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Dec. 27th, 2005 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexeyebreakfast on pluto - despite the fact that this film is based on a novel, it made me think of nothing so much as the crying game as told from del's point of view. that being said, patrick "kitten" braden is a much more fully realized character than del was, and murphy's performance is amazing - i literally would forget that i was watching him as an actor, he fell so deeply into the role. there were some fun turns by jordan regulars (liam neeson as a catholic priest, and stephen rea as a magician, as well as brendan gleeson in a hilarious 5-minute bit that's impossible to explain properly), but murphy absolutely holds the movie. it's a good thing, too, as the structure of the film seems trapped between showing the audience a rather gritty, ugly side of kitten's real life, and presenting it as a sort of fairy tale, which seemed more in keeping with kitten's own point of view. it's a bit muddled between the two, though jordan does manage to make some very nice points on either side. there's no denying that it's a fun film, though - the play of fantasy and pure free spirit, along with murphy's incredible performance, make it very enjoyable.
one of my big issues with the film, though, is in keeping with problems i've had with past jordan films, including crying game and mona lisa. jordan is fascinated by transgendered characters (there's even a supporting one in the good thief, who serves little narrative purpose), but he doesn't seem ready to fully deal with their sexuality. kitten's sexuality is never really looked at - despite a couple of boyfriends and a few stints as a sex worker, we never even see him kiss. similarly, i felt that jordan played del's sexuality for shock value, and the subject of lesbianism was even more problematic in mona lisa (that those films were further complicated by the fact that the "divergent" characters were black is not a problem that breakfast has). i feel that there are certain things that jordan did very well with this story, but that his views of alternative sexualities are problematic, and this leaves me somewhat dissatisfied with a trio of otherwise very interesting and, generally, quite good films.
sort of off-topic, but as i was walking out of the theater, i thought of how much fun it would be to teach a transgender cinema class.
one of my big issues with the film, though, is in keeping with problems i've had with past jordan films, including crying game and mona lisa. jordan is fascinated by transgendered characters (there's even a supporting one in the good thief, who serves little narrative purpose), but he doesn't seem ready to fully deal with their sexuality. kitten's sexuality is never really looked at - despite a couple of boyfriends and a few stints as a sex worker, we never even see him kiss. similarly, i felt that jordan played del's sexuality for shock value, and the subject of lesbianism was even more problematic in mona lisa (that those films were further complicated by the fact that the "divergent" characters were black is not a problem that breakfast has). i feel that there are certain things that jordan did very well with this story, but that his views of alternative sexualities are problematic, and this leaves me somewhat dissatisfied with a trio of otherwise very interesting and, generally, quite good films.
sort of off-topic, but as i was walking out of the theater, i thought of how much fun it would be to teach a transgender cinema class.
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Trivia
Date: 2005-12-27 04:34 pm (UTC)This guy said that he hadn't seen Mona Lisa because he'd been too busy to get out much to see movies as he was working on a movie script. I kind of smirked on the inside but asked him what sort of script he was working on. Then we suddenly got separated as in the crowd as we were exiting.
A few weeks later I was watching the news and saw my movie partner again. It was George Lucas.
Re: Trivia
Date: 2005-12-27 04:40 pm (UTC)personally, if he was working on episodes 1-3, perhaps he should have been going to the movies more often.