Speaker 1: On the dol Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
Speaker 1: or do they happen individualism, the patriarchy, zef in best
Speaker 1: start changing it with the Beck dol Cast. Hello there
Speaker 1: but Bush, Welcome to Nope? No, well good? Can you start? Hi,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Beck dol Cas. My name is Caitlin O.
Speaker 1: Caitlin Jimmy. I'm like, there's too many hard continents. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do it. There's one hard count. This is
Speaker 1: the best cost there's we gotta stop. We have to stop.
Speaker 1: I think that it's good that we got it out
Speaker 1: at the top because out of our system we don't
Speaker 1: know how to do it. This is the Battel Cast.
Speaker 1: We talk about the portrayal of women in movies. Let
Speaker 1: me talk about the portrayal of French people, and maybe
Speaker 1: specifically we all talk about Beauty and the Beast and
Speaker 1: today's starring al. We use the Betel test as a
Speaker 1: jumping off point to start a larger conversation about how
Speaker 1: women are represented and treated and portrayed in cinema. The
Speaker 1: cinema take there's that really good flight of the Conquered song.
Speaker 1: And anyway, the reason we're talking about French people in
Speaker 1: France so much is that we're talking about the movie Amily.
Speaker 1: But before we get into it, let's introduce our guest,
Speaker 1: who has been very patiently waiting, so sorry. She is
Speaker 1: the co creator and co writer of Mom Presents. I
Speaker 1: think these guys are hot stuff. Hanna Michaels, Hey here,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I was having fun listening to that.
Speaker 1: That's the name of the sign. Why does that come
Speaker 1: up in that? There's there must be someone I forget
Speaker 1: what happens that makes that song happen? Oh you know what,
Speaker 1: I bet it is? I bet in New Zealand they
Speaker 1: take French like we take Spanish like it's just obligatory.
Speaker 1: So then there's those phrases that you just know and
Speaker 1: nothing else, right, Yeah, that's why they keep saying BiblioTech
Speaker 1: and disc atteche. Yeah. Well, anyway, so we're talking about Emily. Hannah,
Speaker 1: when did you first see this movie? What is your
Speaker 1: relationship to it? Tell us everything? What I realized when
Speaker 1: I watched it again is I don't actually hate Emily.
Speaker 1: I hate dudes who suggest I would like Amily. Okay,
Speaker 1: I agree with that I did enjoy rewatching this movie.
Speaker 1: I was kind of because sometimes when we revisit movies
Speaker 1: that I've been attached to in my past, it's, I mean,
Speaker 1: as it is for us all we have to take
Speaker 1: a long, hard look at a movie we love and say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: like this is shaped who I am in a way
Speaker 1: that has had negative effects. I was ready for that
Speaker 1: to happen for Emily, and I was not as disappointed
Speaker 1: as I thought I would be. Yeah, yeah, same, same.
Speaker 1: I My reaction to it the first time was really angry,
Speaker 1: and then looking back, it's just like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: my relationship with a dude who suggested that I watch it,
Speaker 1: Like this is right? So you were projecting some maybe
Speaker 1: negative feelings towards a specific man to the movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: Emily is like, I guess, an anxious pixie dream girl
Speaker 1: kind of. She's not like a yeah, she's not manic,
Speaker 1: but she's romanticized for social anxiety in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: This movie does a lot of weird stuff with mental
Speaker 1: illness where she's like, but okay, that was a choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A lot of choices are made. Yeah yeah, yeah. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stalking in this movie. So a lot
Speaker 1: of stalking, a lot of orchestrating of like very like
Speaker 1: Rube old Berg, almost crazy things where you have to
Speaker 1: go to this place and then to follow these arrows
Speaker 1: to do this thing and then look through this thing
Speaker 1: and did it. Was one of those things where there's
Speaker 1: a few scenes especially and where I'm getting way ahead,
Speaker 1: but like the you know, last third of this movie
Speaker 1: is I'm only basically setting up this really demented obstacle
Speaker 1: course to make some guy fell in love with her.
Speaker 1: And the twist is it works. But but if you
Speaker 1: score that movie a little bit differently, it's straight up
Speaker 1: a murder film because she's like at pay phones wearing sunglasses,
Speaker 1: and if there's like a little like no no no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no, I was like, Oh, she's dangerous. She's
Speaker 1: a scary lady. Okay. I do agree that there is
Speaker 1: a specific kind of guy who will recommend this movie
Speaker 1: to you, And I don't know exactly what it is
Speaker 1: about them that bothers me, but I know that all
Speaker 1: the music from my least favorite student film of all
Speaker 1: time is ripped directly from Emily. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: love Boccardi Boston? Of course I'm talking about Love Boccardi Boston.
Speaker 1: It's online to all our listeners. You gotta watch Love
Speaker 1: but already, Bosson. If you've dated me for over I
Speaker 1: would say three weeks you've seen lave Paccardi Bosson. If
Speaker 1: you haven't, it's available to you online. Uh, it's And
Speaker 1: Caitlin because we've been dating for what a year and
Speaker 1: a half now, Yeah, Caitlin has seen Lumbaccardi boss And
Speaker 1: I think what twice one and a half one and
Speaker 1: a half, Well, that can be resolved. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's in a shitty student film that like
Speaker 1: uses Emily's music in a very egregious, transparent, earnest way
Speaker 1: that will make you just want to die. That's the
Speaker 1: other thing I realized. It's not the movie, it's the
Speaker 1: offshoots from Like, if there's no Emily, there's no Garden State.
Speaker 1: If there's no Emily, there's no Travelocity gnome Um. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that tracks. It just created like a cultural moment
Speaker 1: where it's like there's a lot of cool romantic ship,
Speaker 1: but also there's a lot of romanticizing people who aren't people.
Speaker 1: They're just idea, is right. I first saw the movie
Speaker 1: I Want to say I was in college. This movie
Speaker 1: also came out in two thousand and one, another two
Speaker 1: thousand one joint. I saw it in college. I had
Speaker 1: a friend recommended to me a woman as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, so not there was no man who was saying, well,
Speaker 1: I watched this, like this movie, you should watch it,
Speaker 1: um I had is how they all talked. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: I went skiing, when did you? When I went to
Speaker 1: Late Runner with me? I saw it probably around like
Speaker 1: two thousand four five, a few years after it came out.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because there's one of the few foreign films.
Speaker 1: Is the first foreign movie we've done on the podcast.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few foreign films that have crossed
Speaker 1: over into mainstream American cinema in a pretty big way,
Speaker 1: a big way. I meant to do more research on
Speaker 1: sort of film cinema history. I'll go into this a
Speaker 1: little bit later. I didn't do enough research, but I'll
Speaker 1: just say what I know from the film classes I
Speaker 1: took in college, where I did get one of two
Speaker 1: degrees that I do have in film, the second one
Speaker 1: being a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston. I don't
Speaker 1: like to bring it up. I can't believe you made
Speaker 1: me bring it up, but I did do that. So
Speaker 1: I just it's out there now and now you know.
Speaker 1: But I'm interested in exploring French cinema a bit and
Speaker 1: why maybe this movie, unlike many other French films, was
Speaker 1: able to sort of crossover into American mainstream cinema. Anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw it in college. I remember liking it enough
Speaker 1: that I bought it on DVD and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: what a fun, whimsical movie. And then I don't think
Speaker 1: I watched it again, even though I did have it
Speaker 1: very accessible to me on DVD because also brag, I
Speaker 1: have a DVD player. Uh, there's no way around it.
Speaker 1: But I did. I like it, just went on the shelf,
Speaker 1: and then I haven't watched it again until yesterday. So
Speaker 1: it shows you how much I cared about rewatching it.
Speaker 1: I came to this movie, and I'm curious that how
Speaker 1: many young women have this experience. I first became aware
Speaker 1: of this movie on basically Tumbler and Tumbler adjacent websites.
Speaker 1: I was like eight or nine when the movie came out,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't I wasn't aware of it of French
Speaker 1: cinema at that time. But fast forward a couple of
Speaker 1: years when I was in high school. I do remember
Speaker 1: seeing it. It It would pop up a lot. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of screen caps I can remember clearly, specifically the
Speaker 1: one where she says that I'm nobody's little weasel. Saw
Speaker 1: that a million times on the primitive internet in my
Speaker 1: old life journal where I wrote poetry. That's probably where, yeah,
Speaker 1: like websites like that, because I'm like, this would have
Speaker 1: been a little bit before Tumbler was big, because Tumbler
Speaker 1: was really big when I was like in late high
Speaker 1: school college. But stuff like that, where I had seen
Speaker 1: so much of this movie, I'm like, this looks cute.
Speaker 1: What's this? What's this? And then as finally I saw
Speaker 1: it on TV and was like, oh my god, like
Speaker 1: I really really really liked this movie in high school,
Speaker 1: kind of forgot about it, and then rewatched it, I
Speaker 1: would say, for the first time in at least five
Speaker 1: years today, and it I was pleasantly surprised that there's
Speaker 1: one specific plot point in this movie that I had
Speaker 1: totally forgotten that I find very upsetting. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, I'm like, oh, this is misguided in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, But given the fact that it's two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. I was pleasantly surprised at how well
Speaker 1: it held up for me. Yeah, it's cute. It's it's
Speaker 1: a lot more cute than I'm giving it credit for
Speaker 1: because of the dudes who are like, hey, your socially
Speaker 1: anxious watch this. But yes, yes, but other than that, like,
Speaker 1: it's a cute film with some ideas about love that
Speaker 1: are not the greatest, but that's fine because we all
Speaker 1: didn't have those. How did you first come across That's
Speaker 1: part of why is I dated some dude in college
Speaker 1: and I was older than you guys when I saw it,
Speaker 1: which is probably another reason, um that I didn't as
Speaker 1: much if I know what you mean, but you like
Speaker 1: for the first time, right, I just want everyone to
Speaker 1: know that I'm thirty one. My god. She's like Kyl's
Speaker 1: like compulsively spouting information. She's like, I went to college,
Speaker 1: this is my age. Please don't say her PIN number.
Speaker 1: I'm having a stroke anyway, that's what you do catchphrase. Um.
Speaker 1: I definitely think that if I had seen this movie
Speaker 1: in college for the first time, I probably still would
Speaker 1: have liked it. I don't think I would have been
Speaker 1: as extremely attached to it as I was in high school,
Speaker 1: because it's so easy to plug yourself into Emily and
Speaker 1: be like, oh there is some sort of as well.
Speaker 1: As long as you make an incredibly complicated and scary
Speaker 1: plan to force someone to fall in love with you,
Speaker 1: you can still be a little bit shy, which at
Speaker 1: that time I was very responsive to that message. Sure,
Speaker 1: as a fourteen year old girl with the back bace,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, hell yeah, we can pull this off. Yes,
Speaker 1: he has a twenty three year old girl. I was like, No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't work. I've tried it. I'll do the recap
Speaker 1: of the story. We focus on a character named Amalie.
Speaker 1: She is a French gal living in France. Ever heard
Speaker 1: of it? Isn't she in Paris? I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: I would guess so. French listeners, those who have not
Speaker 1: abandoned us, let us know where Emily takes place, if
Speaker 1: it's in Paris or not also missed opportunity. No one
Speaker 1: draws her like one of their French girls. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: just had to shoehorn that Titanic reference in there, and
Speaker 1: I am not sorry. God Almighty Emily is about a
Speaker 1: young woman. We meet her as a child so part
Speaker 1: of the story is that her dad doesn't hug her enough,
Speaker 1: so she and he's a doctor, so whenever he gives
Speaker 1: her a monthly check up, her heart beats so fast
Speaker 1: that the excitement of him touching her that it makes
Speaker 1: him think that she has a heart condition, and then
Speaker 1: it affects her entire rest of her life because which
Speaker 1: first of all means probably her dad's not a very
Speaker 1: good doctor, or he's like, maybe I should get a
Speaker 1: second opinion, like it's nuts, so he is. So they're like, well,
Speaker 1: she has a heart condition, she can't go to school,
Speaker 1: so she's homeschooled then, and like doesn't ever get to
Speaker 1: be socialized out in the world really, so she's she
Speaker 1: ends up being this kind of like isolated adult who's
Speaker 1: very shy. She's socially awkward. She doesn't necessarily feel complete
Speaker 1: as a person, and a three year old person would
Speaker 1: feel this way, yes, but the way that they resolve
Speaker 1: it for Emily is just like come on, right, because
Speaker 1: so she's also like sort of take a night class,
Speaker 1: Emily figure out. So this in his first to adulthood
Speaker 1: where she's still but she has a job. Now, she's
Speaker 1: out in the world. She's a waitress at a cafe,
Speaker 1: but she's still kind of a loner. She doesn't relate
Speaker 1: well with other people, and she's also sort of prone
Speaker 1: to flights of fancies. She's a very whimsical Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: her thing is She's like, I don't like sex, but
Speaker 1: what I love is contaminating food with my hands. There's
Speaker 1: all these tie shots of Omily just dip in her
Speaker 1: paws into open bag, like that's someone's food. You can't
Speaker 1: do that. They're the sexual politics of this movie, and well,
Speaker 1: we can get into this later as well. The sexual
Speaker 1: politics of this movie are very all over the place,
Speaker 1: where it's for better or worse. It's usually pretty clear
Speaker 1: where a movie falls on sex, of like whether it's
Speaker 1: being demonized or whether it's being like very pro sex,
Speaker 1: but this movie is kind of all over the place
Speaker 1: where it's not it's not critical of Emily for not
Speaker 1: being interested in sex, but there is something about the
Speaker 1: way that sex is portrayed in this movie that does
Speaker 1: feel a little bit I don't think prudish is the word,
Speaker 1: but something adjacent to that. Well, we can like dig
Speaker 1: into that, but yeah, the way that sex is treated
Speaker 1: in this movie is weird and also I think is
Speaker 1: something that I was very responsive to as a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old in the back brace of like I don't
Speaker 1: need to have sex. I can just you know, put
Speaker 1: my hand in some of food and come that way
Speaker 1: have orgasms from skipping rap, right, I mean, we we've
Speaker 1: got the We've got This is like one of the
Speaker 1: Hallmark like not like the other girls. Um yeah, sorry, continue.
Speaker 1: So she's this, you know, kind of socially awkward, like
Speaker 1: you sort of said, maybe not manic, but but the
Speaker 1: HIXI dream girl in a sense. But don't worry, she's hot.
Speaker 1: She's very cute. The story starts with her finding a
Speaker 1: little box in her bathroom that a little boy had
Speaker 1: left forty years earlier. It is like a period piece
Speaker 1: to an extent, not a lot, not only a few
Speaker 1: years removed from when it came out. But there is
Speaker 1: this through line of the movie where it takes place
Speaker 1: just as Princess Die passes away. You can't say die dies.
Speaker 1: That's just makes it seem like you're making a joke,
Speaker 1: which we would never Uh, it's not so Princess Night
Speaker 1: passes away during this movie, And that was another I
Speaker 1: was like, that was definitely a choice that I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure why that was the choice, but interesting, well,
Speaker 1: it's a catalyst of her she finds out about this.
Speaker 1: She drops like the lid to her perfume or something
Speaker 1: like that. It rolls across the floor and un wedges
Speaker 1: this like hiding spot basically where this little box was,
Speaker 1: and she's she digs it out and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's this. This little boy left all of this little
Speaker 1: like toys and tokens and treasures behind. So she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna find out who this belonged to. I'm going
Speaker 1: to return it to him, and if he's moved by it,
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to be a do gooder from now on.
Speaker 1: So she sort of like takes on this project and
Speaker 1: she starts to figure out who this person might be,
Speaker 1: and in so doing, she runs into this man named Nino,
Speaker 1: who also is a bit of a manage tricks tricksie man.
Speaker 1: I would like half of the cast of this movie
Speaker 1: is just like, yeah, this is a vague, cartoony wow,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, it almost reads is a fairy tale.
Speaker 1: This movie, to me, does there's that guy with hollow bones.
Speaker 1: I did forget about all hollow bones anyway, So she
Speaker 1: comes across this guy who's like rummaging around under this
Speaker 1: photo booth in a subway station, and they kind of
Speaker 1: make eyes at each other and they're like, Oh, this
Speaker 1: guy comes back later because as she starts like doing
Speaker 1: her do goodie, she comes in contact with him again
Speaker 1: in this scene where he's trying to return something to
Speaker 1: someone else, and then he loses a book and she
Speaker 1: picks up this book, so she's like, I have to
Speaker 1: return this book to him, and it's full of all
Speaker 1: of these discarded photographs from the people have taken at
Speaker 1: these photo booths. So he has this like hobby I
Speaker 1: guess of like finding the he's thrown away ripped up photos,
Speaker 1: putting him in a like a photo album. And then
Speaker 1: he it makes him come. I don't know why he does,
Speaker 1: so we have to they're hand in the basket of food,
Speaker 1: the texture of the page. You're like, this book is
Speaker 1: being come on all the time. Fine, right, So then
Speaker 1: she sort of orchestrates this whole thing to get the
Speaker 1: book back to him, but because she's so shy, she
Speaker 1: can't actually meet him in real life. Meanwhile, he like
Speaker 1: there's like hints that she's falling in love with him,
Speaker 1: even though she doesn't know who he is or they've
Speaker 1: never spoken. And then also he loves her back. You
Speaker 1: see her like throbbing heart the second she sees him.
Speaker 1: It's like I love it first sight, which automatically when
Speaker 1: I was fourteen and I was like, but now I'm
Speaker 1: just like like I'm gonna launch myself through a pane
Speaker 1: of glass. Especially with that thing with her dad in
Speaker 1: her heart earlier, that's just kind of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's a call back to your dad. Touched.
Speaker 1: That's not good. That didn't even register for me, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not good. Her her relationship with and that is
Speaker 1: like another that's like something that is kind of I
Speaker 1: feel like dropped in the movie where at the beginning
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like I think if you saw
Speaker 1: the first ten minutes of this movie, you would think
Speaker 1: that this would be This movie would have a lot
Speaker 1: to do with Emily's relationship to her father, because you
Speaker 1: learned about Emily's father before you even learn about her.
Speaker 1: You hear his whole life story. Then you hear a
Speaker 1: little bit about her mom, not as much because it's
Speaker 1: a movie. We can't be talking about women too much. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then you hit the plot point where it's like
Speaker 1: daddy never touched and again, the translation might be funky,
Speaker 1: we don't know, but there was like a line that
Speaker 1: was basically like like every six year old girl Emily
Speaker 1: wanted to be hugged by her daddy more than anything
Speaker 1: in the world. And that is like such a strongly
Speaker 1: worded statement that you feel like it would come back more.
Speaker 1: But the dad is kind of dropped in the movie
Speaker 1: event like where she sees him a lot, it's clear
Speaker 1: that he is socially weird and doesn't quite know how
Speaker 1: to connect with her when she's an adult as well,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not really like I was surprised that
Speaker 1: they put so much emphasis on that, and at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the movie, and then he kind of
Speaker 1: disappears from the narrative and is replaced with a different
Speaker 1: older guy who's the artist, older guy m R. Which
Speaker 1: which kind of reminded me of Shape of Water was
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know, that was a similar relationship
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, genue and artist who failing but has
Speaker 1: lots of exposition to say. But anyways, Yeah, also, she
Speaker 1: she has a dead mom, so she is like a
Speaker 1: Disney princess this is a fairy tale. Mom dies in
Speaker 1: a crazy way. I did laugh if I forgot that.
Speaker 1: I forgot that her mom died like that because someone
Speaker 1: is trying to commit suicide by jumping off a building
Speaker 1: and lands on her mom, killing her mom. I think
Speaker 1: she was successful in the suicide, but I don't think
Speaker 1: she firs the suicidal fish. And now this it's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of suicide in the first like ten minutes
Speaker 1: of this movie, which again sort of we don't come
Speaker 1: back to it. It's weird. It's a weird tonal start.
Speaker 1: There's I mean, I think the film like I can't.
Speaker 1: I just said film, Well, no, thank you, I have retired.
Speaker 1: I just called it the film. But the visual consistency
Speaker 1: in this movie is pretty much across the board, like
Speaker 1: it's a very this whole movie was dipped in some
Speaker 1: very ornate piss like it's a very yellowy movie. It's
Speaker 1: a very Cepia romantic looking movie. But totally the story
Speaker 1: is weird. You think it could be a movie about parents? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean there's this voiceover throughout the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and it's like focusing on a lot of different things
Speaker 1: that really don't have anything to do with the story,
Speaker 1: all these subplots get introduced, where so the main plot,
Speaker 1: which also doesn't even come up in the story until
Speaker 1: maybe forty or forty five minutes in, where she needs
Speaker 1: to return this photo album to this guy, so that
Speaker 1: becomes the main plot where she's orchestrating ways to get
Speaker 1: them to meet up again so that she can return it,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't actually want to meet him because she
Speaker 1: like returns it from Afar. And then like she's also
Speaker 1: kind of chickening out because she's so shy that she
Speaker 1: can't meet this person. And then she also orchestrates this
Speaker 1: thing where she's gonna help him solve the mystery of
Speaker 1: who this one particular person is in the photo album,
Speaker 1: this bald guy who keeps popping up over and over
Speaker 1: and it's like, who's this guy? And she helps him
Speaker 1: figures out. So while all this is happening, she's also
Speaker 1: helping some of her colleagues falling but helping people know.
Speaker 1: She's interfering with people's lives, and she's breaking her friend
Speaker 1: up with a scary criminal like that that's the thing
Speaker 1: that okay, but you know what keep going. She also
Speaker 1: like breaks and enters into this guy's house. Granted this
Speaker 1: guy is very mean, but like she's like making key
Speaker 1: copies so that she can go and his house and
Speaker 1: funk with all of his ship and like I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then she's like encouraging her dad via this garden
Speaker 1: gnome to travel by like sending him she steals his
Speaker 1: gnome and then sends him photos in other countries. So
Speaker 1: she's yeah, she's basically just like trying to inspire people
Speaker 1: to be like better people. But actually the twist is
Speaker 1: she's not a complete person herself. Like she's fixing other
Speaker 1: people's messes, but her own life is still a mess.
Speaker 1: And don't worry. There's a heavy handed painting metaphor into that.
Speaker 1: Maybe she's just here as some here are some things
Speaker 1: that we say at the painting. Maybe she's just different.
Speaker 1: She can't relate with other people. I just lost French.
Speaker 1: She has an absolute right to mess up her life.
Speaker 1: And then there's one point where All bird Bones is
Speaker 1: like enough, It's like we have to stop talking at
Speaker 1: this painting right now. There. Yeah, it's almost like an
Speaker 1: Emma Ish austiny, like she's interfering a lot and not
Speaker 1: dealing with her own problems. Is what it becomes, but
Speaker 1: it takes a while for us to get there. For
Speaker 1: I sort of forgot. I'm like, I forget exactly how
Speaker 1: far into the movie she actually it takes her to
Speaker 1: get the box to the guy, and it was sooner
Speaker 1: than I thought. And then the objective of the movie
Speaker 1: switches again to general meddling, and then at the end
Speaker 1: it switches again to trapping me in a relationship with her.
Speaker 1: So they're like, her objectives are always I mean, it's
Speaker 1: always sort of too fill the void is I guess
Speaker 1: the overarching thing. But yeah, like the specific objectives changes
Speaker 1: a couple of different times. There's not a ton of consistency.
Speaker 1: I will say that the scene I forgot that because
Speaker 1: it used to make me cry in high school. But
Speaker 1: it made me cry this sound too of when he
Speaker 1: actually gets the box back, and like like that that
Speaker 1: gets me every time. With the scene with the marbles,
Speaker 1: well to launch us into the discussion, so the movie
Speaker 1: with finally she's able to have a face to face
Speaker 1: with this guy Nino, who she's been trying to connect with.
Speaker 1: She catches him in a net. She pulls him into
Speaker 1: her apartment and they start kissing, even though they've never
Speaker 1: really spoken to each other, and then the next scene
Speaker 1: is them like holding each other's naked bodies. So it
Speaker 1: all worked out. They got together because she traps him
Speaker 1: in her Venus fly trap and their in love. This
Speaker 1: had a negative effect on how I my entire life.
Speaker 1: So that's the end of the story and every and
Speaker 1: they're happy now. They're so happy to launch us into
Speaker 1: the discussion all of her objectives starting from like finding
Speaker 1: whose box this belongs to helping her debt, like they're
Speaker 1: all either to help a man or to help a
Speaker 1: female friend of hers get at a man. Hard agree
Speaker 1: with that there. I at one point I wrote, Emily
Speaker 1: is a guys gal, and I think that that is
Speaker 1: to an extent true. And it's not that she's ever
Speaker 1: hostile or mean to the women in her life. She isn't.
Speaker 1: But every character that we see her create a sustaining
Speaker 1: bond with in this movie is a man, and that
Speaker 1: you know, you can go to a character based She
Speaker 1: was raised by her dad basically, but she seems to
Speaker 1: connect easier with men. Where she hangs up with bird Bones,
Speaker 1: she becomes very attached to Nino Nino. Nino Nino keep
Speaker 1: saying exactly but like everyone we see her connect with
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way is a man. Also Lucien. Lucien.
Speaker 1: Lucien was my fucking favorite. I so adorable. So he's
Speaker 1: the character who worked. He and this other guy or whatever,
Speaker 1: the guy that she puts foot cream in his toothcaste, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they worked. They worked together at a market it and
Speaker 1: this older guy is very very mean to Lucien and
Speaker 1: insults him and brates him and all this stuff. So
Speaker 1: she Jame's rubbing up on your live so helps Lucien
Speaker 1: by like basically publicly humiliating his boss, who's just like
Speaker 1: really awful, who spirals into this like manic state and
Speaker 1: becomes it seems like borderline suicidal. In one scene, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell you with certainty I have put foot
Speaker 1: cream on my teeth and I'm not I don't need
Speaker 1: help with that. He loses his ship. That's like he's
Speaker 1: like someone's been in my home. And then he like
Speaker 1: can't put his shoes on anymore, and he's vibrating and
Speaker 1: he's calling the psychiatric Association, and it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: that only happens because she plugs that number into his phone.
Speaker 1: He doesn't deliberately call that number. Okay, she makes him
Speaker 1: think that she's basically gaslighting him because she's making him
Speaker 1: think that the most whimsical guest lighting really beautifully scored
Speaker 1: according to music to this. But that is how she
Speaker 1: approaches a lot of these situations where she goes. So
Speaker 1: there's this guy, a regular at her cafe, who is
Speaker 1: there to see one of her colleagues, Gina, because they
Speaker 1: used to date. His character's name is Joseph, Joseph, and
Speaker 1: he's got his eye on Gina. Meanwhile, Georgette, she works
Speaker 1: at the tobacco counter. So Umily's like, what if I
Speaker 1: set these two up instead? So she goes to Joseph
Speaker 1: and she's like, can't you see how much Georgette is
Speaker 1: like doing all this stuff to get She's not She's
Speaker 1: just got like nasal spray. And then she goes to
Speaker 1: Georgette and it is like, don't you see how much
Speaker 1: Joseph is like always sitting so close to you? And
Speaker 1: then they have sex in a public space in the
Speaker 1: bathroom that's very loud, knocks all the glasses over and
Speaker 1: the cadet sex and this movie is very loud. So yeah,
Speaker 1: she's basically like manipulating everybody but it's it's okay because
Speaker 1: she's helping them. That character Joseph is to me, and
Speaker 1: I vaguely remember that, I didn't remember the specifics of
Speaker 1: exactly how that story unfold. That part really that really
Speaker 1: bugged me. Of like, he is actively stalking his ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend every day. No one ever thinks to call someone
Speaker 1: say hey, seems like this guy might be dangerous. He's
Speaker 1: literally Uni bomber, carrying around a tape recorder and staring
Speaker 1: at his ex girlfriend all day and people are kind
Speaker 1: of mean to Gina about it, and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: it just just tell him to go away. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is not on her. He's the one who has
Speaker 1: seemingly left his job full time stalk her, and every
Speaker 1: time she does anything, he's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Are you You're fucking him? Like
Speaker 1: there's you know, which I'm just like, oh, jeez, I've
Speaker 1: dated that guy. I mean, I've used to date a
Speaker 1: guy who would show up in my work for my
Speaker 1: whole shift and just be like just keeping an eye
Speaker 1: on you. And it's like, no, uh, we're married now,
Speaker 1: Uh you know, he's stalking her. And then Emily goes
Speaker 1: over to him, and I'm like, oh, does she tell
Speaker 1: him to funk off? Like that would be cool? But
Speaker 1: she doesn't. She's like, oh, let me just hook you
Speaker 1: up with my friend, this very stable guy who's always
Speaker 1: harassing my coworker. Let me just hook him up with
Speaker 1: my other coworker like that. I'm just like, then he
Speaker 1: starts harassing her too, like they have sex, but then
Speaker 1: they're like relationship goes sour, and then he's like doing
Speaker 1: the same thing over again, which I'm glad at least
Speaker 1: that Georgette gets the funk out of there, because I
Speaker 1: was so worried that that would be like, yeah, the take,
Speaker 1: because I forgot how that subplot ended. But it was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: she does. She does tell him to sunk off, and
Speaker 1: then there's that interesting and I thought this was an
Speaker 1: interesting um exchange between whoever that failed writer is who's
Speaker 1: always at the cafe, Miss Susanne, who is the like
Speaker 1: brassy bartender lady and Joseph. Georgette is like, I'm done,
Speaker 1: funck off, goodbye, I've got to go, you know, raw
Speaker 1: daga bottle of nasals, right or whatever. She does, But
Speaker 1: there's Suzanne. She says women need air and then Joseph says,
Speaker 1: you give women air, they blow you off, which is
Speaker 1: like he's a feminist. But it was interesting to see,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that was the point where the
Speaker 1: movie finally passed some decisive judgment on that character, because
Speaker 1: before it was like, Oh, this guy's like quirky and
Speaker 1: weird and we know he shouldn't be here, but maybe
Speaker 1: he's just misguided and needs love. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: this guy needs help, like he needs to not training
Speaker 1: orders filed against him to not be in this cafe,
Speaker 1: but the movie seemed like weirdly tolerant of his pres
Speaker 1: and so finally, by the end with that line, I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, good, now we can write him off
Speaker 1: as like the movie thinks this guy sucks. I don't
Speaker 1: know why it took so long to reach that conclusion,
Speaker 1: because it seems pretty obvious from moment one. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that that would have been obvious to me
Speaker 1: the first time I saw this movie, because that's like
Speaker 1: kind of just like an exaggerated cartooning version of like
Speaker 1: the Chase narrative, like just hang out, Yeah, just hang out,
Speaker 1: She's yours. This whole movie is a like on the
Speaker 1: Chase narrative. There's a there's a scene with Nino in
Speaker 1: the porn shop where he works, where he's talking about
Speaker 1: how he loves Emilie because of the mystery, and there's
Speaker 1: supposed to be that big contrast with the porn shop,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, if you watch that as a team,
Speaker 1: you're like, Yeah, the mystery is fucking great, And if
Speaker 1: you watch that now, it's just like, no, fucking buy
Speaker 1: me a vibrator. It's right. His colleague is actively like
Speaker 1: putting price tags on her name. Her name is Eva,
Speaker 1: and she is She basically only provides exposition. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: I wanted what does she do? Like, yeah, can we
Speaker 1: stop watching amily and watch whatever she's doing. She seems
Speaker 1: to be enjoying her life. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: female characters in this movie. There are, um the way
Speaker 1: they were treated is all over the board. But the
Speaker 1: characters that I found, and perhaps I've missed him, Emily,
Speaker 1: Emily's mom, Georgette Madeleine, the land neighbor lady, who I
Speaker 1: have some things to say, well, Gina, my dame, Suzanne,
Speaker 1: the newsstand lady who does she have a name? I
Speaker 1: never caught it, Okay, maybe because French. We didn't catch it,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find a name for her, but she
Speaker 1: she's in a bunch of different scenes, the video girl Eva.
Speaker 1: There's at one point a stripper named Samantha that Nino
Speaker 1: tries to talk to, but she's busy dancing in a box.
Speaker 1: It's the whole thing, and those are the ones that
Speaker 1: I There's one more that I call Philmine, who is
Speaker 1: the flight attendant who helps Yes Emily take pictures with
Speaker 1: her dad's gnome in other parts of the world. Amazing, Yes,
Speaker 1: but she is basically like she's a tertiary character, hardly
Speaker 1: has anything to do with the story. Most of these
Speaker 1: female characters exist in relay shintoman or their primary objective
Speaker 1: or plot line has to do with getting a man,
Speaker 1: which sucks a lot. Emily's plotline is all over the place,
Speaker 1: but it eventually settles on getting a man. Georgette, she's
Speaker 1: basically coerced into having a man and then leaves them,
Speaker 1: which is like okay. Gina, who I really liked to
Speaker 1: that and another character I felt was like under serviced.
Speaker 1: Gina doesn't do anything wrong this entire movie. She's very nice,
Speaker 1: she's very tolerant of Emily being a weirdo. But everyone
Speaker 1: is kind of always like Gina is loose, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it's just because that guy Joseph's always saying are you
Speaker 1: sleeping with him? Like she's not, she's and even if
Speaker 1: she has leave her alone, Oh yeah, Okay, Madeleine Madeleine
Speaker 1: the neighbor weird subplot, so she's I think one of
Speaker 1: the first scenes in this movie that passes the Bactele
Speaker 1: test is the scene between Emily. Spoiler alert it does test,
Speaker 1: but the scene between Emily and Madeleine the neighbor. She's
Speaker 1: always trying to figure out who this box belongs to,
Speaker 1: and Malone's like, Hi, I'm Madeleine. My husband died forty
Speaker 1: years ago and it ruined my life and I was
Speaker 1: just like, whoa coming in hot. Yeah, she's still like
Speaker 1: devastated by it and it concerns all of her energy.
Speaker 1: But that's literally all we know about her, and we
Speaker 1: don't see her for a while, or we see her
Speaker 1: for like two seconds or whatever, and then at the
Speaker 1: end we get like she she receives, you know, the
Speaker 1: letter from the letter from her husband saying like I
Speaker 1: love you and blah blah blah, and her the end
Speaker 1: beat to her character, she like makes out with a
Speaker 1: framed portrait of her dead husband, and I was like, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That storyline confused me because didn't she
Speaker 1: already have letters from him, which we learned early on.
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, but I don't think that they like
Speaker 1: said as explicitly like I love you. I thought that
Speaker 1: was what I thought. It's all about his day or what. No,
Speaker 1: I see, Okay, yeah, it's it's supposed to be Emily
Speaker 1: providing closure, but what it ends up is Emily keeping
Speaker 1: the myth of this forty year dead guy alive for
Speaker 1: this poor woe fueling the fire, yeah, like extended, especially
Speaker 1: if fast forward like six months and Madeline finds out
Speaker 1: the letter was fake. Oh yeah, that's going to result
Speaker 1: in some serious psychological consequences. So that was That was
Speaker 1: like one of the female characters that I felt was
Speaker 1: like most disservice and just felt like not even underwritten,
Speaker 1: but just like that was a choice that I don't
Speaker 1: know without but that was a choice because there are
Speaker 1: so many subplots that you think one of them might be, Oh,
Speaker 1: Emily's helping this person reconnect with a friend or Emily's
Speaker 1: helping she does kind of Again, do they not have
Speaker 1: night classes in France? Do they not have paint nine
Speaker 1: in France? There's plenty of things you can do with
Speaker 1: your time that aren't actively sad lives of others in
Speaker 1: a very tweet way. With banks, yeah, and helping people
Speaker 1: and interfering with people's lives always as it relates to men.
Speaker 1: So like I feel like she if she did want
Speaker 1: to be this do good or who's helping people? Great,
Speaker 1: So maybe volunteer at a food bank. Maybe like go
Speaker 1: to an animal shelter and pet some dogs. Don't grab
Speaker 1: the nearest blind person and starts shouting at them, and
Speaker 1: she didn't even know where he was going. She just
Speaker 1: leads him, like leave you here, and then he was
Speaker 1: like where I am blind? I do want to point
Speaker 1: out though, that speaking I mean animals, she does have
Speaker 1: a cat, and that cat most likely has eight nipples.
Speaker 1: This has been additor, subtracted, you know, only so full
Speaker 1: of whimsy that she might have just an extra nipple.
Speaker 1: She may have just amputated because she just made a
Speaker 1: necklace of cat nipple and sold it on. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: you know, I'm only it's just like if someone breathed
Speaker 1: life into Etsy dot com. There she is. She is
Speaker 1: et dot com. So I think he might be able
Speaker 1: to write off the fact that so much of her
Speaker 1: motivation and her decisions and actions are based around like
Speaker 1: romantic pursuits, either for herself or helping other people, because again,
Speaker 1: like this is sort of a fairy tale, so it's
Speaker 1: going to be this like, oh, a romantic narrative with
Speaker 1: all of these romantic subplots and stuff like that, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's just it's also it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be exclusively that, because there's so many other characters
Speaker 1: and so many other either like fully fledged subplots or
Speaker 1: just sort of like story beats that relate to whatever character.
Speaker 1: It could be her helping a fellow woman take her
Speaker 1: driver's license tests, Like why is it always like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to help set you up with a man
Speaker 1: in or I have to do It's always just it's
Speaker 1: so focused on either helping men or helping women get men.
Speaker 1: And if you can conceive of a suicidal fish, you
Speaker 1: can probably come up with problems that are development. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: She has a great yardstick. She has a vivid imagination,
Speaker 1: Like you would think that she'd be able to like
Speaker 1: transcend just helping people find a boyfriend, right. Can we
Speaker 1: talk about how especially with this story where she is
Speaker 1: trying to get Nino and her to cross paths, but
Speaker 1: not really because she keeps chickening out, but all the
Speaker 1: measures that she goes through to orchestrate this is so
Speaker 1: she like gets him to come to this park thing.
Speaker 1: She calls a pay phone. He gets on the phone
Speaker 1: and she's like, follow the blue arrows, and then he
Speaker 1: runs and follows the arrows. I swear to God score
Speaker 1: the scene differently, and it's fucking score crazy. It's like hate.
Speaker 1: She's gonna kill him. She's wearing sunglasses. She's gonna kill him.
Speaker 1: It's not good. Like it's just it's bad. Put that
Speaker 1: on top. So he follows the arrows and then he
Speaker 1: comes up to this man who is dressed as a
Speaker 1: statue pointing at something. So she apparently paid a person
Speaker 1: like a street performer to wait there waits in this economy,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe there's a little bit postling boom. It
Speaker 1: was a child too, Like a child is less terrifying
Speaker 1: to you to talk to than this guy. Then she
Speaker 1: also pays a kid to be like hey, make sure
Speaker 1: you look at what the guy's pointing at. So she
Speaker 1: pays someone to dress up as a statue and then
Speaker 1: point at some binoculars, and then she apparently also pays
Speaker 1: a kid to tell him where to look in case
Speaker 1: she's an idiot, which she is, so then he runs
Speaker 1: up and he looks through the binoculars, and then he
Speaker 1: sees her returning his book. Then she figures out who
Speaker 1: this mystery person is who keeps appearing in his photo album.
Speaker 1: Turns out he's a repairman for these photo booths. So
Speaker 1: she also want rather than just like meeting Nino and
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, um, let's go for a drink, and
Speaker 1: then on their day they say, hey, you know that
Speaker 1: person that was like in all of your photos, that
Speaker 1: bald guy. I actually figured out who he was. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just the repairman. Instead of doing that, which would
Speaker 1: have been so much easier, she orchestrates a whole other
Speaker 1: thing where she deliberately breaks a photo booth and then
Speaker 1: tells him where to go so that he can so
Speaker 1: that a lot I will say, I just made some
Speaker 1: connections to something that I recently did in my personal
Speaker 1: life that could be perhaps trades back to no, because
Speaker 1: you already know and it's really embarrassing. Okay, But like
Speaker 1: all I had to say, if we are to look
Speaker 1: at Emily as a movie that is directed at primarily
Speaker 1: young women women, which I don't think it's unreasonable to say,
Speaker 1: I think that that's the probably assumed who the movie
Speaker 1: stuck with the most for sure, especially if it's like
Speaker 1: shy young women. This is not a responsible blueprint to
Speaker 1: present young women with. Uh, in terms of just like
Speaker 1: you gotta do like it looks, you know, it's visually interesting,
Speaker 1: shout out to the accordions, but the yeah, like saying like,
Speaker 1: if you're a young woman who's uncomfortable approaching romantic partners,
Speaker 1: that you should instead of gaslight them half to death,
Speaker 1: destroying your own personal life in the process, and that
Speaker 1: will achieve you a free ride on a moped like
Speaker 1: that patently untrue, And and watching it unfold was it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it is you know, that romantic subplot
Speaker 1: is not subtle, but the way it unfolds is so
Speaker 1: like there's so many red flags that we just blaze
Speaker 1: past them. And because we love Emily and we love
Speaker 1: Bangs uh, and so yeah, there are moments where I'm like,
Speaker 1: we should the movie, you should be passing a little
Speaker 1: bit of judgment on her right now, but it's ned's
Speaker 1: never gonna happen. And again, I think you can chalk
Speaker 1: this up to it being so whimsical and fairytale like
Speaker 1: that you can't really take it that seriously. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I think you're supposed to just walk away from this
Speaker 1: being like, oh, what a fun fairytale like story. But
Speaker 1: for young women who are watching this, who might not
Speaker 1: make that connection because they're fourteen year old brains haven't
Speaker 1: fully developed. They're gonna be like, wow, look how oh
Speaker 1: my god love, and you're just supposed to like do
Speaker 1: all these grand gestures and then a boy will like me.
Speaker 1: And one, it's extremely heteronormative. Every relationship in this movie
Speaker 1: is is always so extremely white movie. There's one okay,
Speaker 1: there's one point where a lesbian hits on Emily and
Speaker 1: she is terrified. Oh yeah yeah, And it's not even
Speaker 1: that like she's being friendly. It's not like I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like that. The way that that scene is
Speaker 1: like filmed and like continually cutting back to a horrified
Speaker 1: Audrey tend to like, yeah, because that is a pretty
Speaker 1: innocuous interaction that could be interpreted as friendliness. But the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way it's filmed is like, yeah, she's a gay
Speaker 1: person in France and like, yeah, obviously idiot. Well then
Speaker 1: so like, but I feel like this movie depicts Paris
Speaker 1: the way that a lot of movies depict in New
Speaker 1: York City, and it's like, oh, only white people here,
Speaker 1: even though Paris is a very diverse city. Yes, so
Speaker 1: it's craze. Like I just remember that scene in the
Speaker 1: beginning where the voiceover the narration is like Emily likes
Speaker 1: to amuse herself with silly questions like oh, I wonder
Speaker 1: how many people are having orgasms right now? And then
Speaker 1: it's like all these quick cuts of all the people
Speaker 1: couples having sex. Yeah, I love a lot of ages
Speaker 1: and body types, but all straight white couples, yes, And
Speaker 1: I was just like, wow, so much diversity and Emily.
Speaker 1: But the the use of narration in this movie quick,
Speaker 1: because it's a lot of it bothers me. I think
Speaker 1: that a very simple choice that could have been made.
Speaker 1: Give us a female narrator. Why did the narrator of
Speaker 1: this movie who talk about lazy writing, but like, why
Speaker 1: why was it a man? Like, why is there a
Speaker 1: man talking over half of this movie that is a
Speaker 1: woman's story, because that makes it seem like it's coming
Speaker 1: from a male perspective, even though the main character of
Speaker 1: the story is a woman. That really bothered me on
Speaker 1: this view because I forgot how much of it there
Speaker 1: is is And again it's like a weird thing that
Speaker 1: I'm like, did this At what point did this movie
Speaker 1: change hands in terms of who wrote it? Because the
Speaker 1: top half of this movie is so heavy in voiceover narration,
Speaker 1: especially like the first half hour where there's not even
Speaker 1: a lot of dialogue. There's like a set up through
Speaker 1: the voiceover and then like two lines of dialogue to
Speaker 1: punctuate the scene, and then we're onto the next thing,
Speaker 1: but then it sort of goes away. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's that unusual though, for any movie to have in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the movie, when they're all the exposition
Speaker 1: is basically happening, for there to be a lot of narration,
Speaker 1: and then for that too, I agree, I agree, But
Speaker 1: the thing that it was, I felt like it was
Speaker 1: too much, especially because a lot of the exposition were
Speaker 1: given at the beginning of the movie. Doesn't really have
Speaker 1: a lot of bearing on the rest of the movie, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the first time minutes about her dad's touching of her
Speaker 1: or the lack thereof which they really drill into you.
Speaker 1: And then but why you know, but yeah, really simple
Speaker 1: choice that could have been made. Give us a female
Speaker 1: narrator would have made more sense. Yeah, the first thirty
Speaker 1: minutes of this movie is kind of like a series
Speaker 1: of Okay Cupid profiles. It's just like you're just like,
Speaker 1: what questions were you asking it? Okay does ask those questions?
Speaker 1: They never fu with okay Cupid. It was a big
Speaker 1: okay Cupid head. There is a question on okay Cupid
Speaker 1: that is is would you be okay with making dolphin
Speaker 1: noises for your partner? Which, like, IM get any more specifics? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the person who wrote that question has a
Speaker 1: dolphin noise thing, and that's fine, but that's very specifically.
Speaker 1: That's just way too specific. I would do it in public,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't do it in a well, no one
Speaker 1: asked me, But no one's ever asked me that question.
Speaker 1: But if that were to come up, like I'll make
Speaker 1: a dolphin noise and if we're at a Walmart, Well
Speaker 1: back to a point I was trying to make it
Speaker 1: never got there a while ago. I'm sorry, it's quite
Speaker 1: all right. Oh my god, I probably distracted myself. Um,
Speaker 1: you're all under arrest now, my god. But I was saying, like,
Speaker 1: you can chalk this up to this movie being a
Speaker 1: fairy tale, so like the depiction of romantic love isn't
Speaker 1: going to be very realistic. But the fact that, like
Speaker 1: you see these two characters fall in love without even
Speaker 1: ever knowing each other's actually like very reminiscent of snow
Speaker 1: White our recent episode on that movie where snow White
Speaker 1: decides she likes Prince Charming even though their only interaction
Speaker 1: had been him scaring her and her running away and
Speaker 1: then singing right and then well like song I have
Speaker 1: but one song, and then but then he also mysteriously
Speaker 1: loves her, even though again they've never interacted hot. So
Speaker 1: I just think it's irresponsible to keep making romantic stories
Speaker 1: that are reminiscent of these fairy tales that depict romantic
Speaker 1: love so horribly and like so unrealistically. It's like, why
Speaker 1: do we keep doing this? Granted this was seventeen years
Speaker 1: ago that this movie came out, but yeah, um, and ultimately.
Speaker 1: I mean, something that does bug me about this movie
Speaker 1: is that after all this where On only does grow
Speaker 1: as a character outside of her romantic self, where she
Speaker 1: does like learn to connect with people in a way
Speaker 1: she hadn't before. She gets a little bit more confident
Speaker 1: in herself, she's a little bit less shy, she you know,
Speaker 1: has more like she does come into her own to
Speaker 1: an extent. But then it just becomes like and because
Speaker 1: she did all that, she has a boyfriend now and
Speaker 1: making that seem like the end game of like working
Speaker 1: on yourself is like fuck, like right where the truth
Speaker 1: is the reward is you have to just keep doing
Speaker 1: that forever. You have to work on yourself, and then
Speaker 1: one day there's no more work to be done because
Speaker 1: you've passed away. I think you can look at it
Speaker 1: like that, and you can also look at it like
Speaker 1: her pursuit of a man is what fixed her, Like
Speaker 1: she she didn't bother to do any of this stuff
Speaker 1: until she decided, oh, I have to try to meet
Speaker 1: this man, and that's what is making me a whole
Speaker 1: complete person exactly exactly. And then she's trying to do
Speaker 1: that for other people to to various results, even though
Speaker 1: they did not ask for her and did not want
Speaker 1: to end it ends up fucking with them, like poor,
Speaker 1: Who knows when Georgette is going to be able to
Speaker 1: trust again. Honestly, I bet she's not on okay Cupid
Speaker 1: right now. She deleted her profile. She's already a hypochondry.
Speaker 1: Like he threw a very nervous person into a toxic situation,
Speaker 1: knowingly not smart, not good. Uh. There's that exchange between
Speaker 1: Georgette and the news stand lady where the news stand
Speaker 1: lady says a woman without love whil it's like a
Speaker 1: flower without sun. I was like, oh god, I'm I
Speaker 1: feel ill feminist icon newstand lady. I just nodded so
Speaker 1: vigorously my head. That was just I don't And that
Speaker 1: was like like a number of topics in this movie.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where does the movie actually fall on that?
Speaker 1: It is unclear because for some characters it seems like,
Speaker 1: oh fuck that. But then with Emily, you know, her
Speaker 1: improvement is love, and so dudes in Emily's life seemed
Speaker 1: to imply that at some point it will be quote
Speaker 1: unquote too late for her. Chill. She's twenty three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Once they said, through some sort of expedition that she's
Speaker 1: twenty three. I was like, oh, where are we wearing?
Speaker 1: What's what's wrong? Bitch? On thirty one? There Caitlin's do
Speaker 1: catchphrase bit. I wanted to explore I hinted at this earlier,
Speaker 1: but why this movie might have been able to cross
Speaker 1: over into American audiences whereas most foreign films don't. I
Speaker 1: was like trying to remember what I learned about French cinema,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember a lot, so apologies, and I
Speaker 1: should have researched this more. What I do remember is
Speaker 1: the main difference between a lot of American cinema and
Speaker 1: a lot of foreign cinema in general, is that American
Speaker 1: cinema is like very structured and formulaic, whereas a lot
Speaker 1: of French and then just other cinema from other countries
Speaker 1: that are not the US, those narratives, I think tend
Speaker 1: to be not quite so structured and not quite so
Speaker 1: like rigidly formulaic. So I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that this movie was able to cross over. And then
Speaker 1: it does resemble sort of like the love story fairy
Speaker 1: tales and like the whimsical romance that American audiences love.
Speaker 1: But again, I wish I had remembered more or read
Speaker 1: more about it. So if you are a condosseur of
Speaker 1: French cinema, feel free to tweet at us and let
Speaker 1: me know what I'm sucking up about it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just thought that was interesting that this is one
Speaker 1: of the few non English speaking movies that crossed over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was a big hit. It had a ten
Speaker 1: million dollar budget, grossed hundreds seven me four point two,
Speaker 1: big old hit. So it wasn't a hit when it
Speaker 1: came out. I think that perhaps uh and and I
Speaker 1: truly know very little about international cinema. I'm not even
Speaker 1: go in a hazard, I guess. But it was associated
Speaker 1: with a company called Mila Max that I'm sure was
Speaker 1: a feminist icon Mirramax femtassa on Harvey Weinstein and fantasy
Speaker 1: on Bob Weinstein, you know, the whole bit. But I
Speaker 1: think that that association and that this was like peak Mirramax,
Speaker 1: like Chicago too. Thou two is about to come out,
Speaker 1: baby that ship, so uh so I think that there
Speaker 1: was probably some sort of push. But in terms of narrative, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean American people respond to unrealistic love stories all
Speaker 1: the time, all the time, and also I think that
Speaker 1: there is like, uh Francophile thing that factors into like
Speaker 1: it's a it's a weird love hate relationship where people
Speaker 1: my dad says Starbucks is French. But also I was
Speaker 1: obsessed with Emily when I was a teenager personally because France,
Speaker 1: because France. There's a there's a really great comedian in
Speaker 1: New York named Ruby mccollist who has this great bit
Speaker 1: about how obsessed teenage girls are with France because of
Speaker 1: the romance that it implies, and like you know, like
Speaker 1: the looping lid and the whole bit where I know
Speaker 1: girls who dropped out of Spanish class and took French
Speaker 1: because of this movie. Yeah like this, I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like French culture plus American teenage girls equals wet moisture.
Speaker 1: That's what it boils down. Aristotle is gonna Killby's upset.
Speaker 1: Can I just say that I wish that the insiding
Speaker 1: incident instead of Princess Dies Death. I wish it had
Speaker 1: been Emily seeing on the television a trailer for Titanic,
Speaker 1: because that was that's what made her drop the thing,
Speaker 1: and that's how she found the box. I think Princess
Speaker 1: Dies Death was one of the first memories I ever
Speaker 1: like clearly remember my mom weeping, yeah when that happened,
Speaker 1: and my brother being there and a very tiny baby,
Speaker 1: and he was probably weeping too because he was a baby,
Speaker 1: not because he was a big fan of Princess. But
Speaker 1: I'm interested in and I have truly no context. I
Speaker 1: tried to do some research on what the motivation was
Speaker 1: because this movie came out No. One. But it's set
Speaker 1: in like the two weeks, and they give you the dates,
Speaker 1: even like they repeating that they're repeating dates, and I
Speaker 1: am not sure, like the way they talk about Princess Die.
Speaker 1: There's one point where bird Bones gets piste off at
Speaker 1: Lucienne and goes Princess d Princess Deep, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: why is he piste off about Princess Die? And like
Speaker 1: does it have to do with like the death of
Speaker 1: an icon? The death of a beautiful woman? I feel
Speaker 1: like is referenced at one point where the news standlady
Speaker 1: says something about like, oh, isn't it so sad she
Speaker 1: was so beautiful and beautiful and then normally is like, oh,
Speaker 1: what it would have been okay if she was old
Speaker 1: and ugly? And then the new Standlady turns out it's
Speaker 1: not a feminist icon because she's like, yeah, yeah, look
Speaker 1: at mother Teresa, Like, is if like it? She looks
Speaker 1: because she was old, right, she old, and she looks
Speaker 1: like there is what she's saying. Yeah, I say, Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa hot. Anyways, Yeah, that was That was something that
Speaker 1: I totally forgot was a part of the narrative. But
Speaker 1: it does. It comes up over and over. It is
Speaker 1: the inciting incident of the movie to an extent, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't exactly put my finger on why. I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to know what the answer that is. Impair that
Speaker 1: with like this artificial like clock that some people are
Speaker 1: putting on Emily Like, yeah, it's I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: something to do with that, And I don't know where.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, if you don't do something now with
Speaker 1: your life, you might die in a car crash when
Speaker 1: you're young. Yeah is that? Like I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just like what they do. But also it's like, well
Speaker 1: you better find a guy now when and that worked
Speaker 1: out well for Princess Die. I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of all over the place. Now I have to
Speaker 1: go home and watch a twelve hour documentary about Princess
Speaker 1: Die Again done before I'll do it again. She's an
Speaker 1: icon whatever great beanie baby loved the memorial Iconic Beanie Baby.
Speaker 1: If only all of our lives could be boiled down
Speaker 1: into one iconic beanie baby. I'm going to start designing
Speaker 1: my memorial beanie baby. Now. Mine would be Paddington to
Speaker 1: the Beanie Baby bear perfect. I don't even know. Mine
Speaker 1: is just going to be a bean bag with a
Speaker 1: little sad face and sharpiet. They remember those stuffed animals
Speaker 1: that like, um, they're so big in the nineties. You
Speaker 1: you open them up and there's a bunch of little
Speaker 1: ones inside, So you're like performing a c section on
Speaker 1: these stuffed animals? Am I making this up? I swear
Speaker 1: to god? I remember, I don't remember expand the smell Crow.
Speaker 1: What kind of animals was it? Like different dogs and
Speaker 1: like unicorns, and you'd open them up and they're a
Speaker 1: bunch of little ones inside. I said they were giving bird.
Speaker 1: I guess, I don't know. I can really into a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, there were these these free app
Speaker 1: games that I found just because I was like trolling
Speaker 1: the app store, and they were like all these offbrand
Speaker 1: app games where you can give a C section to,
Speaker 1: like the characters in Frozen. There's some of the wild
Speaker 1: I wonder if they're still online, because they were straight
Speaker 1: up you were giving like what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: pretty realistic C section where you would sedate Princess Elsa.
Speaker 1: She's extremely pregnant. It's crazy. You can give a C
Speaker 1: section to the snow man and a human white baby
Speaker 1: boy comes out no matter what you do. Every you
Speaker 1: give this no man a C section. He's pregnant with
Speaker 1: a Caucasian man. It's the man the way we I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that's my memorial stuffed animal, though for sure, I want
Speaker 1: my memorials to be an app where you could give
Speaker 1: me but it looks very realist. If it turns out
Speaker 1: this isn't not a memory and just something psychologically terrible
Speaker 1: about me, no, I believe you. I swear everyone. If
Speaker 1: anyone's still playing the Frozen C Section games at me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I forget the name of it. I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of what will happen if I search Frozen C Section online,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to do that. But if you
Speaker 1: remember the name of the game, I'm pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was free I'm pretty sure that it was like one
Speaker 1: of those apps where you could tell they had like
Speaker 1: photoshopped a lot of like it looked too real. It
Speaker 1: looked too and the baby comes out, baby covered in goop.
Speaker 1: And then and then you gotta put a crown on
Speaker 1: it because it's royalty. Because I checked out as soon
Speaker 1: as you said frozen c section because that just sounds
Speaker 1: like the aisle at the grocery store, where like the
Speaker 1: frozen seafood is. This is gonna derail my fucking day.
Speaker 1: I have I have things I have to do, and
Speaker 1: now I just started playing the frozen c section game again.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get back on track and Emily,
Speaker 1: is there any final thoughts anyone has about the movie?
Speaker 1: As far as Emily as a character and her character development,
Speaker 1: I think it's better than a lot of movies we
Speaker 1: see because we at least have a very clear understanding
Speaker 1: of what her personality is like. We know a lot
Speaker 1: of her corks, we know a lot of her backstory.
Speaker 1: We see her and her personality having an effect on
Speaker 1: this story and having an effect on the decisions she
Speaker 1: makes and how she approaches things. Um, A lot of
Speaker 1: movies don't bother to develop their female characters enough for
Speaker 1: we would see stuff like that. So I actually I
Speaker 1: think her character development is better than a lot of
Speaker 1: movies we've seen. But because the bar is so low,
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that the character development is superb, right,
Speaker 1: But I think and it's and maybe this is like
Speaker 1: it has to do with it not being cut and dry,
Speaker 1: kind of boring American movie, that it is like what
Speaker 1: we that we do see changes in Emily. We don't
Speaker 1: see her go from flawed to unflawed, which for a
Speaker 1: story about twenty three year old woman, makes sense. Like
Speaker 1: at the end, she's not gonna be like I've figured
Speaker 1: it out, I'm good. So in that way, it's like, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the way that the story, the place
Speaker 1: they leave us with self improvement equals boyfriend, eventually it
Speaker 1: just is like not good. Uh. We hinted that the
Speaker 1: movie does pass the backdult test. She does have a
Speaker 1: lot of conversations with the other female characters like Susan
Speaker 1: and Jit and Gina. The first the first time I
Speaker 1: noticed it passing was with her mom. Oh yes, because
Speaker 1: she's teaching her some grammar lessons and stuff like that. Yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of the conversations are about men or men
Speaker 1: get mentioned in them. But because of our version of
Speaker 1: the test where just has to be a two line
Speaker 1: exchange between two women and a man is not mentioned,
Speaker 1: there are several of those. Tons of the conversations in
Speaker 1: this movie between women, Oh man will get mentioned, or
Speaker 1: the whole conversation is about a man. So it does
Speaker 1: not necessarily pass super handily if you're comparing conversations about
Speaker 1: men to not. It was more isolated incident than I
Speaker 1: would have thought. Yes, especially the movie with so many
Speaker 1: women in it. At one point that Gina and Georgiette
Speaker 1: leaning to have a conversation and Joseph speaks into his
Speaker 1: tape recorder blatant female conspiracy, that was just like the
Speaker 1: perfect en cap is right, Joseph. I mean, the Joseph
Speaker 1: plotline for me is by far the worst part of
Speaker 1: this movie. Yeah. God, I just hate especially when movies
Speaker 1: are directed at teenage girls. I just feel like uber
Speaker 1: sensitive to like, oh, you're just telling them all the
Speaker 1: wrong things here, and it takes too long for the movie.
Speaker 1: The past judgment on it bugs me. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: also the reason one of the reasons the movie doesn't
Speaker 1: pass the test better is that we already touched on this,
Speaker 1: but like she has female acquaintances and colleagues, but no
Speaker 1: real female friendships that we see. All of her kind
Speaker 1: of close friendships are either with the guy with brittle bones,
Speaker 1: her pal Lucien at the market, her dad, Like all
Speaker 1: of the more meaningful relationships she has are all with men.
Speaker 1: So she's a guy gal. She's a guys gale. So
Speaker 1: when she is talking to women, it's usually because she's
Speaker 1: tricking them into thinking a random creep at the coffee
Speaker 1: shop that they work at likes her. So that's frustrating.
Speaker 1: So Emily holds up better than I would have thought.
Speaker 1: I definitely think she could have benefited from a female friend.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly why we had to kill her
Speaker 1: mom other than that's a funny, like the jokey way
Speaker 1: that they kill her off. But it's like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: such huge consequences on the story that it's like that
Speaker 1: can't just be like a random decision that's made and
Speaker 1: it never really comes up again. Yeah, that doesn't pay,
Speaker 1: Like that's never referenced after it just it just becomes like, well,
Speaker 1: that's why there's no mom, and that's and her dad
Speaker 1: is probably more introverted than he was before. Um shall
Speaker 1: we rank, let's rank. Let's right. Um, we've got our
Speaker 1: nipple scales your to five nipples. Based on its portrayal
Speaker 1: of women, I'm gonna land somewhere around a two or
Speaker 1: two and a half. Because it's a fairy tale. I
Speaker 1: think that you could use that to excuse a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that happen and a lot of the
Speaker 1: choices that are made, such as the super unrealistic portrayal
Speaker 1: of romantic relationships. But I'm tired of using that as
Speaker 1: an excuse because it turns out fairy tales don't treat
Speaker 1: women well, and fairy tales do not like prepare you
Speaker 1: for a healthy life. Right. Remember that Disney Princess roast
Speaker 1: we did where we realized both of our characters are
Speaker 1: just horrible things happen to them, and they have no
Speaker 1: We have no personality to build up. There's nothing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Because well because you were so and I was Cinderella,
Speaker 1: and we were both at an extreme disadvantage we had
Speaker 1: we had the oldest movies, so we had no personality. No,
Speaker 1: we looked great though, Oh of course, that's what's important.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's it's all these fairy tales I took
Speaker 1: in as a trial, right, So there's that. But she
Speaker 1: does have she has agency, although she goes to very
Speaker 1: extreme lengths to get what she wants. We didn't touch
Speaker 1: on this that much, but I do want to just
Speaker 1: acknowledge that I feel like mental illness is treated in
Speaker 1: a very weird way in this movie, to the to
Speaker 1: the point where I don't I wouldn't even know how
Speaker 1: to approach that discussion because it's not spoken about at all.
Speaker 1: But there's some like indications we see of it that
Speaker 1: are sort of either dismissed as quirky or I don't
Speaker 1: know there it was just like a very uncanny it
Speaker 1: didn't I think that's why I had such a bad
Speaker 1: reaction to it. Actually, know that you're saying that, like
Speaker 1: people are simultaneously fetishizing and chastising Emily's mental illness. Yea,
Speaker 1: And fucking dudes who would suggest you watch Emily will
Speaker 1: probably do that like to you. Yeah, Yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: think that's exactly why it's not really Emily that I
Speaker 1: have a problem with. It's same way like a manic
Speaker 1: pixie dream girl character. Fine, but that reflects on so
Speaker 1: much exactly. Yeah, the people who are like drawn to
Speaker 1: and exploit Like, yeah, it's not. That's why it becomes
Speaker 1: the responsibility of filmmakers and storytellers that if you do
Speaker 1: want to tell a story about a character like that,
Speaker 1: you have to frame them in a way that like,
Speaker 1: then you don't have these fucking idiots who are watching
Speaker 1: this being like, oh I think you would look watching
Speaker 1: because you like, is there responsibility to like responsibly frame
Speaker 1: characters and frame mental illness and things like that so
Speaker 1: that the viewer gets the right message right. And it
Speaker 1: is like when I got when a guy does say,
Speaker 1: oh you'd love Emily, they're making a specific comment about
Speaker 1: how they view you, and it is not actually very complimented.
Speaker 1: So as someone who has received a similar like oh
Speaker 1: you probably would love that, I was like, um, fuck off,
Speaker 1: my favorite movie is Doubt You Can. So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna I'm gonna go with a two nipple
Speaker 1: rating because even though she her character development is decent,
Speaker 1: all of her motivations and all of her friendships and
Speaker 1: pretty much her entire world is centered around male characters,
Speaker 1: and she is like interest it in self improvement or
Speaker 1: maybe it's not even sure if she is or not.
Speaker 1: That's what ends up happening, but it's hard to say
Speaker 1: if that's an actual goal of hers. But that happens
Speaker 1: because a man helps her get there, and then the
Speaker 1: reward of her like fixing herself a little bit, is
Speaker 1: a man. So I think not watching it through the
Speaker 1: Bechtel cast lens, I think the movie does hold up
Speaker 1: for a movie that came out in two thousand one
Speaker 1: better than we expected, but when we are looking at
Speaker 1: it through this lens, it's not great. So that's why
Speaker 1: it's a two nipples from me. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: my nipples. One goes to the cat, whose name we
Speaker 1: never find out, so if she bigs to the cat,
Speaker 1: it cannot pass the Bechtel test uh. And then the
Speaker 1: other nipple, I'm gonna give it to Gina, Emily's colleague
Speaker 1: in the cafe, because I think she was robbed a
Speaker 1: bit by the narrative. More could have happened with her
Speaker 1: she had. There's potential for that to be a better situation,
Speaker 1: better character, better storyline, what have you. I guess I'll
Speaker 1: go to as well, but we always go at the
Speaker 1: same But it's but two does sound right for this,
Speaker 1: which is always on the same page, which is so
Speaker 1: in love, which is the reward we got for working
Speaker 1: on our side. But yeah, I I'd give it to
Speaker 1: as well because it's like with Emily, we do like
Speaker 1: you're saying, she does make progress as a person. That
Speaker 1: is nice to see. The progress is a result of
Speaker 1: her own choices. For the most party, she does have
Speaker 1: a lot of agency. I just think that this movie
Speaker 1: is kind of harmful in that it can be used
Speaker 1: as a blueprint. First, I'm not so healthy interpersonal behaviors
Speaker 1: for young people. As a young person who did like
Speaker 1: ape this behavior, Yeah, I don't like it. I don't
Speaker 1: like the way that it treats mental illness. I don't
Speaker 1: like the way it treats Gina. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: one of my nippies to Lucien because I really love him,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to give my other nippy to Prison's
Speaker 1: die friends in Paradise. Two nipples great, I'm gonna bisect
Speaker 1: a nipple right in half and give it two and
Speaker 1: a half nipples. Yeah, I'm giving a one nipple too.
Speaker 1: I think Gina to she she deserves better. She does.
Speaker 1: People are endorsing her being stalked, which is just someone
Speaker 1: in the comedy community not fun to watch. And then
Speaker 1: there's that and then Eva cool definitely giving her a nipple,
Speaker 1: and half nipple goes to Emily. Well, there you go, Gang,
Speaker 1: we did it. We did France, the backt Cost Conquerors France. Hannah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here, Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. Where can people follow you online? What would
Speaker 1: you like to plug? I would like to plug a
Speaker 1: book I wrote with Alex Fere who loves Emily X.
Speaker 1: But it's called mom Presents. I think these guys are
Speaker 1: hot stuff and it's like kind of a cross between
Speaker 1: um like a Christmas letter from a mom to her
Speaker 1: daughter and Maxim magazine, or like a playgirl. It's so funny.
Speaker 1: It was really fun to write. The reason we wrote
Speaker 1: is because we were walking from a target and we
Speaker 1: saw a guy who was just buying tissues and energy drinks,
Speaker 1: and so we write about this guy and then it
Speaker 1: just became a series of profiles of weird dudes. And
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at Hannah Michael's which
Speaker 1: is spelled h A n A m I c h
Speaker 1: E l S. I'm on Google Herble. But good luck. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll help people find you. Don't we'll help people find you,
Speaker 1: and then they can show up at the cafe every
Speaker 1: single day with their tape or corner. Hey. Hey. You
Speaker 1: can follow the Batchel Cast on social media platforms such
Speaker 1: as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can go to our
Speaker 1: website back toelcast dot com. You can tweet at us,
Speaker 1: you can email us. You can buy our mer ur.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to our Patreon, which is five dollars
Speaker 1: a month and it gets you two extra bonus episodes
Speaker 1: that no one else can get unless you're a matron.
Speaker 1: And you can ignore the harmful messages that movies like
Speaker 1: Emily send out that you're just going to fall in
Speaker 1: love with someone who you've never actually met or spoken with,
Speaker 1: but because you're both a little whimsical, you're actually destined
Speaker 1: to be together. Instead, I say you should become a
Speaker 1: woman in STEMP by downloading the c section out and
Speaker 1: you're basically assert and you're halfway there. Uh well, thanks
Speaker 1: for being here, Hannah. I have a few surgery instinct's
Speaker 1: o'clock and tonight, but thanks for listening. Gang