partially into the game again. I cannot say exactly why it is so, maybe something for a shrink to look into, but it means that I am prone to disregard all the obvious qualities of the movie and simply hate watching it. I watched it once before and this second time just confirmed everything.

Obviously, I cannot give “Fatal Attraction” a fair review.

Dan (Michael Douglas) and Beth (Anne Archer) Gallagher live in an apartment on Manhattan with their 6-year-old daughter Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen) and a dog. To all appearances a happy family. Dan is an attorney and, in that function, meets Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). During a weekend where the rest of the family is away, Dan has an affair with Alex. It is supposed to be in full understanding that Dan is married, but when Dan tries to leave it, Alex clings on. This will grow progressively more extreme as the movie goes on but starts on a high with her slashing her wrists to make him stay. She shows up at the office, calls him constantly, first at the office then at home. When he changes number, she shows up pretending to want to by their apartment and she claims she is pregnant with his child.

Dan quickly realizes that that he prefers to stay with his family, but Alex wants him and nothing he can do or say to her makes her change her mind. When the family moves upstate to a new home in the countryside, Alex follows them and her attacks on the Gallaghers include kidnapping and a boiled bunny.

Eventually Dan must tell Beth what is going on and that does not go down easily. The family is under assault both from the outside and the inside.

It is possible to convince yourself that this is a movie about a family being terrorized by a crazy psycho-bitch. Fairly straight forward, the woman has been offended and now the family must pay and as she is out of her mind, her attacks are off the scale.

I think this is mostly the extra drama. The real drama is Dan cheating on his wife and this coming back to bite his ass in a big way. A cautionary tale about philandering. In this light, Dan is not the good guy even if he is the central figure. He is the homewrecker who thinks so little of his family that he risks it for a weekend of fun. Alex is mad, but she is also the avenging angel (or demon) of justice to make him pay for his arrogance. Beth and in extension Ellen are the real victims here. They have done nothing to deserve what is happening to them and when she kicks out Dan, I understand her all too well. Asshole.

And then, of course this could be a story about forgiveness. Is a crime is so big it cannot be forgiven, or if forgiveness is a necessity if it is needed for basic survival. Beth will never see Dan in the same light again, but maybe this is part of growing up, leaving innocence behind. Dan is philandering, but she killed somebody.

The tension of the triangle was overwhelming for me. I could watch around 20 minutes before taking breaks, and I feel pathetic for it, but that is what it is. This may be seen as a special achievement of the movie: if there was nothing at stake, why make the movie? But that is a tension for other people to enjoy. For me it was torture.

No doubt this is a movie with many qualities; it was nominated for 6 Oscars including three of the big ones. It is also one of those movies many people will mention as a landmark even today, but please please do not make me watch it again.

The Dead (1987)

 

The Dead

John Huston’s last movie, “The Dead” was directed by him practically on his deathbed and that is important to know when you watch the movie. Very far into the movie, I did not understand the point of it, until I realized that this was Huston’s elaborate farewell.

It is early days in the 20th century, January 1904, in Dublin, Ireland. People are arriving for a party hosted by three spinsters, Kate (Helena Carroll, Julia (Cathleen Delany) and their niece Mary Jane (Ingrid Craige) Morkan. Most of the men appear to be single and at least middle-aged and the female guests mostly music students of the spinsters. Notable exceptions are Molly Ivors (Maria McDermottroe), an activist who leaves the party early, and married couple Gretta (Anjelica Huston) and Gabriel (Donal McCann) Conroy.

The party starts with some dancing to music from the music students and we are introduced to Freddy (Donal Donnelly), who has a reputation for drunkenness and indeed shows up late and drunk, but is tolerated because of his mother. The dancing is replaced by a lengthy dinner through which we are privy to several conversations and finally the guests leave and we follow the Conroys home to their hotel.

Watching this, the point of all this eluded me. It looks like any other upper middle-class dinner party of that era with the more or less empty talk, a few recitations, some music and some singing. Freddy’s interruptions that are too loud, too insisting and with the lack of the sense of situation expected of everybody, is the closest we come to drama. This is blamed on his drunkenness, but I sense autistic traits in his character that makes my heart bleed for him, yet Freddy does not seem to be the point either.

It was only when the Conroy’s were back in their hotel room that the movie came together (and explained the title). This is effectively an eulogy by Huston onto things past and gone, life and a world that is over. It is based on a James Joyce short story, but it could have been written by Huston himself.

Most of the guests live in the past and celebrate the past. They live on what or who they were and act as coming out of an earlier age, not entirely understanding the present world they live in. The poems recited and the songs performed hark back to a world lost and gone. When Gretta hears a particular song upon leaving the party she succumbs to memories of a young lover from her past who sung that song to her and died, maybe because of her. When Gabriel stares out the window on the snowy, dark landscape he appears to be saying his farewell to a world that was and is now dying.

It is in that light, I think, “The Dead” should be watched and while that is a downer, it also feels like a fitting end for Huston himself who died an old man months before the release of “The Dead”. Without this purpose, “The Dead” feels pointless and boring, like those parties you cannot wait to leave, but must stay and endure for the sake of politeness. Luckily it is a fairly short movie, but that did nothing to suppress that feeling. For me personally, it did not help that the copy I watch did not have subtitles which was a problem with the heavy Irish accents of many of the characters. I found myself often consulting Wikipedia to learn if somebody said something important, which they invariably did not.

I would like to say it is a beautiful movie, but I think that is a stretch. It has a beautiful and poignant point, but is mostly a movie to endure rather than enjoy. Calling it boring is harsh, but let is just say I was happy it was short.

  

800 Movie Anniversary

 

800 Movie Anniversary

I have now reached the 800 movie mark on the List. Of course, with all the extra movies I am reviewing I am actually long past that point, but counting official entries, this is where I am now. I passed 700 on October 12th, 2023, so it has taken me two and a half years to climb this interval. Not very impressive, really.

On the other hand, I am really enjoying being immersed in the eighties. To me, this is a golden age in so many ways, not least because this was my formative childhood. I therefore decided that the awards I will make this time is for movies that encapsulates the eighties one way or another. This was a hard pick, and I had to keep telling myself that this is more about zeitgeist than quality. My top-10 list of movies would look quite different. Also I stopped at 87. This is after all as far as I got on the List.

 

10. The Terminator

What was the eighties without the buff duel between Arnie and Sly? The Terminator perhaps best represents this.

11. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

E.T. may be the quintessential family film of the eighties. The optimistic note of the movie is so typical eighties that you probably could not have made it at any other time. Project Hail Mary owes a lot to E.T.

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street

While this may not be the best horror-gore movie of the eighties, it perhaps best typifies the genre and Friday, the 13th is not on the List.

7. Dirty Dancing

Dirty Dancing is not on the List, and it does not even take place in the eighties, but it is sooooo eighties! The music, the mood, the message, the structure. This is the very definition of a romantic song and dance movie of the eighties.

6. Ghostbusters

The eighties were super strong on comedies, and few did it better than Ghostbusters. The special thing about Ghostbusters is how rooted it is in the eighties. Not only does it run the standard eighties formula, it is also full of the pop-culture of the eighties.

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Here I was a bit in doubt. The Indiana Jones franchise takes place in the past, but this is very much a movie of its time. You could say it is the eighties displaced to the thirties and maybe a case of the movie being so big that it made the eighties. Certainly, the decade is full of more or less successful copies.

4. Beverly Hills Cop

If Ghostbusters is not the most quintessential eighties comedy, then it must be Beverly Hills Cup. Murphy’s Axel Foley takes the ride from the seventies in Detroit and land in ultra hip eighties LA. The decade is almost the main character.

3. Top Gun

Top Gun is a good example that being very eighties is not necessarily a good thing. This is so eighties, it is a hoot. It is almost a mockery of an eighties movie if I was not convinced they actually meant it seriously.

2. Back to the Future

Again, a movie that mostly takes place in another time, but by juxtapositioning the eighties against the fifties it manages to very effectively highlight the eighties. This is literally displacing eighties characters into the past.

1.     1. The Breakfast Club

If you were young in the eighties, there is a very good chance this was the movie that formed you. No other movie I can think of encapsulates being young in the eighties as The Breakfast Club does.

 

I had a thought to place Blade Runner on the top-10. In high school, this was the movie highlighted as representing the post-modern style in cinema, something typical of the eighties, but thinking about it, Blade Runner was so far ahead of its time that it should belong to a complexly different decade. At least the nineties or even later.

 

Red Sorghum (Hong Gao Liang) (1987)

 

Red Sorghum

“Red Sorghum” is a Chinese film. Not a Hong Kong production, but a movie from mainland China. This is from a period where the technical capabilities became absolutely comparable with what was made elsewhere, but when there is still a political imperative that is not to be avoided. Combining these two elements we get a movie that is cryptic, interesting and ham-fisted at the same time.

The narrator of the story, whose voice appear from time to time in the movie, tells us that this is a story about his grandparents. Evidently it takes place in the period of the 1920’es to the 1940’es, which makes it prior to communist takeover and at least in the latter part during the Japanese occupation. His grandmother, Jiu (Gong Li) is sent off to marry a rich winery owner who also happens to suffer from leprosy. Needless to say, Jiu is not happy about this. One of the employees at the winery, whom the narrator names his grandfather, but whose name in the movie I forgot (Jiang Wen), takes an interest in Jiu. He sleeps with her in something that to me looks a bit like rape and it is implied that he may be the one killing the winery owner. In any case a sort of anti-hero.

Jiu takes over the winery and starts running it a bit like a cooperative, but with her as executive lead. Sort of the Chinese communist ideal. There is some story about Grandfather getting drunk, telling everybody he has a claim on Jiu, then when Jiu gets kidnapped by bandits he rage on them and after that, being angry he pees in the wine, which, curiously turns it really good (I guess I want to avoid Chinese sorghum wine...).

When some years later the Japanese arrive, they abuse the local population and demonstrate cruelty on a level where the winery commune forms a resistance cell to fight off the Japanese. The narrator’s father, a little boy loses his mother in the fight and is left with his grandfather.

The red sorghum of the title refers to the fields of red sorghum surrounding the winery. It is tall and mysterious, hiding things and is the source of the sorghum wine they are producing.

The general story is one that fits in very well with the communist China narrative. The local countryside population is suffering under greedy landowners. That the winery owner is suffering from leprosy represents the rot of the wealthy class. His death is the revolution and the winery, a mini-China forms a cooperative under gentle and loving, but firm leadership. The winery employees must be educated. The Japanese invasion was both a real, formative event for China, but also represents the external threat that China / the winery needs to defend against and to make sacrifices for in the process. The grandfather is the re-educated Chinese helping the young generation into a future.

This is rather ham-fisted and would in itself, perhaps, be uninteresting to a western viewer. What makes “Red Sorghum” interesting after all is how it presents itself. There is a production quality underlying this movie that makes it astonishing to look at. The big sorghum fields, the sun-parched winery, the endless skies and the construction of the setting of the movie. There are also impressive and convincing performances all around. Especially by Gong Li, who would develop into one of the biggest Chinese actresses, at least seen from a western perspective, but also all-round by the staff on the winery. I sometimes feel watching Hong Kong movies a disconnect from reality as if actors are acting that they are acting, if that makes sense. This is absent in “Red Sorghum” and the naturalistic acting here as far more convincing. Director Zhang Yimou would become one of the premier directors of China and this is his promising beginning.

Yet, all this is still very Chinese and while I understand the overall picture, I feel that so much is lost in the cultural translation. There are odd elements, things that are said or done and contexts that makes little sense to me. I lived in China for half a year back in 2008, so I recognize these things as Chinese idiosyncrasies, but they still baffle me. I therefore cannot say that I fully understand the movie and indeed I felt lost at times, but that is, I suppose, to be expected.

Despite that, this is a movie worth spending time on, if for nothing else than to enjoy the spectacle and the window into a transitional period of China, whether is be the 1920-40’ies or the 1980’es.