La Femme's Top Five...of 2013

This is a belated list, but much like my favorite podcast, Battleship Pretension, I save my list of best films of the year until The Oscars (yes, I realize they were a few weeks ago… you can't rush genius!).  It gives me time to catch up and watch everything most some of the stuff I missed from last year.  There are still a bunch of movies I want to see from 2013, but based upon what I've seen so far, this is my top 5. So here is the belated, but surely much anticipated La Femme's Top Five Films of 2013!

1. Frances Ha  (Noah Baumbach): Frances (a luminous and charming Greta Gerwig) is abruptly left without a roommate and therefore a place to live when her best friend Sophie moves out to be with her new boyfriend.  Frances, who is training as a dancer but doesn't have much talent, finds herself untethered and quasi-homeless, and we watch her float from one place to another.  She lives with two guys and has an awkward, almost romance with her roommate, visits her parents at home, has the saddest trip to Paris ever, and eventually, in a small way, learns how to be a grown up and accept and even embrace responsibilities.  Writer-Director Noah Baumbach nods to the French New Wave, from the camera work to the musical cues, and Gerwig is so winning as Frances that she reminded me of a modern day Anna Karina, only a lot more awkward.  Baumbach combines the very cinematic elements of the New Wave with an extreme naturalness and awkwardness that reminded me of early Woody Allen.  Gerwig meets the challenge of making Frances, who could be an extremely annoying hipster character, all whiney and self righteous and privileged, and instead infuses her with intelligence, kindness, and naiveté.  By the time the nature of the title is revealed in the last shot of the movie, we are not only completely on Frances's side, but even a little bit proud of her. 

2. Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh):  I have already written about this riotous, campy, sad, and beautiful film here, so I will keep it short.  Although technically for HBO, Behind the Candelabra was just so damn cinematic that I would be remiss to not include it on my list.  Michael Douglas is revelatory as Liberace, and Matt Damon, as his lover Scott Thorson, meets him at every step.  The costumes and set are the stuff of my dreams.  But what makes the film compelling is the perfect tone Steven Soderbergh sets: a little campy, a little over the top but mostly just an honest look at the tragedy of the closet. No matter the fame, no matter the excess, Scott and Lee are forced to hide their relationship and Soderbergh explores what constantly lying does to a relationship.  Spoiler Alert: it doesn't end well.  But they look great doing it.

3. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater):  I am going to be short and sweet on this one too because I have a big post planned for the entire "Before" series.  This was a movie that made me literally sob when I saw it.  I think I may have said to K, "Are they trying to ruin my life, how can I even believe in love anymore?"  Such is the toll the third installment in the romance of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Deply) had on me.  Some twenty years after they first met, Jesse and Celine are exactly where so many fans of the series imagined them to be: together!  In the first films, we shared some of the best times of their lives, but in Before Midnight we see  one of the worst nights.  A huge fight;  a real, terrible, relatable fight, breaks out between two people that know each other very well and know exactly how to hurt each other in the worst way possible, and we see their personalities, all the beautiful and terrible things about them on full display.  Hawke and Delpy are just so natural and their chemistry is so pronounced that you believe every moment.  During that moment that K had to pause the movie due to my sobbing, I would have said this movie ruined my life.  But by the last, perfect scene, I started to feel the exact opposite (ok, maybe not exact opposite).  Too say to much would be to spoil that ending so you'll just have to take my word for it.   Like the films before them, I was left with a feeling of hope, that maybe I still could believe in love after all. 

4. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen):  Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave was a film I kept putting off watching, because I assumed it would be too oppressive, too depressing, too difficult to watch.  That was my mistake. 12 Years a Slave portrays terrible human suffering without every wallowing in the misery of it.  I hate the phrase misery porn but this film could easily have devolved into something more lurid, and while McQueen never shies away from the truly disgusting torture of slavery, he manages to affirm life instead of condemning it.  If anything, Solomon Northup (brilliantly and humanely portrayed by the lovely Chewitel Ejiofor) has a deeply felt will to “not just survive, but live,” and McQueen brings that somewhat modern idea to the screen in this period piece of the most shameful period in our country’s history.  Solomon is tricked, disappointed, deceived, tortured, and worked nearly to death, and, while McQueen shows us the frankly horrifying and ugly-beyond-belief moments of slavery, he does it with a deft touch.  We are moved but not oppressed. Lupita N’yongo and Michael Fassbender are equally great as master and slave caught in a terrible web of lust, power, and self-hatred.  An important film, yes, but also a great one.

5. Room 237 (Rodney Ascher):  Rodney Ascher’s exploration of obsession of the Stanley Kubrick-classic The Shining is something every cinephile can appreciate. Ascher uses clips from the film to illustrate the theories of people obsessed with the hidden meaning of Kubrick’s most famous film. Some think it is a metaphor for the genocide of the Native Americans, some  see it as a metaphor the Holocaust, some even think it is Kubrick’s confession of being involved with the government faking the moon landing.  All the theories seem crazy at first, but Ascher’s superb, hypnotic editing begins to creep under your skin, and the film slowly becomes as creepy as the movie that inspired it.  I love the fact that a film can inspire this bizarre loyalty and attention to detail, and, although I don’t think any of the theories hold any weight, Room 237 is still a fascinating exploration of a world of film criticism that I think both enriches and poisons the cineastes plight.

Julie

La Femme….in Boston

Last July, after our week in New Hampshire and Vermont K and I drove down to Boston for a long weekend, thus completing our mini New England odyssey.   I found Boston to be a lovely, almost magical city, so much so that remembering our time there, it is easy for me to forget the stifling heat (seriously, I made K stop at a Chipotle just so I could be in air-conditioning and drink an ice cold Coke.  Nothing tastes better than ice cold Coke when you are sweltering) and instead remember our few days there as a hazy, leisurely, romantic weekend.

After pooing out that stupid pit!

Traveling with K is always easy and always fun.   Luckily, we love to spend time together and uninterrupted time together is the best. In the interest of full disclosure, before I wax poetic about our romantic weekend (anytime you come from a wedding, I think romance is in the air), I have to share our drive from Vermont.  Everything was going swimmingly, the car was cool and the traffic was flowing nicely.  Suddenly my mom calls.  From the moment I said "Hi!", I could tell that something was wrong, and I knew it was something with my beloved pup, Rufus.  Long story short, he had swallowed some sort of pit and my Mom had quickly taken him to the vet clinic that I work for.  After talking to the doctor, I had worked myself into a complete frenzy, convinced he would need foreign body surgery.  Poor K had hit Boston traffic and was trying to get us to the car rental return.  After getting to our hotel, I was still in a state of panic and so we decided to get a drink and walked to a nearby hotel bar (I have a soft spot for a good hotel bar).  I could barely notice the Back Bay neighborhood or be charmed by the brownstones, instead I could only focus on my boo boo baby (yes, I call him that).  Luckily, seconds after sitting down, I checked my phone and the vet had left a message that he had passed the pit!  Our vacation could resume and I could begin to relax and quickly did (with a celebratory cocktail, or three). 

We stayed at the quaint but modern Chandler Inn, our room was tiny but comfortable.  My favorite part of the hotel was the gay sports bar adjacent to it.  Every time K and I would walk down the street, there would be some adorable guys outside ready to make comments to us. It didn't help that for some reason K and I decided we were the Beckhams this trip and every day accidentally coordinated our outfits; one day we both wore green, the next purple.  This amused the peeps down at Fritz (best name for a gay sports bar ever) a lot.  Our neighborhood, the Back Bay was charming, filled with drool worthy brownstones, an adorable square of cute restaurants and café lights and a banging, modern wine shop.  I loved it.

K and I spent our days wandering around the city, from Newberry Street, where we had a lovely lunch al fresco and I spotted the cutest dog ever in the window of an eyeglass shop (other than Ruf, obvs).  We visited the HUGE Anthropologie and the tiny Jonathan Adler store, and bought our pups some souvenirs from an adorable doggie boutique.  What struck me most is just how pleasant and friendly everyone was, it was something I just wasn't expecting from this brusque east coast city.  My favorite moment was when I got an ice cream on our last day; we went to a soft serve truck and I ordered a cone.  I then noticed that they had sprinkles so of course, I had to get some.  The guy obliged, but not before good-naturedly  telling  me in a thick Boston Accent, "you're gettin' real little kid on us".  I was smitten!  The only way I could have been more chuffed is if someone had said to me, how do you like dem apples!   It basically made my life.

The Freedom Trail which crosses through the whole city was also one of the highlights for me.  Months later it all runs together and I don't have much of a head for historical facts.  But I loved wandering through the city, visiting cemeteries, churches and City Hall.  It made me unexpectedly patriotic.  K and I also got to stroll through the North End, which is the Italian neighborhood and I fell in love.  It was so uniquely American, with great restauarnats and terrible, tourist shops and real people who lived there.  The architecture was old but didn't feel like anywhere in Europe I'd ever been.  We knew we had to return for dinner that night, which we did, to Lo Conte's, a Italian red sauce joint that fulfilled my craving for Italian American food.  Walking in the evening all the way back to our hotel, we strolled and held hands and it was lovely.  Speaking of food, another highlight was a lobster roll that we had the next day for lunch.  We went to this place right by the water and there were a bunch of people ordering lobster rolls (there were people tourists who didn't want any mayo on it, WTF!) and they had a huge tank full of the very bugs we were about to eat.  We ate our rolls and clam chowder outside and it was filling and delicious.

Now this wouldn't be a post from La Femme unless I discussed cocktails, right?  Drink was a bar I knew I wanted to go to as soon as I started researching Boston.  But, K and I were kind of an a budget this trip because we had literally closed on our house a few days before leaving.  So I didn't think blowing $$$ on cocktails was very wise, and K and I don't have a very good history of sticking to our vacation budget (our mindset is, don't regret something later, you never know if you'll make it back).  Long story short, I thought we wouldn't make it to Drink.  But lo and behold, after spending an afternoon wandering around Harvard University and the surrounding Cambridge neighborhood, we found ourselves at an underground tavern at 2:30 pm discussing what to do next.  We had dinner plans, yes, but it was so stinking hot, we couldn't stand to walk outside any more than necessary.  And although our bartender was very friendly, I didn't want to spend all afternoon sitting and drinking rum and cokes at a nondescript student hangout.  So, looking at my guidebook, I suggested Drink to K, telling him it was one of the most highly regarded cocktail bars in America.  He wondered why I hadn't mentioned it before, and before I knew it, we were on our way to South Boston.  We wandered around the quiet, industrial neighborhood for a while waiting for the appropriate time after it opened to go in. Luckily we weren't the first and we took a seat at the very long bar.

Drink was perhaps one of my favorite bar experiences, ever.  The bar steadily filled up but still remained fairly quiet, almost reverential.  The atmosphere, at least in the late afternoon wasn't my favorite (overall the look of the bar was a bit clinical for me), and K and I didn't have a chance to go back in the evening as we were leaving the next day (thank god we didn't go the first day, our budget would have been really blown, then!) but I have to say the drinks were some of the most carefully constructed, beautifully presented ones I have ever had.  There is no menu at Drink, instead you talk to your server about what you like/want.  I knew I wanted a Mary Pickford, one of my favorite rum drinks.  It was prepared carefully and served on a white napkin, almost like a gift.  I followed it up with a Ramos Gin Fizz, a difficult but tasty, lighter than air cocktail.  It takes a lot of shaking, and I did notice the bartender didn't seem to keen when other patrons began asking about my milkshake looking drink.  But he made me the best one I have had to date.  It was a lazy, sun filled afternoon that I will never forget.  And I can't wait to go back to Drink, to the North End, to Fritz's and to the lovely, charming, friendly city of Boston.

How about dem apples?

Julie