Me and movies
Oct. 16th, 2025 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annavereLast winter I was given my mother's several boxes of DVDs because I have more free space than her. We're both fans of physical media and this does lead to clutter.
I blogged about the first film I selected for the project of watching all the things, but when the second, Roman Holiday, sent me into a crying fit that lasted so long I felt physically sick, I decided I was too emotionally fragile to continue at the time. Being in a more durable state, and with another winter coming on, I thought I should try again.
I'm also going through the boxes and preemptively setting aside anything that has a Kick in the Teeth vibe for eventual donation. All the soul crushing historical atrocity movies are going out the door unwatched, as are most of the kitchen sink tearjerkers (literary adaptations exempted). They might be great films, but for me they are not good films.
This still leaves a vast quantity of movies to actually watch, thankfully looking to promise a good time and eye candy rather than salt in the wounds of life. Although sometimes one ends up with an unappetizing salt and sugar approach, like The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Comedy is a more delicate thing than drama. If you diffuse a tense moment with a quip, the tension can almost immediately ratchet up again, but for me, if I end up getting uncomfortable it is very hard to go back to finding things funny, and Wes Anderson's film veered all over the place in an ugly tonal mishmash. It went from farce to violent murder to screwball comedy in the alps (the best part of the film) to numbing historical atrocity. Sure, it looked amazing and had an A List cast but I never need to see it again. I'm sure someone at the local used bookshop will be delighted to snap it up.
So last night I watched The Valet, a 2006 French comedy written and directed by Francis Veber. It's about a parking valet named Francois (Gad Elmaleh), who is hired by a rich ass (Daniel Auteuil) to fake-date the rich ass's supermodel mistress in a desperate bid to keep the wife from finding out. The supermodel, Elena (Alice Taglioni), discovers what it's like to have a guy treat her respectfully and then... they don't fall in love, because Francois is in love with his childhood sweetheart and only agreed to the masquerade to earn money to help with her struggling bookstore. Elena, charmed by this, decides to take matters in hand and sort out Francois's life for him, with the pair becoming rather adorable, physically affectionate friends.
Meanwhile, the wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) sees right through the whole con and is archly amused. Rather than seek to get revenge on Elena, she prefers to play cat and mouse with her husband and arranges to break the affair in a way that actually helps Elena move on.
It's a film with a surprisingly gentle outlook. The women don't fight over the men. The comic misunderstandings never feel mean-spirited, Elena is not a prize to be won and even two obnoxious minor characters end up finding a perfect match in each other.
This film has a simple and appealing enough premise to have been adapted four times since (thrice in India, once by Hulu a couple years ago). It reminded me of fanfic with its use of tropes (fake dating, only one bed) and I appreciate how it took a rather sleazy premise and made it about a developing friendship instead of romance. Cute all around, though almost too short. A couple good internal reveals were cut away from, leaving the conclusion somewhat hasty.
For someone like me, who tends to dislike romcoms, this was a very good genre-adjacent compromise. A trifle, but it made me smile - and that is the chief assignment right now.
Hopefully this time the project will take and I'll do a lot of posts on miscellaneous movies to rebuild my blogging muscles this winter.
I blogged about the first film I selected for the project of watching all the things, but when the second, Roman Holiday, sent me into a crying fit that lasted so long I felt physically sick, I decided I was too emotionally fragile to continue at the time. Being in a more durable state, and with another winter coming on, I thought I should try again.
I'm also going through the boxes and preemptively setting aside anything that has a Kick in the Teeth vibe for eventual donation. All the soul crushing historical atrocity movies are going out the door unwatched, as are most of the kitchen sink tearjerkers (literary adaptations exempted). They might be great films, but for me they are not good films.
This still leaves a vast quantity of movies to actually watch, thankfully looking to promise a good time and eye candy rather than salt in the wounds of life. Although sometimes one ends up with an unappetizing salt and sugar approach, like The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Comedy is a more delicate thing than drama. If you diffuse a tense moment with a quip, the tension can almost immediately ratchet up again, but for me, if I end up getting uncomfortable it is very hard to go back to finding things funny, and Wes Anderson's film veered all over the place in an ugly tonal mishmash. It went from farce to violent murder to screwball comedy in the alps (the best part of the film) to numbing historical atrocity. Sure, it looked amazing and had an A List cast but I never need to see it again. I'm sure someone at the local used bookshop will be delighted to snap it up.
So last night I watched The Valet, a 2006 French comedy written and directed by Francis Veber. It's about a parking valet named Francois (Gad Elmaleh), who is hired by a rich ass (Daniel Auteuil) to fake-date the rich ass's supermodel mistress in a desperate bid to keep the wife from finding out. The supermodel, Elena (Alice Taglioni), discovers what it's like to have a guy treat her respectfully and then... they don't fall in love, because Francois is in love with his childhood sweetheart and only agreed to the masquerade to earn money to help with her struggling bookstore. Elena, charmed by this, decides to take matters in hand and sort out Francois's life for him, with the pair becoming rather adorable, physically affectionate friends.
Meanwhile, the wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) sees right through the whole con and is archly amused. Rather than seek to get revenge on Elena, she prefers to play cat and mouse with her husband and arranges to break the affair in a way that actually helps Elena move on.
It's a film with a surprisingly gentle outlook. The women don't fight over the men. The comic misunderstandings never feel mean-spirited, Elena is not a prize to be won and even two obnoxious minor characters end up finding a perfect match in each other.
This film has a simple and appealing enough premise to have been adapted four times since (thrice in India, once by Hulu a couple years ago). It reminded me of fanfic with its use of tropes (fake dating, only one bed) and I appreciate how it took a rather sleazy premise and made it about a developing friendship instead of romance. Cute all around, though almost too short. A couple good internal reveals were cut away from, leaving the conclusion somewhat hasty.
For someone like me, who tends to dislike romcoms, this was a very good genre-adjacent compromise. A trifle, but it made me smile - and that is the chief assignment right now.
Hopefully this time the project will take and I'll do a lot of posts on miscellaneous movies to rebuild my blogging muscles this winter.
