But I think a window that is never being opened ceases to be a window and becomes a wall, a hindrance…  Maybe all windows should be able to be opened and closed at some point.  Every story needs to be aired if only to let the pain out and get some

Source: http://2photo.ru/en/post/16810

It does not matter how awful anything is.  Anything can make you think, analyze, compare, and write.  Or not.  It is not a film review per se; it is more or less a letter to myself.  I need to express my feelings, even though I might be the only one ending up reading it later.  I felt that “The Barefoot Contessa” was a terrible choice.  Why would I pick an old film in the first place?  Well, I am poor these days and libraries don’t charge for renting movies, but variety is rather limited.  And when I am not in the mood for reading or doing anything useful around the house, I love to indulge in watching movies.  I picked “The Barefoot Contessa” and watched it despite my better judgment.  And it made me think.  It gave me the point of reference.  I can compare my thoughts with what others thought and wrote about the film.

“Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.”

That line comes from another film “The Jane Austen Book Club”, the first that I watched from that library bunch.  It is as lovely and romantic and elegiac and contemporary as I need these days.  Apparently, Jane Austen characters loved writing letters at important junctures and they were crucial for the plot and the fate of characters.  I should probably read Jane Austen in English.  Well, why not?  I have seen the adaptations of her novels and they were lovely, too.

Coming back to “The Barefoot Contessa”.  It is an old film, made in 1954 and as I was watching it, I was swearing to myself never ever ever watch another old movie again.  It is too deliberate and boring, I might add, but I was wondering about characters why they were so roughly drawn.  So extreme, so unbelievable, so out of touch.  At some point, my interest was engaged (finally), when Maria after all her waiting for a Prince Charming found an Italian Count with whom she fell madly in love.  She married him and on the wedding night he chose to deliver her a letter in Italian (language that may very well be romantic, but the one she does not understand).  I would not judge how well the letter was written but it was to tell the wife that her husband could not be a husband as far as intimate relationship was concerned (war accidents happen, some parts were blown off).  I put it for myself that “Maria was married to a letter.”

She decided to make the Count happy nonetheless by bearing another man’s child without consulting the Count first.  The Count misread the situation and killed his wife, unborn child and the sperm donor.  And I think, maybe it would be a better motif for the movie, if Maria would have taken the time and trouble to write a letter.

Not to criticize the movie, the acting, the plot and everything else, but I am attached to the idea of writing letters in difficult situations.  The major piece in Russian Literary Tradition is the poetic novel by Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”.  Two culminating points are the letters – one written by a young woman, Tatiana, being in love and being rejected and another one by the object of her love, Eugene Onegin, only a few years later when he caught up with the foolishness of his refusal to love an exceptional woman such as Tatiana was.  Only by then it is too late, she was married and though still in love with the gentleman in question but unwilling to become unfaithful.  Tragic and beautiful.  Not to say that nobody died, someone did, but it was a foolish mistake.

I guess I was unaware of the effect that literature had on me, that I used to write love letters too.  Being a girl, a woman, that is.  All of them had different effect.  So, I do agree that we should not underestimate the power of a well-written letter.  And there should be more of them, not less.  They may not help in avoiding tragedies, but they certainly contribute to the Beauty.

“The Ghost Writer”

in my own words…”…taken from my Heart”

I don’t think I am a film buff. I have seen a lot of films, but I hardly qualify for a person who knows all that much about films, film industry, this and that director.  The knowledge must be very expansive and I don’t have it.

I did indulge in watching movies simply because it was my way of escaping from life.  And lately I do not watch movies for a few fairly simple reasons.  I barely have the time, I have no money and I am too immersed in doing something else.  I indulge more in reading about self-development.  Whether I can show much result for the latter, I am not quite sure, but I certainly seem to have developed more tolerance and patience and open-mindedness.

So, coming from these new heights of being improved me (LOL)…  I wouldn’t have the opportunity to go and see “The Ghost Writer”, but I was lucky enough to make a new friend and she invited me to see a movie to celebrate the fact that she had recently found a job.  The choice of a film we made together, but I still have the feeling that I influenced her choice more than she influenced mine.  The reason I am saying this is purely that our choices don’t seem to be so spontaneous as we sometimes tend to think.

And the opinions we had about “The Ghost Writer” at the end were quite different.  I enjoyed the film immensely despite the fact that thinking back about the story itself I found that it was hardly realistic.  But I abandoned the idea that films should be realistic long time ago.  But everything else gave me pleasure.  The scenes by themselves.  Open and dark and gloomy sea, winds, sand, cold atmosphere, the house with glass walls.  I dare say, the plot did not interest me all that much; I was submerged in something all-encompassing.  What it was exactly, I don’t even know.  But when I found a picture in the review, it struck me again – it was precisely “IT”.  It was my gut reaction to the visual beauty.  It did strike something in my heart, in my mind, it was so much on the emotional level.  Maybe the film very much reflected my own mood indeed.  Quite possible.  I liked Ewan McGregor, he felt so genuine in his role.  And the best thing that he said was “…take it from your Heart”.  Maybe it was not exactly what he said, but I think it was the essence.  I felt it and kept this feeling throughout the film.  I was more in the character of the writer, than the whole political scene that never interested me.  The appeal of Ewan McGregor’s character is that he seems to be open, innocent, naïve, very touching person with whom it was easy for me to identify.  It felt like I could be him, our hearts beating in unison – I go through life making the most ridiculous mistakes.  And his death at the end of the film seems so pointless yet so profound.  In my opinion, of course.

Source: http://www.cinematical.com/2010/02/27/review-the-ghost-writer/

Review: The Ghost Writer

by Dawn Taylor Feb 27th 2010 // 1:03PM

 Roman Polanski’s latest thriller, The Ghost Writer, is a fascinating mash-up of homages, cinematic in-jokes and self-references, the sort of film that tends to either delight or irritate film buffs — sometimes inspiring both reactions silmutaneously — while leaving more casual viewers a bit flummoxed. Surely Polanski couldn’t have meant for his green-screen backgrounds to be so patently false! And oh, the performances are stiff and self-conscious! Almost immediately, the arguments begin in one’s own head as to whether this movie is deliberately, stylishly melodramatic, or a tad clunky by accident.

As good as The Ghost Writer is — and it really is quite good — the film itself doesn’t seem to know, either. Part of the problem may lie in the road it took to the screen, what with the director finishing the film while under house arrest in Switzerland, and additional studio meddling which resulted in a painful number of overdubbed line-readings turning effing F-words into “soddings” and “buggers” in order to acquire a PG-13 rating. What’s left is the feeling that this could have been one of the director’s great films, in the same league as Chinatown or Knife in the Water, but the distractions of Polanski’s personal life, and other forces behind the scenes, kept it from reaching masterwork status.

The plot, adapted from Robert Harris’ novel The Ghost, is a clever bit of nouveau noir: A professional ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) is offered a truckload of money to complete the memoir of former British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) after the original ghost dies under suspicious circumstances. Isolated at Lang’s coldly modern beach house and warned by Lang’s assistant (Kim Cattrall) that the manuscript must be kept under lock and key, the ghost slowly pieces together a puzzle that connects the memoir, Lang’s involvement in a CIA torture scandal, and his predecessor’s death. McGregor’s wide-eyed, “who me?” demeanor brings the right note of dewy dimness to the role, playing as he is a man who should have heard klaxon horns as soon as he was offered $250,000 for a month’s work.

The heaviest handed of Polanski’s homages comes with the way he fashions his picture as a modern-day Hitchcock film, with Cattrall standing in for Hitch’s signature icy blonde (and doing a fine job, despite an accent that veers wildly from upper-crust British to mid-Atlantic and back again) while Olivia Williams, as Lang’s wife, fills out the darker side of the neurotic-noir-gal quotient. A propulsive, orchestral score by Alexandre Desplat evokes Bernard Herrmann’s music for North by Northwest without being nearly as memorable. Polanski is at his Hitchcockiest in scenes that involve driving (a long set piece that has McGregor following the directions on a car’s GPS recalls James Stewart tailing Kim Novak in Vertigo) and an almost-final sequence that follows a note, passed hand-to-hand through a party, that goes on for about six hands further than it should.

The Ghost Writer also suffers a bit from overall tone, in that Polanski’s best films have had an intimate, close-in, almost claustrophobic quality to them, while here the action takes place in a glass-and-concrete mansion and outdoors on windswept winter beaches. All this chilly expanse is intended to create a sense of isolation, but unfortunately it also fails to draw us into McGregor’s increasing peril, as does Polanski’s insistence on presenting a couple of key plot turns via characters watching the news on enormous plasma-screen televisions — it keeps us at a distance, where the Hitchcock films on which Polanski is obviously basing this picture all become tighter framed, more entangled and tense as the story gallops toward conclusion. Despite a lot of wonderful imagery and a smart screenplay, the film is just too visually expansive and laconic to inspire an overwhelming sense of dread.

It’s interesting to note that one of the better references in The Ghost Writer is to Polanski’s own work. As McGregor’s writer unravels the unsavory facts about his new job and his employer, we return two or three times to shots of Lang’s groundsman, a middle-aged Asian man, attempting to sweep off the deck outdoors next the beach. The wind whipping around him, he keeps adding detritus to a wheelbarrow only to have the wind blow it all back out onto the deck again. It’s a clever visual metaphor, and also recalls the Japanese gardener in Chinatown, who provided a key clue when he told Jake Gittes that his employer’s salt-water pond was “bad for glass.”

Almost any film by a master director offers moments that delight and illuminate, even when the movies themselves are minor offerings in the director’s oeuvre (see as well: Scorsese’s Shutter Island). The pace of The Ghost Writer is deliberate and assured; the performances by the actors are wisely considered. It’s a good-looking film that feels as if it could have used a bit of tightening up, as well as an R rating to avoid the unfortunate overdubbings — but there are moments of brilliance that make it more than worth tolerating the missteps.

It seems strange nowadays, but I do have difficulty even picking a film.  Maybe I just do not want to waste my time watching some garbage.  The major difficulty is, of course, in defining what garbage is.  I can only pass a judgment after having watched a movie.  Now, I try to laugh at myself on many accounts.  This one is no exception.

Maybe it simply was awhile since I was aware of what is out there.  There is no list in my mind of what I should watch.  So I feel like a blind person in a forest.  Then I go to the “Hidden Gems” category and try picking something suitable.  Then I get stuck with what is exactly suitable.  Suitable for what?  For my mood?  For improving it or for reflecting it?  Or neither?

When I picked “Two Lovers”, it is hard to say what exactly I expected.  I think instinctively I knew it would not be a simple comedy you forget right after the film is over.  I like Joaquin Phoenix and he was so highly praised for his performance, that it was hard to resist.  The fact that Gwyneth Paltrow was there also was almost a turn-off, but you can’t have everything.  So there, the choice was made.

After having watched “Two Lovers”, I haven’t thought much about the film.  Not because I would say it was not good.  It was not thrilling; I would even say it was boring to a point.  But I kept thinking about it, which is always a sign, that the film is really not bad.  Anything that makes you think is worthwhile.

I read the reviews later.  The critics sympathized with Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) and commented how likeable he was and how the critics knew what he should have done and how he should have behaved in order to make the right choice in love.  Pick somebody familiar and safe (and boring) and forego flashy, unstable and instantly attractive.  Save yourself trouble, trade excitement of love and a possibility of heartbreak for security, stability, maybe friendship. 

“However, while it is clear to the audience which of the two women Leonard should focus his attentions on, he instead pursues the other one.”  (Cinema Autopsy, Thomas Caldwell)  http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2009/06/06/film-review-two-lovers-2008/

Of course, there is truth and merit to that, but I wonder how many people could actually resist falling in love and how many of us sit and calculate the odds and the possible outcomes.  Maybe those who took the decision-making courses (you know “What-if analysis”, “Strategic Thinking”).  I know I did.  But I still prefer to be in love rather than not.  Maybe that is why Leonard is so likeable.  Not because he is bipolar, because he is very human.

That is the word – BIPOLAR. 

The film does not put such emphasis on his diagnosis and Leonard is only shown as a depressed person, rather than manic.  The diagnosis is mentioned in one of the reviews and whether it is an assumption or not, there is no way of knowing.  Being bipolar, I know the difference much better than film critics.  But, let’s say it does not matter.

But one point was so touching, so it took me a few weeks to really come back to it and remember.  Subtlety and gentleness of the film is chiefly responsible for the fact that I cannot stop thinking about it.  The first scene – Leonard is going (home?) or on his way to deliver dry-cleaned clothes – and he jumps into the ocean.  Suicide out of the Blue?

Here critics should have said that it was not advisable to jump fully-clothed in freezing water.  Oh, no, I never jumped.  I only thought about jumping from the balcony from the 20^th floor.  Oh, yes, I can sympathize.  That scene is now somewhat haunting and somewhat a relief really.  To see it from a different perspective.  You do have to jump in order to see the light of day.  To realize that there actually will be another day and …who knows what.

Just do not ask the film critics what is right and what is wrong.  Whom to pick and fall in love with.  Make your own decisions.

So, “Nein!” – 9 the Movie

It is so not me.  The apocalyptic nature of the film is so unappealing.  Gloom and doom?  I just could not care less.  Why did I watch it?  I read a review a friend of mine wrote.  That made me aware of the film’s existence.  What universe do I live in?  I am no longer aware what movies are out there.  But this one found its way….

So, nein, nein, und nein!  My German flashes are, of course, not coincidental; the Bad Guys (Military) are so unmistakably the Fascists of the Second World War.  They could have used Russians, but maybe the Germans won the Military Fashion and Paraphernalia Contest.

I watched the film with my son, who is only six (not nein yet!).  It was another suggestion of my friend.  If you are ever to watch this film, watch it with little children who won’t ask too many questions.  He was right.  Somewhere near the end, I asked my son, whether he was up to speed with the movie, because I failed to see the point.  My son said that he understood a lot.  The machine is not as clever as the dolls were and the dolls won.  The peace would be restored.  In another form, however.

One little concept I liked, though.  The scientist, who has realized too late what he has actually done, scatters his soul into these little burlap characters.  I thought that my soul is scattered in all the little pieces of writings, thoughts, reflections, sorrows, and unnecessary revelations.  No, this web site is not a diary.  Each post is but a reflection of my soul.  No, there is no device to put it together.  There is no way back.  Change is life, forward it goes with water drops with some green dots in them in the film.  In my life?  Who knows…

new word, new page, new chapter…

another change, new love, new beauty, new dance, on and on

neues Wort, neue Seite, neues Kapitel…

eine andere Änderung, neue Liebe, neue Schönheit, neuer Tanz, immer weiter

[first lines]

Arthur Edens: Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go to work… all I’m saying is wait, just wait, just-just-just… please hear me out because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it’s…

I’m begging you Michael. I’m begging you. Try and make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago I came out of the building, okay, I’m running across Sixth Avenue, there’s a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I’m dictating. There’s this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and

I… I-I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered with some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… like a… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic – embryonic – fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve-I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death.

And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I… I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the… the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity.

And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now.

 http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041007/REVIEWS/40920003/1023

 BY ROGER EBERT / October 8, 2004

I went to see “I Heart Huckabees” at the Toronto Film Festival. It was on the screen, and I was in my chair, and nothing was happening between us. There was clearly a movie being shown, but what was its purpose and why were the characters so inexplicable? I found the pressure point that is said by the master Wudang Weng Shun Kuen to increase mental alertness. Then I dashed out for a cup of coffee. Then I fell into the Yoga sutra of yatha abhimata dhyanat va, literally clearing the mind by meditating on a single object until I become tranquil. I meditated on the theater exit door.

I think this review is a masterpiece itself.  “It was on the screen and I was in my chair, and nothing was happening between us.  There was clearly a movie being shown…” To me it did sound both kind of moronic and entertaining.  I used to like collecting reviews because most of them are an art in itself.  The rest of funny lines I only highlighted.

At festivals, the moment a movie is over, everybody asks you what you thought about it. I said, “I didn’t know what I thought.” Then how did it make you feel? “It made me feel like seeing it again.” You mean you liked it so much you want to see it twice? “No, I’m still working on seeing it the first time.”

Now I have seen it twice. The movie is like an infernal machine that consumes all of the energy it generates, saving the last watt of power to turn itself off. It functions perfectly within its constraints, but it leaves the viewer out of the loop. This may be the first movie that can exist without an audience between the projector and the screen. It falls in its own forest, and hears itself. It’s the kind of movie that would inspire a Charlie Kaufman screenplay about how it couldn’t be made. The director and co-writer is David O. Russell, who made the brilliant “Three Kings” and the quirky “Flirting with Disaster,” and now … well, he has made this. God knows he’s courageous.

I am about to commence a description. Not a plot description, as I am not sure it has a plot in a meaningful way, but an account of what transpires. Jason Schwartzman plays Albert, an environmentalist who wants to save nature, and begins by saving a large rock that is all that remains from a despoiled swamp (he reads a poem beginning, “You rock, Rock.”) Albert makes a deal with Huckabees, a chain store, to underwrite his Open Space Coalition. Huckabees doesn’t care about the environment, but cares deeply about seeming to care. Jason turns out to be a wild card for them, doing things like planting trees in the middle of parking lots to reclaim them for nature right then and there.

We meet Brad Stand (Jude Law), a Huckabees spokesman, and Dawn (Naomi Watts), a Huckabees spokesperson. They are what in their limited way they interpret as love. Brad’s plan is to use Albert as a cover for a scheme to turn virgin marshland into a shopping mall. Albert, meanwhile, constantly crosses paths with a towering African exchange student, and knows this must Mean Something, so he hires two Existential Detectives to sort it out for him. These are Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin).

Their method is to follow a client everywhere, taking notes on all that he does. “Even into the bathroom?” Yes, even into the bathroom. Bernard and Vivian now begin to be seen in the backgrounds of many shots, or outside the windows, or behind the door, or under the furniture, taking notes. They need to see everything in his life because they believe that everything is connected, and so to know everything is to know all the connections.

Brad the double-crossing executive decides to undercut Albert by hiring the detectives to also follow him and Dawn around. Albert, meanwhile, meets a fireman named Tommy (Mark Wahlberg). Tommy is so eco-conscious that he refuses to ride the fire truck to fires, pedaling alongside on his bike. (He usually gets there first.) Tommy for reasons unclear to me knows about another Existential Detective named Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), who is from France. She is an old enemy of the Jaffes, and no wonder: French existentialists define themselves by being old enemies. Catherine has a peculiar sex scene in a mud puddle.

Everybody talks a lot, the Jaffes in particular. They do a kind of double act, finishing or repeating each other’s sentences. They seem to believe quantum physics is somehow involved in their theories, and talk about how two objects can be in different places at the same time — no, hold on, that’s the easy part. They talk about how the same object can be in two places at once.

Their discussions about this quantum phenomenon reminded me wonderfully of the explanations of the same topic in “What the #$*! Do We Know,” a recent “documentary” in which one of the “expert physicists” has been unmasked as a chiropractor, and the filmmakers are all followers of Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old spirit guide from Atlantis. Because nobody knows $#!t about quantum physics, this doc actually got respectful reviews from gullible critics like me, because it made about as much sense as most of what I’ve read on the subject.

Individual moments and lines and events in “I Heart Huckabees” are funny in and of themselves. Viewers may be mystified but will occasionally be amused. It took boundless optimism and energy for Russell to make the film, but it reminds me of the Buster Keaton short where he builds a boat but doesn’t know how to get it out of the basement. The actors soldier away like the professionals they are, saying the words as if they mean something. Only Wahlberg is canny enough to play his role completely straight, as if he has no idea the movie might be funny. The others all seem trying to get in on the joke, which is a neat trick. I will award a shiny new dime to anyone who can figure out what the joke is.

 http://www.exclaim.ca/motionreviews/generalreview.aspx?csid1=115&csid2=808&fid1=27797

Alexandra

Directed by Alexander Sokurov

By Travis Mackenzie Hoover

Alexander Sokurov is the kind of master who amazes and infuriates in equal measure — there’s no denying his artistry or his seriousness but his grandiose sweep of the arm can sometimes lapse into arrogance. But no matter what political assumptions he makes during the short running time of Alexandra, the sensitivity he brings to the material forgives all sins.

 

The Alexandra of the title is an elderly woman visiting Chechnya for the sake of her soldier son; she’s taken into his encampment and witnesses the boys as they play with their guns, gobble down her gifts of food and blithely accept the fact that they’ve been sent off to die. Our heroine is stunned at this, as is Sokurov, and as she wanders out of the camp and back to it we see her desire to live differently.

 

The movie is a nuanced and sensuous portrait of military life like nothing since Claire Denis’s Beau Travail. Though it sadly evades a proper position on the Chechnya conflict, its evocation of a normalised war culture and the lack of resistance surrounding it are better than most films can even imagine. So to are the director’s typically gorgeous golden hues and fluid, enveloping environment.

 

Cinematic critics of the Iraq war could learn a lot from this movie: its approach, which makes human what is usually idealised or demonised, might help break the deadlock between moralism and sympathy, which plagues the debate, as well as replacing the mushy rhetoric that vulgarises the discourse.

 

I’m not exactly sure that this is an anti-war movie but Sokurov’s beautiful plunge into the cosmic unfairness of it all was enough to lodge the movie in my brain and let it grow in significance with each passing day. (Proline/Rezo)

Surprisingly enough, I saw “Beau Travail”.  I even liked it.  With “Alexandra”, I had no idea what is was about when my mother and I started watching it.  I simply relied on my father’s opinion when he said “oh, it is a good movie, watch it.”  We did.  We kept watching it waiting and waiting when the “good” part will come.  It never did.  The film was dark and gloomy and it was absolutely and totally boring.  We watched the whole film and then I was so mad at my father.  “How possibly could you recommend something like that?”  I vowed not to listen to his opinion ever again.  Maybe I was angry for him for a month.

But now, when a few months have passed after I watched the film and I came across this review, so beautifully written, I made me think.  Why was I so mad?  This film is not a piece of entertainment.  It is a vision and it is a piece of art.  I should be more open-minded.  Maybe my anger was a direct result of my expectations not being met.  At that moment I was not ready to think about anything.  I was suffering.  But I am in this never-ending suffering mode.  I have to find a way to live, not just suffer.  What is a definition of a good movie anyways?  Is there such a thing?  When I watched “Bruno” and I loved it, majority of people did not share my enthusiasm.  “Oh, it is gross, it is too much.”  Too much of what?  Entertainment?

http://www.exclaim.ca/motionreviews/generalreview.aspx?csid1=115&csid2=808&fid1=27799

The Babysitters

Directed by David Ross

By Erin Oke

The Babysitters is a pretty dark, oddly amoral take on suburban life. The story starts with overachieving Shirley, a 16-year-old with a crush on Michael (John Leguizamo), the dad she sits for. Michael is restless in his home life, alienated by his formerly fun-loving wife (Cynthia Nixon), who has turned into a high-strung, overprotective mom.

In my opinion, Michael should not be so unhappy in his married life because his wife is not the worst-case scenario.  Far from it.  I actually liked her.  She seems open enough and forgiving.  She is not an overprotective mom, she did not impress me as such and the rift between the two is so common, they are just different people longing for understanding.  Or novelty or sex or happiness or maybe all of those things.  We all are.  Sex becomes too boring, life becomes too boring, and the partners are not into each other anymore.  Who said, they were a good match at the beginning?  We tend to misjudge each other.  Michael misjudged Shirley and vice versa.  What did he find in her?  Her youth?  Entrepreneurial spirit?  I found her to be repulsive.  Even her looks were in the way for me.

When Shirley and Michael start an affair, his guilt leads to a massive pay-out for her “babysitting” services. Soon other married men catch wind of the deal, and Shirley starts involving her friends in the babysitting action, taking the standard 20-percent cut of the profits for her college fund. When her business is threatened by a high school rival, Shirley uses any means necessary to regain her powerful status. Meanwhile, her surprisingly tender relationship with Michael is strained by their practical business arrangement.

It is strange how little thought it took Michael before he reached out for his wallet.  All of those people are on autopilot.  Nobody thinks too much.  Teenaged girls offer sex; well, the demand is there immediately.  If there is a “need” to beat somebody up into silence, it is done without hesitation.

Shirley is a strange character.  She totally caught me off-guard.  She accepts money with such little hesitation that it is barely noticeable.  That left me with a strange feeling.  And these teen-aged girls embark on the prostitution so easily with no remorse as if they were corrupted long time ago.  Ready for the opportunity to appear.  When I was jokingly suggesting last year that teen aged girls should become mothers and give up their babies for adoption for money to pay for their college tuition (discussion of the film “Juno”), I was given hell.  But my suggestion seems to be so innocent compared to this “Babysitting” business.

The film starts off as a strangely rosy portrait of teenage prostitution, all self-esteem building and problem-free for the girls, who are flattered by the attention of the horny but harmless older men. The film gets darker and sadder as it goes along, as Shirley starts to unravel and the business spirals out of control, but it refuses to take on a moralistic tone or judge its characters.

Katherine Waterston is excellent and unsettling as Shirley, capturing the character’s journey from awkward schoolgirl neat freak to cold, calculating businesswoman revelling in her newfound power to her inevitable fall from grace. John Leguizamo almost impossibly manages to be likeable and sympathetic in his role as the straying husband who develops real feelings for Shirley, which is a testament to his acting skills.

The film is a little reminiscent of Heathers in its dark satire of high school life, replacing that film’s exploration of violence with The Babysitters’ attitude towards sex. (O.D.D. Entertainment)