Nubile Antecedents

When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better--her husband; money; his books.-- Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse, p.14

Michael Apted engages cinematic allusions as well as the dramaturgical in his direction of Nell, and perhaps even some narrative traditions. According to the lucky theater critic, Handley was aware of this in the production of his play, but the film superimposes a diachronic continuum with the history of Grizzly Adams, the short lived Lucan, or Truffaut's rigorous battle as an auteur. What about on set romances that seem to be requisite to belong to the screen actors guild, or Foster's characterization of Nell's rape phobia as a mythological echo, even older than the taunts of demonic possession in The Exorcist?

What I am driving at is my willingness to equivocate on Jodie Foster's public projection of her sexual ambiguity, despite my betrayed disdain and contempt for my fuck wit neighbor. It involves more than her life long navigation from child actor celebrity to contemporaneous diva. As an artist, Ms. Foster seems wary of binary definitions of otherness. Certainly not present in all her roles, it is still an important subtext in many of them, a willingness to evade certain aspects of identity that I can respect.

I could push this post a little further, but we shall return to it, my health permitting. Lithium batteries are an untrustworthy crutch, and my frustration with their flimsy durability is of the sort that makes the ambulatory frightened of me. Tomorrow is an event day. Rare thing.

Half Century Skin

It must be nice for a playwright to spawn something like Heaven Can Wait.
Segall may be a footnote, but his conceit bridges two centuries, and I can think of four, five other films besides the 41 original, only the David Niven version of mild weight, having the right touchstone for its English fable qualities. What underlies the fantasy mechanism between that sacred and profane in temporal transit, is the resolution of interrupted fulfillment. I am sore, perhaps a symptom of diabetes, even though I do not abuse my diet as badly as my mother, on my elbows, and where I bend, under my belly, and I am not ready for prime time. It has turned rather chilly very quickly, and, if I can haul myself out later today, I may need more than my shawl, trying to make breakfast, fighting languor.

We all have to die, at least, thus far; we are not anemones. Some biologists think they are immortal under environmental constants. I would not want immortality, but dying unresolved and unhappy will only increase my anger, sharpen my bitterness. All I want to do is move, and I might as well be igniting the start of the Afghanistan action, rather than watching its withered climax. I am unreasonable and must have a hole in the head if I believe I can leave public housing in this climate, but my weariness is in my marrow, and I am not allowed even this level of selfishness, a change of environment. I opted in for hash browns patties, just two, because I am going back to bed. It may be the fall air. My rage builds, then crashes, builds again, feeling like I have been duped my entire damn life, a naive dunce. Many of my early posts on this study looked at Jodie Foster's film career, as I grew up with the actor that she is, and the thought occurred to me that if I contact her agent for an interview, if I can come up with an idea, I will censor Hinckley on my own, even if the media has their names inextricably linked. I have the publicist. Foster's oeuvre belongs here, and a film like Nell only confirms this, as painfully bittersweet as it was to see Natasha and Liam in a youthful mode.

Natasha Richardson's acting has always felt fake to me, and I think in the context of the girl's story, she almost makes it work, as a flaw, in her conservative supporting role, but the qualifying flag has to remain, almost. I was able to see Neeson's hunger for his wife, but not vice versa, perhaps only a flattered coquetry. If they married in 94, mmm, I have to give it up, whether this was the laudable, drooling set romance that fans, in shallow fashion, ga ga over. kimmy bit me awake at 8 last night for her supper, but next I looked, when I attempted to settle down it was 10:30. Then I managed the film. We'll have more when I can think.