Live Through This

In an interview, the poet Jack Gilbert said that when he was younger he made a list of things he wanted to do in his life - not to die before he'd been in love, not to die a virgin. In Bernardo Bertolucci's film Stealing Beauty (1996), these same desires are shared by the film's heroine Lucy.

Swathed in Tuscan sunlight, Liv Tyler's Lucy is all lip, hair, and leg. She has returned to Italy to visit artist friends' of her mother, a famous poet who has recently committed suicide. While the household husband has been commissioned by Lucy's father to do her portrait, we later learn she's looking to lose her virginity to an Italian boy, Niccolo, who gave her her first kiss at fifteen and to find out the identity of her biological father.

Yet, these plot details come second to the scenery, soundtrack, and sexual experiences of those residing in the country home. Bertolucci is more comfortable lingering on a group languidly smoking a joint at dusk and discussing their first time than he is at teasing out Lucy's emotional and psychological state. Instead, there are the long shots of Lucy writing in her journal (the words gliding across the screen as she writes them on the paper), a close up of her placing a polaroid of Niccolo under her blouse, and the static camera pausing to observe her jumping around, screaming out the lyrics to Hole's "Rock Star."

These small snapshots create the dreamy and sensual atmosphere of a teenage girl's life and mind - one who can quote Liz Phair, Billy Holiday, or Porstihead lyrics, somberly expose her breast while being sketched, and spend an afternoon picking Queen Anne's lace in a field, right at the root.

This is not a film that lends itself to great discussion or thought, but it delights our eye and ear, and provides us with a quiet happiness that can be found in Jack Gilbert's ending to "Burma," - "All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then. / Like a giant bell ringing long after you can't hear it."

Hi, Hello, and Welcome!

If you’re reading this you’re probably related to me or Rosemary, though perhaps we ended up getting wildly famous and this sad little introduction has now been read by thousands. Confessions of Two Dangerous Minds is a simple little venture, really. Rosemary and I discovered we held a mutual appreciation for films that are a bit off the beaten path, and now we’re two of the thousands of others spouting their uninformed opinions on the internet.

This love of the stranger side of cinema, as our title pretentiously states, is really all we have in common here. We do love some of the same genres of film (as I’m sure you’ll see), but Rosemary knows her stuff and is going to be providing insightful critiques of all varieties of film. I’m a bit cruder and will merely attempt to be your resident ranter and raver, lampooning some while waxing poetic about others.  We're a little too broke to review bunches of new releases, but hope to on occasion.

The great positive of such an arrangement as ours is that I believe we’re different enough to provide something worthwhile for anyone that stumbles across our little site. I hope you agree, and thanks for stopping by.


-The Cat