Soft and Quiet

 

What does a swastika pie taste like? In this movie, just like cherries. "Can no one take a joke anymore?" asks the baker. The baker in question is, for lack of a better term, a Nazi Karen, and she has gathered more Nazi Karens to fight for their white rights by forming the self-help and "empowerment" group Daughters for Aryan Unity, which we see scrawled on a blackboard at their meeting. The members of the group are a frazzled soccer mom, a casually elegant teacher, a young woman who has just gotten out of prison, and another young woman who believes that she did not get a job because she is white. They don't "look" like Nazis. They don't consider themselves racist or hateful, but they do think that The Jews and words I will not write or say, are taking over the world and crowding these sick women out. The meeting we see is their first. Everyone is a little hesitant at first to share their own personal stories, but as they grow more comfortable with each other, we learn that the soccer mom is proudly from a long line of KKK members, though she herself has been getting "more into Stormfront these days." Stormfront, for those who don't know, is a Nazi website trumpeting lies, hate, vitriol, and violence against everyone who is not a white Christian nationalist. They are a hate group. They are on the Southern Poverty Law Center's HateWatch list. It takes about 20 minutes or so to realize that the former convict's jacket reads, "Lieben zu Hassen," (Love to Hate), one of many many moments that made the color drain from my face.

The film opens with the elegant kindergarten teacher taking a pregnancy test. Shortly thereafter, she takes it upon herself to tell a 5-year-old (white) boy who is waiting for his mom to pick him up to go tell off a Hispanic cleaning woman. Then off she goes into the woods with her pie for her group meeting in a lovely church. The pie unveiling is a stomach-turning moment for those watching (I hope), but a real hoot for the group, who can't believe she really did that, but they laugh and laugh and dig into that pie. Eventually the priest of the church grocks what's going on and kicks them out. 

Before they can go somewhere more hospitable to drink chardonnay and bond further over their filth, they make a stop at the convenience store that one of their crew owns, and they're the only people in there. Two Asian-American sisters, Emily and Anne, walk in and it goes just as you might think. They are shamed, they are threatened, they are humiliated. On their way out of the store, they make sure to remind the teacher that her brother is in jail for raping Anne. She snaps. She becomes hysterical. Her husband, who has joined them for this piece, speaks out against what they plan to do, and is berated for not being man enough. The teacher and her cronies go to the sisters' house, and here is where it becomes even less soft and quiet. They ransack the house for fun, steal passports and ruin the place. But then the sisters come home and all hell breaks loose. There are deaths here, violent deaths. There is language used, as I pointed out before, that is sick and twisted and nauseating. 

Beth de Araujo wrote and directed this movie to look as though it's shot in one take and it largely appears to work. A 91-minute-long shot of revolting women on a revolting rampage. This movie is not a good one, but it cannot be ignored. 

May December

"Do it nicely, it really matters how it looks."

The first thing I will say is that for some bizarre reason, this has been nominated in the Musical or Comedy categories for the Golden Globes. I am baffled. 

This Todd Haynes film gave me a creeping feeling of anxiety and low-grade fear. It is largely quiet, the music being the loudest piece of it, which serves to help the anxiety settle in. This is a story taken from that of Vili Fualaau and Mary Kay Letourneau, the subjects of a media frenzy that began in the 90s and has yet to end. As in the Letourneau/Fualaau case, the couple here (played by Julieanne Moore and Charles Melton) met and fell in love when he was 13 years old. What falling in love means versus being taken advantage of is obviously a topic here, spoken of haltingly, heartlessly, and with grief. The couple, Gracie and Joe, have stayed together through media backlash, Gracie's imprisonment, and three children. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress from a TV show who has been cast as Gracie in an independent film and has come to Savannah to study her subjects up close and personal. 

Portman is intensely creepy and cold here, like I've never seen her. There is something off about her from the beginning, when she meets the family and their friends at a summer barbecue. The brilliant Moore's expertise in rattled hysteria is on full display, weeping over a canceled baked-goods order. She is a home baker now, having had to upend her whole life. 

Melton is something of a revelation. The actor, like Portman's character, comes to this movie from a TV show, and I can say whole-heartedly that Riverdale did not show his skills to their fullest (no shade, I watched a lot of Riverdale). He plays 36-year-old Joe as a sheltered man in a mid-life crisis, his children all older than he was when he met his future wife; one in college and twins coming up on their high school graduation. He is a care-taker of sorts, cradling Gracie in his arms while she cries, more than once. 

Elizabeth scours the town for interviews with locals and Gracie's children with her ex-husband. She spends some time watching the audition tapes of 13-year-old boys from LA wanting to play the young Joe. None of them are "sexy" enough for the story, she argues. She makes a roomful of teenagers and their drama teacher uncomfortable, talking about the nature of doing sex scenes as an actress. She, sitting alone in the stockroom where Gracie and Joe were first caught together, acts out the sex that she imagines them having. 

The intimacy between Gracie and Elizabeth is electric and feels dangerous. Gracie paints Elizabeth's face to look like hers, teaches her to bake, holding her hands as they pour the cake batter together. These innocuous actions seem much deeper here, the eye contact between them never wavering, the mixture of obsession, pity, and hatred all on quiet show. 

Do not go into this thinking it's a salacious piece. It's a character study that raises and does not answer all of the many questions it poses, and that's ok. Answers aren't always easy, and sometimes, they're unnecessary.