Day: March 9, 2020

Eliza Hittman‘s Never Rarely Sometimes Always opens on Friday (3.13). As mentioned a few days ago, it’s been hyped as the U.S. indie answer to Cristian Mungiu‘s Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days.

Basic drill: Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a pregnant teen from rural Pennsylvania who doesn’t want her parents to know, makes her way to Manhattan to have an abortion, accompanied by her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder).

They loved it at Sundance ’20, and right now it has a 100% and 91% rating from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively.

It goes without saying that you can’t trust critics on films like this. You can, however, trust Hollywood Elsewhere, and I’m calling this a respectable effort — spare, direct, quietly affecting. But it doesn’t give you enough.

Like Autumn, the film holds back a lot, and is basically buried within itself. That makes it a sad experience on one level, but on another it feels too spare, too closed off. It overuses the less-is-more aesthetic. Hittman tells you what you need to know, but at the same time as little as possible.

I couldn’t finally decide if Flanigan is playing a guarded, fearful, inexpressive women, or if she herself is that way. She connects four times — two singing scenes (one in which she karaokes “Don’t let The Sun Catch You Crying”), a scene in which she throws a glass of water in a teenage boy’s face, and an abortion clinic scene in which she breaks down while being asked some painful personal questions.

But she’s so buried, so shielded. She doesn’t even trust the nice abortion-clinic lady, who has nothing but kindness in her heart.

What a miserable life poor Autumn is leading. So cut off, so solitary. The film isn’t really a story about getting an abortion in NYC. It’s actually a study of Autumn’s isolation and defensiveness and brusque mood pockets. A study of a prisoner living in her own cage, and terrified of leaving it.

I’m sorry but Never Rarely Sometimes Always is nowhere near as accomplished as 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. Not even in the same league. The women in Mungiu’s film were sullen and suspicious and kept to themselves also, but Mungiu let you in. You were allowed to peek into their feelings and pressures, to share in their fears and resentments and whatnot. Not so much here.

Ryder’s character is more open and expressive, and a little smarter. Ditto her performance.

If I was of Hispanic/Latino heritage, I would definitely prefer to be called LatinX. Just for the sound of it. In reality, of course, I’d have to settle for AngloX. Which also sounds fine.

If there’s an Old Testament God, and especially if that God has a wicked sense of humor, a certain pot-bellied, red-tie-wearing party has been infected with COVID-19.

“Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. ‘He’s definitely melting down over this,’ the source said.” — filed earlier today by Vanity Fair‘s Gabriel Sherman.

Airport pickup areas usually smell like asphalt and shuttle-bus fumes, maybe a faint whiff of cigarette smoke or fast-food wrappers. The outside of terminal #1 at Austin airport is different. Like a wolf, I’m sniffing traces of soil, grass, leaves. I’d like to roam around during my stay here. Maybe drive down to the gulf, maybe the hill country.

I feel very badly for all those broken-hearted filmmakers who were hoping to make a splash at SXSW.

I haven’t much time before boarding my 7:15 am Southwest flight to Austin, but all hail the classic majesty of the late Max Von Sydow, who passed earlier today at age 90. He had a timeless face in that he looked the same age for 40 or 50 years. (I actually told MVS this when I met him a decade ago.). The Ingmar Bergman films come first, of course (opposite Liv Ullman in Shame/Skammen, lashing himself with birch branches in The Virgin Spring), but three English-language performances stand out: (a) Joubert, the refined, gentle-voiced assassin in Three Days of the Condor (‘75), (b) the bitter Soho painter in Hannah and Her Sisters (‘86) who declared that a resurrected Jesus “would never stop throwing up”, and (c) his mostly silent Father Merrin performance during the Iraq prologue in The Exorcist (‘73).

Despite Hachette having recently cancelled a planned publishing of Woody Allen‘s Apropos of Nothing in this country, the company’s French branch has announced that its Grand Central Publishing subsidiary will release Allen’s book in the U.S. on 4.7. Are we talking a French-language version or…?

RTI France: “Hachette chief executive Michael Pietsch on Tuesday defended the decision, telling The New York Times that “a large audience” wanted to hear his story.

The publisher had described Allen’s book as “a comprehensive account of his life, both personal and professional”.

I’m flying Southwest to Austin this morning (7:15 am departure) to visit my son Dylan, who recently moved there with his dog Rudy. I’m bringing two pairs of tight surgical gloves and ten all-but-worthless face masks. I’ve never taken such precautions before. I know they’re prudent measures, but we also know they’re slightly hysterical. Update: I’ve got the sniffles, and am occasionally sneezing. I guess that settles it…face mask!

Obviously Joe Biden will need to pick a vp running mate to counter-balance concerns about his cognitive command — someone 20 or 30 years younger, extra-sharp, detail-minded, etc. Naturally I thought of Mayor Pete. A friend snuffed this out: “The Democratic ticket can’t be two white guys…not a chance.” Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams then?