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Jul. 13th, 2011 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreMovie night at Bainbridge. This month's movie was Gigi, which is the second movie I've seen with this group that I have unequivocally hated.*
Gigi is both boring and distasteful. It is boring because nothing happens and because it has completely forgettable musical numbers. It is distasteful for many reasons: 1) All of the characters besides Gigi herself are pretty much abhorrent and terrible people, 2) the purported love story takes place between a man who looks to be about thirty-five and a girl whose age is difficult to determine but, judging by her behavior, her physical movements, and the way other characters related to her, can't be much older than sixteen (which, okay, I realize that the movie is set in 1900 but that doesn't make things any less icky for a modern viewer), and 3) what story there is is pretty much this:
So there's this girl. She's vivacious and energetic and enthusiastic about many things but doesn't perform femininity in the way that her relatives would like.** Her grandmother and great aunt are basically raising her to be a kept woman. (Her mother followed her dream to become a singer and works at the Paris Opera where she presumably makes her own money. She never appears onscreen and her presence is only felt through jokes at her expense.) There's a man who's a friend of the family - a very rich man, who has had a string of lovers. His affairs are the talk of Paris. He behaves toward the girl as to a child - brings her candy when he visits, teases her, sneaks her champagne, plays card games with her. The grandmother and great aunt decide that he would be an ideal sugar daddy for the girl and so buy her new dresses and ramp up the intensity of her lessons on the proper way for a courtesan to behave towards a man. She's taught to be a perfect ornament. When the man sees her in the new clothes, he's suddenly struck by the fact that she's suddenly mature (her body language does come become much more mature for the rest of the film and is such a contrast to her earlier way of acting that it feels like just that - an act). He tells her he loves her and proposes that she should be his kept woman to which she reacts with trepidation and, eventually, says that she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to live the kind of life he does, in the public eye, to be enjoyed and then cast aside and made the topic of Parisian gossip before finding another man's bed. He then storms out in a fit of violent temper (not the first one he's displayed towards her). The girl's grandmother and great aunt scold her for rejecting this marvelous opportunity to be kept by such a rich man. He does come back and she relents, saying, "I'd rather be miserable with you than without you," at which point I wanted desperately to give her a third choice. They prepare for an evening out and she gets dressed in a low-cut off-the-shoulder evening gown. I repeat that we have no reason to believe that she is even eighteen. He takes her to a crowded restaurant where everyone stares at her. She performs beautifully all the things that her grandmother and great aunt taught her, become exactly what she's been told by everyone that she should be. But he doesn't want that and gets angry and physically drags her out of the restaurant with everyone staring, drags her back to her apartment while she's crying and begging to be told what's wrong. And then he storms off again. But of course he comes back to the apartment and the grandmother lets him in. And he asks the grandmother if he can marry the girl. They get married and Maurice Chevalier sings a reprise of Thank Heaven for Little Girls and everything is awful.
It is a terrible movie.
And, y'know, okay, I like some terrible things so I am not judging the other people at movie group who liked this film. That's cool - they like Gigi, I like Lovecraft, we all like terrible things. But I hated this and I'm sorry that I watched it. It made me sad.
*The other was Point Blank. Gods, but I loathed that film.
**Also, it's very easy to read Gigi as an aromantic asexual. She has this whole song about how she doesn't get why Parisians are so interested in romance because surely there are more interesting things to do. And her first response to being told that a man is in love with her is to back away in horror. I'm not saying that that's the only explanation for these things but it's one that occurred to me.
Gigi is both boring and distasteful. It is boring because nothing happens and because it has completely forgettable musical numbers. It is distasteful for many reasons: 1) All of the characters besides Gigi herself are pretty much abhorrent and terrible people, 2) the purported love story takes place between a man who looks to be about thirty-five and a girl whose age is difficult to determine but, judging by her behavior, her physical movements, and the way other characters related to her, can't be much older than sixteen (which, okay, I realize that the movie is set in 1900 but that doesn't make things any less icky for a modern viewer), and 3) what story there is is pretty much this:
So there's this girl. She's vivacious and energetic and enthusiastic about many things but doesn't perform femininity in the way that her relatives would like.** Her grandmother and great aunt are basically raising her to be a kept woman. (Her mother followed her dream to become a singer and works at the Paris Opera where she presumably makes her own money. She never appears onscreen and her presence is only felt through jokes at her expense.) There's a man who's a friend of the family - a very rich man, who has had a string of lovers. His affairs are the talk of Paris. He behaves toward the girl as to a child - brings her candy when he visits, teases her, sneaks her champagne, plays card games with her. The grandmother and great aunt decide that he would be an ideal sugar daddy for the girl and so buy her new dresses and ramp up the intensity of her lessons on the proper way for a courtesan to behave towards a man. She's taught to be a perfect ornament. When the man sees her in the new clothes, he's suddenly struck by the fact that she's suddenly mature (her body language does come become much more mature for the rest of the film and is such a contrast to her earlier way of acting that it feels like just that - an act). He tells her he loves her and proposes that she should be his kept woman to which she reacts with trepidation and, eventually, says that she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to live the kind of life he does, in the public eye, to be enjoyed and then cast aside and made the topic of Parisian gossip before finding another man's bed. He then storms out in a fit of violent temper (not the first one he's displayed towards her). The girl's grandmother and great aunt scold her for rejecting this marvelous opportunity to be kept by such a rich man. He does come back and she relents, saying, "I'd rather be miserable with you than without you," at which point I wanted desperately to give her a third choice. They prepare for an evening out and she gets dressed in a low-cut off-the-shoulder evening gown. I repeat that we have no reason to believe that she is even eighteen. He takes her to a crowded restaurant where everyone stares at her. She performs beautifully all the things that her grandmother and great aunt taught her, become exactly what she's been told by everyone that she should be. But he doesn't want that and gets angry and physically drags her out of the restaurant with everyone staring, drags her back to her apartment while she's crying and begging to be told what's wrong. And then he storms off again. But of course he comes back to the apartment and the grandmother lets him in. And he asks the grandmother if he can marry the girl. They get married and Maurice Chevalier sings a reprise of Thank Heaven for Little Girls and everything is awful.
It is a terrible movie.
And, y'know, okay, I like some terrible things so I am not judging the other people at movie group who liked this film. That's cool - they like Gigi, I like Lovecraft, we all like terrible things. But I hated this and I'm sorry that I watched it. It made me sad.
*The other was Point Blank. Gods, but I loathed that film.
**Also, it's very easy to read Gigi as an aromantic asexual. She has this whole song about how she doesn't get why Parisians are so interested in romance because surely there are more interesting things to do. And her first response to being told that a man is in love with her is to back away in horror. I'm not saying that that's the only explanation for these things but it's one that occurred to me.
