In Which The More One Talks The Less The Words Mean

Nana's Twelve Steps

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

Vivre Sa Vie
dir. Jean-Luc Godard
85 min.

Quick! Follow the guy with the Moscot glasses and beige trench! He's jumping over puddles securing his fedora with one hand and umbrella with the other. Scott Schuman is close, I can feel it. On this rainy New York Sunday, we’re both going to the same place: a showing of Godard’s 1962 Vivre Sa Vie.

Seeing French New Wave at a museum is not the same as "going to the movies." After buying my ticket, I hurried to Whole Foods to grab some snacks only to be told by the usher, this eerie wiry man — think Twilight Zone elevator operator — of the strict no food or beverage policy. I also had to check my umbrella, and promise him my first born. Inside the theatre everyone was quietly seated as though following an oath of stoic Sunday cinema seriousness. Of course I thought this was funny, but played along.

There were lots of nods of recognition between acquaintances: most people had come alone and were busying themselves with their iPhones, or whispering to themselves the Sontag quote on the program that was given to us: "One of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of." In my head, that collective, feverish feeling of anticipation seemed to swallow the room. Something special was about to happen.

And it did. Vivre Sa Vie starts with a dedication to B movies; a shout out that immediately endears the audience. And then, Nana (Anna Karina, Godard’s then wife) appears — her helmet hair profile changing angles as the opening credits roll. Nana's silhouette paired with the movie’s haunting music — a Michel Legrand piece that repeats without ever reaching a climax — establish the film’s twelve-part intrigue, endlessly and heartbreakingly evading satisfaction. Nothing completes itself and nobody finds peace.

And yet, Karina’s performance finds a way to couple the urge to take flight with the impulse to preserve, recognize, stop, sit, and share a conversation, or write a letter, slowly, carefully, and eloquently.

In one scene Nana fights off a kiss on the lips from one of her clients, in another, she ditches one man who bought her a movie ticket for another man sitting at a café. She skips out on her rent, and her husband and child to pursue acting, and yet, she’ll still choose to dance the entire length of a song on the jukebox, playfully and wholeheartedly. She orders a glass of wine, but leaves before having one sip. She embraces a man, only to take a puff of her cigarette over his shoulder, staring off longingly, mildly melodramatically, at some far away horizon. You’ll covet her whole face, but when you see it all, that regretful pang of knowing too much will start to pulse. She’ll get you like that.

Because we follow Nana’s path towards prostitution in twelve parts, Vivre Sa Vie is set up like a countdown to the end. Fin! The audience is ushered through a veritable ‘How to’ of prostitution made intimate by varied forms: a voice-over interview of the ‘lay of the land,’ a conversation shot from behind, scenes of silence followed by philosophical conversations.

At times, the film’s endless collection of quotations or allusions to literature, philosophy and film, teeter dangerously near affectation. For non-believers and those critical or hesitant of film’s snobbish stigmas, the tendency in this, Godard’s fourth major film, to reference and draw comparisons can be disorientating and alienating: audience self doubt abound.

But Karina’s presence and her manner, her step, both weightless and grave, her ennui, “the life,” does not impose, and instead seduces the way familiarity in strangers might seduce. Yes, I will follow you down the street as you nervously accept your first client. Of course I don’t mind looking over your shoulder as you write a letter. All of it? Sure why not? Watch you watching The Passion of Joan of Arc? Yes, please. Can I wipe your tears?

In talking about female leads, we often rate their undeniability, their charm and contrary whimsy, their command. But with Karina, it’s not an easy attraction, and not one that accepts your refusal. Nana’s allure haunts and evokes that part of us that is compelled by our own discomfort.

Durga Chew-Bose is the senior editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She tumbls here and twitters here.

"Trouble" — Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions (mp3)

"Blanchard" — Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions (mp3)

"Sets the Blaze" — Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions (mp3)

In Which We Spend The Summer With Her

Blemishes

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

My summer began with a bang. A bullet, which I later collected for the police — six miniature pieces of delicately warped copper metal — smashed my second floor bedroom window as I watched game four of the NBA Finals in my living room. My roommate and I had only been in our new place for a little over a month. The unusually long walk down our hallway from one end of the apartment to the other was still novel, and often, the source of newfangled ways to strut, lunge, race, or complain down its exaggerated path. Even then, as we shakily walked towards my broken window, the hallway's reach offered a touch of comedy to an otherwise nervy moment.

An hour or so later, after I'd cried and two police officers had arrived and returned a second time to retrieve the bullet bits, my roommate and I went back to the game as if nothing had occurred. We even paused the DVR at one point so I could snap a picture of our TV with my phone: Lil Wayne sitting behind the basket with his new girl, Dhea — a rare find at the time.

Catherine Keener and Anne Heche in Walking and Talking

As it happens in the summer, unlike winter where a stupor of shorter days allows for the stewing, knotting and eventual swelling of events, this particular trauma came and went. Well, sort of. Rather, I began to spend an unusual amount of time indoors, at mine, watching movies; specifically any and all of Nicole Holofcener's works.

Time spent with a Holofcener movie can feel curative: a helix of close and complicated female friendships, a nod to those compulsive habits we keep private, to the snug and the sound, and to the funny, like a pick-me-up come to life. But it can also feel entirely indulgent. Relating to a slew of passively worn relationships, or perhaps less whopping, passively worn personal hygiene or clothes — greasy hair, jean overalls, pajama t-shirts in the day — can shift significance to self hatred, fast. Things will get ugly. Belonging is oftentimes static.  

Friends With Money

Catherine Keener, the director’s muse, has mastered the deadpan droop. She is beautiful in a tomboyish way and sexy in a scrappy way. The combination is faultless when casting a female lead whose hang-ups are meant to appear relatable — and are ultimately very charming, and described by critics as “spirited” — for 90 minutes.

Keener's tone is flatline, slow and soft, and a bit chipped. She stands with her upper body at a slight angle as if she’s only ever carried canvas tote bags instead of leather purses. Her face and body are bony. Shirts sit on her shoulders as they would on the hanger and sweaters, no matter what size, are oversized. Her clothes seem resigned to her body in the same way the characters Holofcener writes for her seem resigned to whatever the current crisis might be: finding “a job, job,” guilt-driven charity, navigating a teenage daughter, mourning a dead cat, divorce. Holofcener dresses Keener, even in the daytime, as if she’s driven to her friend’s house in the middle of the night to cry, plot, laugh, and eat ice cream from the carton — a wealth of cardigan sleeves stretched and pulled over her hands, shawls, linen, little boy tees.

As Michelle in 2001's Lovely and Amazing, she plays a fatalistic mother-wife-daughter-sister, and would-be arts and crafts artist living in L.A. Her Eeyore affectations are offset by her sarcastic smile, which widens in proportion to her growing disregard for her mother’s liposuction, her husband’s cheating, and her sister’s insecurities. By the end, Keener’s indignant glow lulls and Holofcener’s restorative mold surfaces — an unlikely romance with a teenaged Jake Gyllenhaal, a final scene with her adopted 8 year old black sister, Annie.

Lying on my couch, Keener’s half-smile, made unusually bright by an L.A. McDonald’s fluorescent lights, was necessary. That’s what Holofcener does. She rounds things off only to make you feel, moments later, unwieldy in her absence. It’s as if the whole affair was made, by some means, to mock you. Credits rolled up my screen while there I was, still on my couch.

Friends With Money

What Holofcener does so well is pinpoint and spotlight her actors’ strengths. She has this uncanny way of condensing their careers into a single gesture or a series of actions. Call it cruel, but it’s a clever choice casting Jennifer Aniston in multiple scenes, squeezing pricey sample face creams, hoping for one last drop. Her character, Olivia, is a pothead, a maid, single, broke, tired, and pissed off. Thwarted by her last mint green Clinique mini-tube, Aniston’s disheartened face — bitterness turned tantrum, and soon turned conniption — has never been better optimized.

Her friends are rich and married, and writing checks to charities. Beyond any romantic comedy where Aniston’s on screen life mimics, to some degree, her much gossiped about off screen life, her scenes as Olivia, alone in the bathroom, thumbnails pinching tubes of pastel-colored face creams, portray a type of hopelessness that in reality is nothing more than pure and outright frustration, but in the movie, acts as its center. Another director might have asked Aniston to pull a few Flashdance "Maniac" moves in the bathroom, or slap on some lipstick, toss her hair a bit, and just go out. But not Holofcener. Aniston returns to Nordstrom’s and sheepishly scours for more samples — one for her and one for "a friend."

Mortimer with Dermot Mulroney

Similarly, Holofcener cast Emily Mortimer in Lovely and Amazing as a twiggy aspiring actress who fudges an audition because she isn’t sexy enough. Later, she dares her date to critique her naked body. Suddenly there she is: bare, bushy, skinny, flawless and flawed in the way any naked body can look like an extreme of either. It’s a strange scene, and perhaps even unbelievable, but Mortimer’s gawky looks fit the part of a willowy actress who isn’t objectively beautiful but has that elusive "something."

Keener as a television writer in Friends with Money, who’s remodeling her house and unknown to her, ruinning her neighbors’ views, is a pitch-perfect amalgam of her many Holofcener roles. Her character, Christine’s, seemingly ideal marriage is about to unravel, her sarcasm is her swordplay, her friends are her tonic, and her son, Max, offers moments of calm as the two read together. In watching those scenes during an escape home to Montreal two weeks ago, I immediately thought of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, and especially the scene where Max crawls under his mother’s (played by Keener) desk and picks at her stocking-ed toes as she types a story he recites to her. Maybe Spike Jonze watches Nicole Holofcener movies too? Maybe she’s one of his favorites? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Walking and Talking

After watching Walking and Talking, I considered taking a cue from some of its assets and main concerns: nurturing friendships, weekends out of the city, wearing overalls, borrowing & returning, therapy. I have attempted four out of the five and succeeded at three. The movie was part of what spurred that side of me itching to feel better, go out more, and trade in my anxieties for concerns less self-involved.

As with Amelia, who’s played by Keener, there’s a neediness that evolves from moving forward. You need someone to bear witness, to validate your effort. And that need, more or less, feels like moving backwards. Change can be disorienting, and in a New York summer, especially exhausting.

Since then I have watched Holofcener’s four features. I have e-mailed one friend detailing a few stylistic connections I made between Holofcener’s films and the episode of Gilmore Girls she directed, "Secrets and Loans." I have even considered future Holofcener titles: Home and Country, Blemishes, Winning Smiles, Sound and Imperfect, A-Ok.

It will soon be two months since the bullet. Three months since I moved to my new apartment. Five months since I began feeling whirlybird uncertainty in crowds, opting for nights in instead of out. And six months since my 25th birthday. I look at that evening in June as a blip, a bookmark keeping my place in case I choose to revisit and consider it, a slight pivot, and the start of this particular summer. Really, it meant nothing, in that slightly maddening way a Holofcener movie means nothing but means something, and then means something big (!) and then means nothing at all (but secretly remains urgent and important). I’ll leave that night and these movies alone for a while. Despite a few setbacks, some midweek bouts of inertia, hooky and halfhearted note keeping, and a sweet tooth for cancelling plans, I’ve started keeping tabs on things I start and things I finish. Ratios, those remedial proportions of work and play, time trapped inside my head vs. time outside of it, time inside my apartment vs. time outside my apartment, it would seem, got lost somewhere in the mix. I’ve started running. There’s that. My neighborhood is quiet in the early mornings. I pace myself and breathe, inhaling and exhaling — a two to two rhythmic ratio, every couple steps.

Durga Chew-Bose is the senior editor of This Recording. She twitters here and tumbls here. You can find an archive of her work on This Recording here.

"Take Good Care" - Joss Stone (mp3)

"Boat Yard" - Joss Stone (mp3)

"Landlord" - Joss Stone (mp3)

In Which We Take Notes On The Important Parts

Those Marble Composition Books

by DURGA CHEW-BOSE

On that first date we fell asleep watching Bottle Rocket. The poem ended one line after as I described his tissue paper thin t-shirt that I borrowed for the night.

I was twenty-two and high the first and only time I have ever written a love poem. With perceived eloquence I sat on my bed and remembered a first date from years ago, detailing each bit chronologically on a piece of paper I have now lost. Using the kind of scrutiny one might assume when proving a point, I produced a poem that offered little attention to feelings or the fumbling beginnings of closeness: shaky eye contact, commonalities, taut and clumsy flirtation, cool smiles, heartbeat. Instead, I rattled off a joyless inventory of the night; a tally of what I had ordered, what he had worn, which album we had argued about, and on what street we shared a kiss. My bias for pragmatic writing outdid my hope for something more sentimental (!) and meaningful. This was a list disguised as a poem, and worst of all, I took pleasure in its accuracy, persuaded that precise recollection might yield more tenderness than dopey hearts and shooting teenage inclinations.

My habit for list keeping could be isolated to a single memory, like connecting someone’s command and sway to that first group exercise in the fourth grade in which there was a time keeper, a secretary, and a leader, and where we were taught the verb to delegate, or, like tracing versatility to resourceful, creative parents who despite moving the family numerous times in earlier years, were quick to design the notion of home around a single and consistent possession or tradition; the giant Dieffenbachia plant, banana fritters after school, or sandalwood soap in all of the bathrooms. In my case, I’m sure there was an adult—a friend’s mother, a piano teacher, most likely a woman who could French braid and who kept curative distractions and snacks in her purse, and that I ruefully wished was my own mother—this same woman, hoping to quiet whatever anxiety was overpowering me at the time, handed me a pad and pencil and said, Here, Durga. Make a list.

I am unclear if this likely compounded memory mushroomed into a character trait, though part of me believes that my impulse is largely intuitive and present in those who, from very early on are bound by some need to record and restore, and seek pattern, as if preoccupied with some expectation of defeat.

As a kid, I often spied on everyday happenings, assuming a Harriet Welsch compulsion to fabricate intrigue in nominal things: decoding neighbors' license plates, perceiving foreign accents, supposing ulterior purpose from things that unscrewed, appeared fancy, or were unmarked. I collected long lists of notes that shared zero relation but were somehow kindred because I had decided on that day to collect them in a blue spiral notebook on a page marked Thursday, June 5th, 1995.

I was nine and couldn't steady the length of our aluminum pool skimmer. I remember the feeling of cold water running down my arms as I tried to navigate the net before giving up and asking my brother for help. I sat and watched as he scooped and cleaned the leaves that had fallen from our neighbor’s Maple tree. The sound of the pole’s metal din as it scraped the sides of our pool was very specific and I haven’t heard it since. Years later as I scrambled to find a half-filled notebook and recycle it for a new class, I discovered the page on which I had seemingly indexed our entire backyard. I had accounted for everything: the chipped shed door that revealed an old coat of aquamarine, the fat azalea bush, the smell of chlorine, the feel of wet cement under my bare feet, and the sound of the skimmer as it shaved the side our pool. Matching that uniquely stark shift of entering a place where quiet is obliged — the library, a museum, a church — I read the list over.

Though I was happy to find this anecdote from my childhood, I was troubled by its judicious and ordinary range, but more so by its delusive expectation of custody...and loss? Still, these concerns pass just as easily as they present themselves. Our childhood, a maudlin alloy of lapse memory and possession: my cursive handwriting was once bulky, round and sweet; the bottom corner of the page still curls where I pressed hard on my palm and wrote in black ballpoint.

Sometimes hidden among my lists were a build-up of details that hinted at change — notes on a distracted family dinner, unusual pairing-offs of parent with child; splitting up to park the car, buy the tickets, save the seats — and by and by, clear signs of my mother and father’s eventual divorce.

Children list-keepers expect filigree from collected facts. They care deeply about their first family tree assignment in school, and though their T-shaped diagrams might pile awkwardly to one side of the page, lopsided with a wing of extended cousins or half-siblings, its carefulness and fidelity to specifics embodies the kind of exhaustive design that inhabits their everyday. Baited by Haeckel's lithographs, by grandparent stuff, and by cutaways in DK Eyewitness travel guides, children list-keepers are yanked by asides, labyrinths, and stories of missing kids and mysterious abductions. Envious of those with photographic memory, children list-keepers will anxiously store incidentals that might later guild together. Their minds: a cherry wood curio cabinet filled with doodads and trinkets, invaluable for future analogies, and called upon years later in college when a professor assigns the ratios and ornament amid expanse of Moby Dick.

It was in my literature classes that my hankering for cataloguing was put to use. I would copy a novel's first sentence only to hear its echo in Part IV or Part V. I would predict romantic pairings based on how a woman's dress was depicted — not its cloth nor its color — but how it moved at her feet or sat on her shoulders. I kept notes on recurring characters, peculiar posture, food pageantry, and individuals who never removed their gloves or their hats. I especially took to narratives where childhood was imparted with an overture-type clairvoyance. Those were my favorite.

Instead of flagging pages with post-its, I dutifully copied entire passages into notebooks that I would return to when writing a paper or when trying hopelessly to retrieve whatever it was in that particular sentence or pair of words that had originally wooed me. Sometimes my reason was far less calculated: a Dickens character that I imagined as a Tintin character, and that I'd share with my friend, Tait, via text message on my walk back to the dorm. Studying literature paired the utility with the coincidence of list keeping; something I had seldom enjoyed before. Because my first impulse has always been to write it down, whatever it is, immediate function has been a rarity and meaning has presented itself in belated, sometimes confused, bounty.

Durga Chew-Bose is the senior editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She last wrote in these pages about Mariel Hemingway. She twitters here and tumbls here.

"The Bay (Erol Alkans' Extended Rework)" - Metronomy (mp3)

"Everything Goes My Way" - Metronomy (mp3)

"Trouble" - Metronomy (mp3)

louise fitzhugh