Last week, I introduced a new feature called The Micro Five, with the basic concept being that every Tuesday, I would come up with a five-item list based on a micro-specific topic, and then toss the baton to five other film bloggers, who would then rebut my list with a list of their own. I had fun putting together my list of Five Improbable Werner Herzog Anecdotes, but that whole baton tossing part didn’t work out so great–the feedback I got indicated that the topic was *too* obscure, and that the rules were too vague.
So, we’re trying this again. This time I’ve picked what I think is a more accessible topic, and instead of tagging specific bloggers, I’ll leave it open to anyone who wants to respond with a list of their own. If you put together a list, please paste a link in the comments to this post. If you’d like to put together a list but don’t have a blog of your own, may I suggest starting one for free at Spout? Next week, I’ll do a round-up post linking to all responses.
This week’s topic was inspired by this blog post, which is just the latest in the “I think Knocked Up is plum unrealistic!” meme that’s been going around all summer. Katha Pollitt’s angle is an interesting one–basically, that Knocked Up isn’t so much about an unwanted pregnancy as it is about Seth Rogen’s character wanting to be saved from himself–but it’s still a bit hung up on the idea that the plot wouldn’t fly if abortions were more commonplace in movies. I personally disagree–I think everything Judd Apatow tells us about Katherine Heigl’s character indicates that she’s exactly the kind of woman who would keep an unplanned baby as part of a quest for unconditional love–but this seems like as good a time as any to compare and contrast unwanted movie pregnancies. So, in no particular order:
Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve) loves Guy, but he’s a mechanic, and her mother would prefer her to be with this older businessman dude with a creepy moustache. Guy gets drafted and has to go to war in Algeria; shortly after he leaves, Genevieve discovers she’s pregnant. After a few months of mooning for the absent Guy, Genevieve acknowledges that her mom’s got a point: a rich baby daddy that she doesn’t love but who is willing to financially support another man’s child is better than a genetic baby daddy that Genevieve “would die for”, but who is penniless nonetheless. Demy’s treatment of Genevieve’s situation is frank and nonchalant for its day, particularly considering that the film itself was an homage to Hollywood’s fantasy-driven Technicolor musicals. The final scene (embedded above), in which (spoiler alert!) Guy is reunited with his child, gets me every time.
A near-forgotten gem of 80’s British cinema, Wish You Were Here follows Lynda, an ostentatiously promiscuous 50s-era teen tart (director David Leland based his script on the memoirs of famed madam Cynthia Payne) through a series of seriocomic coming-of-age encounters in her seaside hometown. Lynda’s mother’s dead, and her father can’t be bothered; her sluttishness is clearly coded as “looking for love by any means necessary.” When a friend of the family gets her pregnant and then abandons her, Lynda’s aunt provides the cash required to “take care of it.” Lynda takes the money, skips town, keeps the baby and starts a new life. The unexpected cloying ending (blah blah blah, the baby gives her the love she was looking for all along) works thanks to the mult-layered breakout performance of Emily Lloyd, who was nominated for a BAFTA ad generally became something of an international It girl for a brief time after the film was released.
3. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Not only the only movie I’m aware of that deals with an unwanted pregnancy with a total lack of hysteria, but the only film dealing with the A-word that I could find that was actually directed by a women (Amy Heckerling). All of the drama surrounding Jennifer Jason Leigh’s unwanted pregnancy in this movie has to do with how she’s gonna get to and from the clinic. The douchbag who knocked her can’t even pay for his half, let alone give her a ride. She ends up lying to her brother, telling him that she needs a ride to the mall, and then sneaking off to clinic when she thinks he’s driven off. He ends up following her, and drives her home after the procedure. Today, Heckerling is praised today for refusing to moralize the abortion subplot, but it’s probably worth noting that at the time of its release, Fast Times was widely panned. “How could they do this to Jennifer Jason Leigh?” Roger Ebert wrote. “How could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into such a scuz-pit of a movie?”
Hillary Brougher’s harrowing second film is a study of two very different pregnancies. Amber Tamblyn plays the title character, a religious high school student who loses her virginity to a stranger and gives birth in a public restroom several months later, claiming she never knew she was pregnant; Tilda Swinton plays the pregnant psychologist hired by the court to pass judgment on Stephanie’s sanity. The film revolves around Stephanie’s fractured testimony–is she crazy? Lying? A little of both?–all of which Tamblyn manages to pull together in an incredibly nuanced performance. The film came and went in limited release earlier this year (I saw it at Sundance in 2006), but it’s worth seeking out. The birth scene, shot something like a Lars Von Trier remake of Carrie, is absolutely terrifying.
5. Trust
Many Knocked Up skeptics mention the film in the same breath as Waitress, another 2007 comedy centered on an unplanned (an inexplicably un-terminated) pregnancy. That film’s director/co-star, the late Adrienne Shelly, was best known to many indie film fans for her starring role as a pregnant teenager in Hal Hartley’s Trust. Shelly plays Maria, a gum-snapping suburban high school dropout whose pregnancy prompts her football-star boyfriend to leave her, and her father to drop dead of a heart attack. Matthew, a TV-repairman played by Martin Donovan, is probably twice her age, but he’s struggling to break out from the shackles of his own dysfunctional family. The two form a tentative bond based on their mutual alienation. Matthew offers to marry Maria; Maria, believing Matthew has fooled around with her sister, eventually gets an abortion. Just as Maria and Matthew’s relationship hinges, as he puts it, on mutual “trust, admiration and respect,” Hartley asks us in good faith to invest in a relationship devoid of the usual romantic fireworks, and then suddenly removes the one traditional bit of plot glue holding the two characters together. Due to Hartley’s magic formula of deadpan melodrama, it works.
