Lucy's Revenge

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
-- George Santayana

Thursday, May 20, 1999
One year ago: Public Speaking
Two years ago: A Bridge to the Moon

Jack was up and gone by seven AM, after our late Phantom Menace evening.! I had the luck to be able to go back to sleep, so I did, until midmorning.

I'd already missed the first press screening of the day, so I looked at the schedule and decided to give the 12:30 movie a miss as well. The conjoined twin theme didn't turn me on. (I've heard good word of mouth since, so maybe I'll see it later.)

So I was surprised when the 2:30 press screening turned out to contain conjoined twins also! ("Conjoined twins" are what we used to call "Siamese" twins, since the first pair to come to worldwide fame were from there.)

• Of Freaks and Men
  (IMDB page for this movie) I was expecting quite a bit more "ribald fun," as the Film festival writeup has it, from this story of the early days of spanking porn movies in Russia. Instead there were endless shots of the characters taking a ferry between their apartments, or riding on trolleys and trains. Long silences, people walking down endless hallways or listening at doorways. There are a few laughs, and the atmosphere is weird, but not in an interesting way, for me. The person sitting next to me slept through the majority of the film, and I didn't blame her!

I crossed paths with Hyper Dan, and Anne Walkky, two dance buddies who have mostly disappeared from the dance floor. Why? it's a mystery. It was fun to catch up and compare opinions so far. I walked down Broadway, stopped at the drugstore, and met up with A---, already at the Harvard Exit for the evening screenings.

• The Hole
  (IMDB page for this film)I found this Taiwanese story tough going, about a mysterious virus that's leading to (or takes advantage of?) isolation and social breakdowns. It's raining constantly. Again, no one speaks. Long silences are problematic when I'm already tired -- I'm that much more likely to drop off! The music videos interspersed through the film (the actors, lipsynching to pop hits) do liven things up. I liked the ending, which is a moment of hope and transcendence after the unrelieved tedium and depression.

• Lucy's Revenge
  (IMDB page for this film)This was something different! An African film with a Polish writer/director -- a humorous look back at relations between the sexes and the races over time. The same characters appear from pre-history, through the colonial period, and back to the present. Good fun! The director was present for Q and A, and I wanted to ask if Lucy was meant to represent the prehistoric, prehuman Lucy, but I didn't get a chance.