weird romance

on wuthering heights, and some much better movies

Time has been moving slowly but the span between the last apocalyptic blizzard and the one currently raging outside my window has condensed, and it’s hard to remember a time when everything wasn’t thick and white and silent. Last night I walked through the storm to my friends’ house for beef stew and to watch the finale of The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and it was so eerily quiet I heard the emergency blizzard alert coming from someone’s pocket across the street for a few confused seconds before my own phone started bleating. On my walk back home there were small clusters everywhere of people in beautiful coats, laughing and standing in the middle of the street just because they could. Times like these always remind me that men cannot help but throw snowballs.

Something weird happened to me a few weeks ago and ever since I feel like someone shot me into space and forgot to bring me back down. Because of this I’ve finally taken seriously the suggestion that I should be walking around without AirPods. Normally I cannot be left alone: I often listen to podcast interviews with people I don’t know about movies I haven’t seen just to keep the lights on in my brain. It’s been a challenge and a delight these last few weeks to try to entertain myself with nothing while I’m out and about; it feels a little like someone is pouring cool water into one of my ears and it’s running out the other. I’ve overheard things I wouldn’t ordinarily get to overhear, and something about me is that I love to eavesdrop, though this is hardly a unique quality. I passed a small group of older women last week on my walk home from physical therapy, bundled up in large wool coats and hugging goodbye. “Thank you for everything, and for sharing your champagne,” one of them said to the other. I felt like crying.

Magic

I’ve devised this interesting little routine where I go into the office much earlier than anyone needs me to be there, because the L is most pleasant before 8am, and because I need silence. There’s something precious and intimate about getting to see everyone fresh-scrubbed and sleepy-eyed and pre-caffeinated on their way to wherever the fuck. On Friday there was a potentially mentally unstable person on the train who rolled his eyes theatrically and moved to the other end of the car when I and the random boy standing in front of me boarded the train and grabbed the same metal pole. “Desperate!” he said, shaking his head. I thought about it for the rest of the day. It is objectively hilarious to call a bunch of tired people desperate on their way to the office on a windy Friday morning. Also, he was right.

Valentine’s season as a single person can be weird even if you’re not a scrooge, which on most days I am not. But I am still hungover from it all. I imagine that three days of trying to entertain yourself while your single friends have all “coincidentally” fled the state would be a bit difficult for anyone. On Valentine’s Day proper I got a burger and a martini with another friend (whose boyfriend was, luckily for me, occupied that evening) at a cozy bar in the neighborhood. We sat at a tiny table surrounded by couples who I believe must have been incredibly relaxed and low maintenance and staggeringly in love to spend Valentine’s Day evening being so completely chill at a place that doesn’t entertain reservations. Paul McCartney’s “Another Day” played over the speakers, which made me laugh because it is possibly one of the most depressing and astute songs ever written about single womanhood. People gather ‘round her and she finds it hard to stay alive. Jesus! It’s a great song; I’ve been listening to it a lot since. It has a deceptive cheerfulness to it but really gets to the heart of things.

At the moment I can’t really focus or expand upon anything, which is why this roundup is rather brief, but I’m hoping this state is temporary. Almost (!) everything I’ve been able to watch has knocked me so completely flat I’ve needed to take a few days to recover. They have mostly been hits, except for the one that tries too hard. I don’t think it’s difficult to guess which one that is.

Wuthering Heights / dir. Emerald Fennell

It’s…fine! For it being such a contentious topic of conversation, I felt incredibly mildly about Fennell’s overgrown preteen dream-pop adaptation of this famously tortured and fucked Brontë novel. There are a handful of properly hot and sticky moments but nothing really close to the depraved psychosexual romp that I feel was promised to me. There wasn’t even any of the canonical ghost fucking, which is so squarely in Fennell’s wheelhouse that she basically already did it in Saltburn (maybe as a director you’re not allowed to ghost fuck twice. If you are familiar with the DGA bylaws, Let Me Know!)

Thanks to its prioritization of horniness over theme or characterization (which is more than okay, but a weird choice in this sort of story), Fennell’s film must insist upon its own melodrama, and does so unconvincingly. Of course, everyone looks beautiful (Margot Robbie’s boobs look consistently magnificent and roughly 30% of the film is a close-up of Jacob Elordi’s scarred back), but individual hotness cannot stand in for actual chemistry, and these people are spiritually giving cousins. The PR campaign was sweaty and loserish in its attempts to bamboozle us into thinking Robbie and Elordi might be fucking. We have all learned our lesson by now: costars who are secretly banging don’t wax poetic about dressing rooms filled with thoughtfully gifted flower arrangements—instead, they give off a palpably strange vibe in interviews and unfollow each other on Instagram.

It’s not all a waste of time—Alison Oliver is fantastic as Isabella Linton, turning in a very funny and physical performance that makes more than the most of a slight role. And the production design is pretty wonderful. The whole movie has the aesthetic sheen of a gaudy stage play or an elaborate wedding cake. There’s a montage moment where Robbie is eating a strawberry so big she has to hold it with both hands. This is great! But overall, it’s needlessly long and kind of emotionally limp. Fall in love again and again and again and again and again and again, indeed.

Crossing Delancey (1988) / dir. Joan Micklin Silver

Everyone has to watch this immediately. I’m not kidding. Now! Go! Crossing Delancey stomps all the other rom coms into the dirt. Our delightful protagonist is an uptown bookstore employee, and her love interest is a downtown pickle salesman (played wonderfully by Peter Riegert, who I previously knew from the frat boy classic Animal House, which was strangely prominent in my childhood). This all sounds a little bit silly and I promise you that it isn’t. It is, in fact, perfectly lived in and deeply, sickeningly romantic in a grounded way that sneaks in and then kicks your feet out from under you. Midway through the movie, there is a scene set at Gray’s Papaya that is so simple and arresting that I actually stopped breathing. The next day, I happened to walk by the very same Gray’s Papaya on my way from the subway to a friend’s apartment and was almost moved to tears—I would have stayed to stare in the window if there had not been a man screaming at me from a few paces behind. Life is weird and beautiful. If you like Moonstruck you will adore this.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) / dir. Ariane Louis-Seize

Perhaps my new favorite coming-of-age romcom, with a plot exactly as advertised. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (spectacular title) is sweet, dry and poignant all at the same time, thanks to remarkably efficient writing that deftly uses the assumed knowledge of Teen Vampire Movie tropes as a grounding basis in order to create something completely fresh. Vampires drinking blood bags like they’re Capri Suns is so simply, stunningly genius I can’t believe I haven’t seen it done before. It also flawlessly uses Brenda Lee’s “Emotions” (which I’ve since been listening to in an obsessive and psychotic manner) in an homage to Before Sunrise so good it gave me goosebumps. It’s like the depressed love child of Dinner in America, Before I Fall and Santa Clarita Diet, three properties that are all immensely important to me. From the beginning to end of its 92-minute runtime, I was dumbfounded by its understated genius. It’s kind of completely perfect!

Ghost World (2001) / dir. Terry Zwigoff

This is NOT REALLY a romance! Do NOT arrest me! Ghost World shares quite a bit of DNA with weird-undefined-age-gap-relationship classics like Lost in Translation and Licorice Pizza, movies I happen to love deeply due to my unending fascination with stories predicated on the liminal, haunting intensity of unexpected connection, whether it’s romantic, platonic, or that sticky in-between. Starring Thora Birch and a baby Scarlett Johansson as two high school grads who think everything is stupid and lame, it’s supremely mean and biting in a way that conceals a surprisingly gooey, earnest core. In its exploration of moving on after high school and Birch’s character’s nebulous relationship with an awkward, middle-aged music fanatic played by Steve Buscemi, Ghost World nestled itself somewhere weird in my chest. I loved it dearly.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie / dir. Matt Johnson

Saw this in a full theater late Valentine’s Day evening, and it rocked so much. I’ve been fascinated by Matt Johnson since I discovered him in Matt & Mara, and his mockumentary-time-travel-buddy-comedy is a complete and utter grand slam. To say nothing of the fact that this film is a feat of nature production-wise, it is such a deeply great time at the movies. I laughed so much, so hard! I can’t wait to make more people watch this!

P.S.

• I did not keep up with the Olympics, at all. What I did do is watch Alysa Liu’s gold-medal-winning routine set to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” three days late and absolutely burst into tears. So joyful and whimsical and awesome. That little spin she does on her knees! Get out of here!!

• So far this month I’ve read Caroline Palmer’s Workhorse, which was too long, and Lauren Rothery’s Television, which was too short, though I inhaled both. Fresh off the library hold shelf is Cameron Crowe’s The Uncool, which as a devoted Almost Famous-head I cannot wait to start.

• February’s playlist has it all: mopey love songs, Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without A Face” (which I’ve been playing incessantly since it was prominently featured in Industry a few weeks ago), a head-banging remix of Timbaland’s “Give It To Me” that I’ve been listening to when I’m tired at work. All in good fun.

Thank you for reading and for tolerating today’s rambles. Love you very much.