OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Only a Fool Would Speculate About the Life of a Woman

September 9th, 2008

Rough draft of another heavy, introspective blog entry sits on my computer, and it’s one of those days when I just cannot take my own voice, so can I say instead? Last night I needed a movie I could sit and knit in front of and picked out Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her. I tend always to be a sucker for the intertwined stories type of movie, (loved Short Cuts), and I loved how this one worked, I think because the conjunction of these particular stories is as meaningful as any one of the stories told. And I liked that the characters talked not as people talk in real life but in dramatic monologues, in rhythms and repetitions. I liked that it wasn’t “forget you’re out there and we’re up on the screen as you get absorbed in this more real than real life life” story telling, instead it was storytelling where a gesture can reflect a hundred things and you have to pay attention (even if you’re knitting) to catch the internal references. And I resonated with the varieties of loneliness and grief and then taking that step forward, even though none of the lives particularly resembled my own. Then, too, finding thoughtful discussions of things I was only starting to pick up on on the IMDB discussion boards was another small gift, one of those moments of profound gratitude for the internet, like finding a cool person to go to the movies with who helps me appreciate them better. (Plus, I love that the one thread where someone tries to discuss whether an actress is hot just sort of falls flat with no real responses).

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