What is Genius? From Mozart in the Jungle to London Spy

When I was in college I took a film class on Biopics. The central question of the class was, What makes a great life? And furthermore, What makes that great life worth telling? Indeed, the crux of a compelling narrative is, in my opinion, interesting characters. But so much of our current television landscape goes beyond depicting simply interesting characters into depicting extraordinary ones, however that may look. Don Draper, Walter White, Carrie Mathison, and Eliot from Mr Robot are all exceptional people in some way or another. Commonplace lives are boring, while great ones are watchable.

So how do you tell the story of genius? Amadeus (1984) picked the lens of mediocrity in Salieri, using his averageness to elevate and evaluate Mozart's talent. I still maintain that movie is one of the finest depictions of humans grappling with the edges of their abilities ever made. Yet more often, biopics take the genius as a given and instead depict the life circumstances surrounding that genius, rarely questioning it in the first place.

This is why Mozart in the Jungle, Amazon's surprise winner at the Golden Globes, is refreshing to me. It's about the New York Symphony, with its conductor and all its players, so it's not about an individual genius - it's about an entire body of people channeling some original sort of genius lying dormant in classical sheet music through their own individual interpretations, and hence risking being second-rate. Rodrigo, the flamboyantly rule-breaking conductor, has a multitude of talent as a musician and conductor, but he must contend with the mediocrity of his orchestra; as he says after a performance, "it wasn't bad. But it was also not not bad." Hailey, one of his youngest oboists, wants to be great someday, but only within the confines of an orchestra - why not on her own as a soloist? There's also Gloria, who gave up her singing career in favor of fundraising, or Thomas, the maestro emeritus who's now trying his hand at composing and will not listen to the critics who call him derivative. In essence, what I like about this different take on talent is that it cannot be taken for granted because it is not a constant. It's a highly flammable variable that can get extinguished at any time thanks to disuse, fear, or lack of work ethic.

Does Rodrigo hear his orchestra's talent going astray? 

Stories then seem especially tragic when talent is extinguished too early, as in when someone dies. In London Spy, BBC2's emotional spy thriller, Danny (the always watchable Ben Whishaw) falls for an inscrutable investment banker, Alex (Edward Holcroft), whose tight-lipped, tight-assed virginal innocence stands in for the more sinister government secrets locked in his mind. When Danny discovers Alex's decomposing body in a trunk at the end of the first episode, he's convinced that Alex was murdered because he knew something important. Over the course of the five episodes, we go from disbelief to disregard to conviction of Alex's mathematical genius as we get closer to what those secrets are. Yet if Alex hadn't been endowed with such gifts, how would his life have been different? Would he have loved the same way? The show is brooding and dark, and at the end we're left a bit unsure of everything except what genius can do to haunt someone's life.

What did Alex know?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, knows about the haunting notion of genius. In her new book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, she gives all us wannabe-artists the hope we need by reconstructing the concept of genius. Nodding to her previous book's enormous success, she writes that she would be plagued with self-doubt as a writer when tasked with chasing that success if she had believed that a genius was something she just inextricably was. Instead, she believes, as we all should, that genius is like magic, lingering in the atmosphere, and if we're lucky enough and we work hard enough, it may flow through us momentarily. That's why similar movies get made at the same time, or why two startup ideas are weirdly similar, or why someone may write 'your' book before you do. It's the genius finding a vessel, or few, at just the right time. Most of the time, our creativity is a slog of hard work, but we do it so we can be ready to receive the genius if it comes.

This is such a healthier perspective on genius, I wish film and tv shows would pick it up more. That way, all of us with any sort of creative aspirations wouldn't be crippled by insecurity if we saw more people like us on screen. We're ordinary, we work hard, and perhaps the work possesses genius. The trouble is, is that watchable?

Representing Sexual Abuse in Outlander and Spotlight

I spent this weekend in 1740's Scotland and 2000's Boston thanks to Starz's Outlander and Tom McCarthy's Spotlight. These are two very different (excellent) stories depicting two very different times, but they overlap on one key element: they both contain stories of rape and molestation committed by men, on men (or boys). Here's my attempt to work out how those representations worked, and what they might mean.

Outlander's male protagonist is the strapping, fearless Scottish Jacobite soldier Jamie Fraser who is married to Claire, a time-traveling combat nurse pulled back to 1743 from 1945 (forgive the premise; it's actually great). Jamie's dealings with the Scottish rebellion from the British has left a price on his head, and when he is captured and sent to prison close to the end of the first season, Claire musters up some comrades and cattle (yes, cattle) to break Jamie out before he is hanged. However, it's not Claire who gets to him first but rather the show's villain, "Black" Jack Randall, a redcoat gone rogue who has a perverse obsession with Jamie. How perverse? Let's just say that movie blood hardly ever makes me squeamish, but Black Jack's brutal flogging -- 100 lashes -- of Jamie midway through the season made me yelp in protest despite being alone in my apartment.

Black Jack's goal is not just to torture Jamie. He wants to break him. Tobias Menzies, who plays Randall, has said that he thinks Randall is an exercise in sadism and that some viewers reckon Randall loves him, and he plays the character with just enough empathy for the viewer to feel horror and pity in equal measure. I won't go into all the details, but Black Jack breaks Jamie down not only by raping him but by inflicting so much shame against his masculinity, sexuality, and love for Claire that he is left staring, unmoving, wishing for death. And we see it all.

 Randall's sadism at work

Spotlight, on the other hand, relies on testimony by victims of Boston's priest abuse scandal to represent male sexual abuse. What starts as a seemingly regional story based on a single priest and a few hush-hush settlements begins to spiral as more leads point to a city- and even country-wide scandal. It's as if all of Boston had been muzzled for decades by the Catholic Church; the abuse was rampant, everyone knew, and no one could speak up. Shame and silencing were everywhere. We don't see reenactments of these crimes but rather feel their gravity thanks their simple multitude. Numbers speak loudly here -- 13 priests becomes 90 becomes 250 -- and the breaking down of a few survivors as the film employs them to recount what happened to them as boys is more than enough. We feel those broken spirits multiply as we see the names and addresses of the priests tally up.

One of many of the Boston priests' victims, Phil Saviano

Both stories examine what it means to be a victim just as much as they examine what it means to be a predator, especially when those victims are male. For some reason, watching Randall rape Jamie made me more uncomfortable than watching him attempt to rape Claire, which he does earlier in the season. Maybe it's because I have seen rapes against women on screen before. Heck, SVU is dedicated almost entirely to this phenomenon. Yet I think it's because seeing an ultra-masculine man who builds his manhood on his strength being broken down into helplessness was as tragic as the thought of pedophile priests singling out boys from poor families with absent fathers.  The victims are different but their pain is the same. It's that of the predators boring shame so deeply into their souls that silence is their only companion. Especially when those predators have incredibly unshakable systems of power to shelter them from justice (the priests were simply sent elsewhere; Black Jack's got Britain propping him up by his Redcoat).

What resonates most with me when comparing these stories is that we can't and shouldn't qualify shame by degree, and that watching a depiction of abuse is just as powerful as not seeing it. We tend to think of masculinity as synonymous with resiliency, as if men should be unbreakable. And if they are broken, their pain must be suffered in silence, lest they betray weakness or invoke systemic abuse. So whether or not a film or TV show chooses to physically show an instance of male sexual abuse, it's so incredibly moving and sad and important to infuse the subject matter with vulnerability and to show the power dynamics at play. In Spotlight, the Boston Globe must go after the Church and not the individual priests to make the magnitude of the scandal resonate, and that's what stories about male sexual abuse should do too, if they are approached well; they should go after the system. They can expose the cracks in the power structures that keep hegemonic masculinity afloat by emphasizing the importance of speaking up and being vulnerable. I'm not saying that every show should undertake a rape scene, but rather I am happy that these two stories were able to humanize and empathize with victims while simultaneously exposing the cowardice of the people in power to keep such atrocities under wraps.

Mr. Robot and my guilty conscience

Permit me to explode for a moment about Mr. Robot, USA's remarkable summer series about unreliable narrator Elliot (Rami Malek) and his hacker involvement in taking down corporations.

This show is un-effing-believable. And not just because we have a hard time believing Elliot. It's visually stunning, morally argumentative, powerfully written and narratively captivating. Think Fight Club and American Psycho and A Clockwork Orange for 2015, in a 10-episode serialized form.

What I love most about this show is Elliot's unabashed, paranoid take-down of capitalism, corporate America and the hyper-connectivity of our world. There are several standout characters, including Tyrell with his Swedish chill (the excellent Martin Wallström), and Mr. Robot himself, but Elliot is the most compelling (and confusing). As a skilled hacker whose delusions fuel his drive both to destroy and also unite, Elliot's world is scattered and disjointed yet webbed like a computer security network, bits and pieces whirring together. He's an angry young man who hates greed and people and in his extreme loneliness he may or may not have the means to destroy both these things. I won't spoil it, but the question of what's real nowadays, for Elliot and hence the viewer, is ever wavering after the explosive finale.

This show unhinged me a bit this week. His stance on social media (as well as consumerism, naiveté and a host of other social maladies) is that it's an infectious disease--super spreadable and toxic. Complacency through social media leads to laziness which leads to helplessness and mental illness. It's a strong viewpoint to be fair, but it left me nevertheless extremely conflicted about how networked my life is, personally and professionally.

Here's the thing about Mr. Robot. I watched it relentlessly, captivated, glued to the TV while trying to avoid spoilers on Twitter. But as soon as a huge plot point or character reveal happened (ummmm BD Wong as the White Rose?? Wut that was amazing!) I wanted to tweet my heart out with others watching. Thus employing what Elliot denounces. Thus buying into the system he crusades against. Sam Esmail, the creator of the show, seems to be using Mr. Robot as a platform for his brutalist perspective on the world, yet he nevertheless has a platform entirely supported by advertising to get his message across (ie, basic cable broadcasting). Such a morally complicated narrative would be a no-brainer fit somewhere like HBO or Showtime, whose subscribers dictate the kind of stories told on the channel, not like USA.  Which is why this show fascinates me - it actively calls out the evils of advertising/corporations/the 1% even though those things are its foundation. That this particular show exists on basic cable makes me think of Brutalist architect Le Corbusier's Pilotis pillars (PS do he and Sam Esmail share a philosophical brain?), those concrete columns that hold up stories upon stories of concrete.  If those pillars crumble, so does the whole structure, but they are deceptively, relentless strong. So is capitalism. So is advertising. So is Mr. Robot.

 Pilotis : brutalism :: advertising : Mr. Robot

I can't wait for the next season.

The UnReal-ity of the 'Bachelor' Universe

It's been a hot minute, I know. Working in TV and social media makes it harder to dedicate your free time to TV and social media. Who knew?

Nevertheless, I am currently swept up in the faraway land known as the Bachelor/ette/inParadise franchise. There is something very interesting happening in this world, which I've written about before, but you might not know it unless you are an avid fan able to parse out which tropes and codes are being disrupted in the Bachelor-verse this summer. These disruptions fall under two categories; one within the series The Bachelorette, the other outside it, namely the seriously compelling Lifetime (what, did I say those words together?) show UnReal. 

Let's start with how Kaitlyn Bristowe, the most recent Bachelorette to be whisked away by the glamor of 'dating' 25 men on TV, purposely or purposelessly spun the show on its head. See, Kaitlyn seems to behave like a woman of 2015, meaning she has a sex drive that leads to certain events. A few weeks into the courtship, when there are still ~8 men left in the game, she sleeps with one of the contestants. Normally in this show, sex happens under verrrryyy controlled circumstances and locations that are actually called 'fantasy suites,' which serial viewers of the franchise will tell you only pop out when there are 3 guys left. Usually these 'overnight dates' happen on a tropical island, complete with pillows and candles and maybe some palm trees rustling in the wind. Everyone knows sex goes on, but it is never talked about, because the show seems to pander to what it believes to be Middle American values (for its Midwestern mom demographic, maybe). This season, Kaitlyn sleeps with Nick in Dublin, in a hotel room. It's so pedestrian in comparison, but so much more real, because the next morning the crew catches her on camera having a heart-to-heart with one of the producers on her balcony, reciting all those things we millenial women sometimes recite to ourselves and to friends after sleeping with someone too early. She doesn't regret it, but now she has to figure out how to break the news to the others. Furthermore, she had already told another contestant in private (Shawn, who would end up with her heart), that he was the one.

How did the production team approach this behavior? They sort of embraced it and altered the format of the show. Yes, they seem to have scrapped the other exotic locations in favor of staying in Dublin with a shorter schedule (could this have been a weird punishment? Nah, since producers will do whatever they can for ratings), but they actually gave Kaitlyn the go-ahead to have overnights with four men, not three. They also exposed all the slut-shaming tweets aimed at Kaitlyn in a reunion special (and my feminist heart whined as I heard this vitriol) in order to incite and maybe defend their now-controversial commentary on sex. Then Kaitlyn only met two families instead of 3, which was probably a good call on the producers' part when they must have known pretty concretely that Kaitlyn only really cared about those two guys. It may have been a misstep on the production's part to bring the 'loser' all the way to a proposal, but again, ratings rule.

 "raise your hand if you have ever felt personally victimized by Regina George Twitter trolls"

Why is this important? Finally, after a bajillion seasons of this show perpetuated archaic values, romantic inventions, and hegemonic gender roles, we're finally seeing the cracks in that rigidity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're getting a positive representation of healthy relationships, but Kaitlyn has ushered in a frankness about sexuality that is welcome on a show that has, for better or worse, dictated some standards around courtship and romance in pop culture. That this franchise is also responsible for Bachelor in Paradise is interesting because the otherwise proper values steeped in the Bachelor/ette are nowhere to be found in "Paradise," where sex, backstabbing, and manipulation are called "love" to hide the jealousy and competition that draws us in like any good trashy tv.

Then there's UnReal. A scripted series that draws quite tightly from the Bachelor universe (it's basically a fictional behind-the-scenes look at the Bachelor), it tells the story of the backstabbing, manipulative producers responsible for this good trashy tv. What's great about UnReal isn't so much the scandals and cat-fights the producers encourage, but that these producers are women living in the feminist/post-feminist media landscape, grappling with their conflicting desires: power and morality, danger and safety, love and lust. For example, the female showrunner Quinn is a ruthless yet intuitive boss gunning for her own franchise, and she wants to take her best associate producer, Rachel, with her, despite Rachel's paranoia that this world is drawing her irreversibly farther away from escaping the manipulations and destruction she happens to be good at.

 Quinn certainly isn't nice, but she knows people, and she knows what makes good TV.

Honestly, I sometimes feel like Rachel. It is difficult to work in media without internalizing a general feeling that the internet brings out the worst in people. Being addicted to social media, like many in my generation, has made me less patient, less able to be in the moment, less empathetic, and less able to think deeply about issues larger than 140 characters. Yet when I see complex stories on TV about complex women, I feel like at least I have a voice, because stories like mine are starting to be told in mass media. I'm trying to escape it all, but I end up sucking myself back in. Maybe it's a vicious cycle, condemning the hand that feeds me because media also tells the stories I care about, but the fact that dating shows actually resonate on my feminist scale gives me hope.

Jane the Virgin & risk-taking

Jane the Virgin mostly makes me giggle, but one episode struck more than my funny bone in the way it treats the theme of taking risks as a young, responsible woman.

This show, which is in its first season on the CW, tickles with its undercover feminism and genuine emotions amidst goofy, over-the-top characters and telenovela-inspired plot twists. Gina Rodriguez excels as Jane, a thoughtful young woman who gets accidentally artificially inseminated and (small spoiler) develops feelings for the father of the baby. Jaime Camil, as Rogelio, is actually hilarious as a superstar who discovers he is Jane's father. Add a thousand other events and people in Jane's life and you've got a hit that, surprisingly, doesn't get swept away by its own drama.

In a recent episode, Jane finds herself doing something she never thought she would; she breaks up with her stable, detective fiancé for the man whose baby she's already carrying. Michael, the fiancé, is her rock and his feelings for Jane never waver. Rafael, on the other hand, is passionate but harder to nail down. But they have undeniable chemistry, so she goes for it. This sounds like a completely typical trope in romantic comedies, which it kind of is, but for some reason it doesn't feel cliché. Here's why.

Yup, I can feel the chemistry from here. 

Up until this point, Jane has lived her life avoiding risk and instead banking on responsibility and stability. She harbors dreams of writing fiction but has gone to school for teaching. Her mom raised her as a single woman, so Jane has learned never to be dependent on men. She works two jobs to put herself through school. So when she finds herself actually a pregnant virgin at no fault of her own, she wants to throw her hands up, admit defeat to the gods of "good things come to those who wait,"  and pursue those potentially life-changing butterflies she feels with Rafael, especially after hours-long conversations with him are making her fall in love.

I sort of love this story line. First of all, Jane is a character who is strong-willed without being reckless, considerate without being demur, and a role model while still allowing room for error. We need more characters like her on television.  Second of all, the story subverts the traditional romantic comedy, which treats the woman as a shell of a person by which the obstacle of securing a man she becomes whole. Jane is already her own person with legitimate aspirations, and she is feeling things in her heart that make her want to take a risk which could enhance her life, or change it for the worse. For once, this "risking everything for love" story is one I can get behind, because Jane feels more three-dimensional than many romantic comedies--a character with real agency.

Which, of course, makes me reflect on all the times I have or haven't taken risks. Yes, I moved to two foreign countries to pursue passions, but I always knew I could come home (and alas, I have), so for some reason those adventures still feel like calculated risks. More often, though, I've had the nagging "should I text" thoughts after someone exited my life too soon (either by my design or theirs) and the hope that going all-in could change our fate. I've had the friendly brunches/drinks/dinners with exes, where I've kept my composure and shown them, mostly truthfully, that I am doing great and that my life has its direction (like Jane's, regardless of partner). Many times I've accepted these events as the right thing and eschewed regret. But I don't think I have ever irrevocably risked it all, even though when I was younger I thought I wore my heart on my sleeve; I've discovered I'm sometimes way too rational, and hence I shy away from true risk-taking behavior.  Even recently I realized, thanks to a discussion with a friend, that the way I drink (casually, never in excess) has never been to let loose to the point of forgetting or exceeding limits; it's to get a little closer to the authenticity of a moment in which the rational details of time, place and company merge with the monumental emotions of certain moments. I love feeling overwhelmed by the emotional gravity of stories I hear/read/watch, but in my own life I tend to let rationality dominate. When slightly buzzed, I feel that it's easier to merge the rational with the emotional sides of my brain and I want to get better at this sober.

But I also can't lie and say I don't dream about a moment in my life where I grab my bike, pedal through the snow, and show up unannounced at someone's door and say, let's do this. For real. You're worth the risk.

The Affair

I've never had an affair, but recently I was pulled towards one. I found myself not answering texts, canceling plans, and saying to myself just a bit more, then I'll stop. I was enamored, enraptured. I lost the whole weekend to it.

That thing, while not an affair with another human, does bear its name: The Affair on Showtime. I'll only say a bit about the show because you should really watch it yourself. It's essentially the same recollection of an affair from two perspectives, Noah's (Dominic West) and Alison's (Ruth Wilson), each taking up half of an episode. However, things get complicated with and beyond the affair as the deeper, sadder details of these two peoples' lives emerge. You'll notice right away that little, superficial details change according to whose narrative we're in: the color of a dress, who kissed whom, when in the day something happened. Beyond showing us the faults of memory, these little details also highlight each character's worldview and self-perception. This narrative style is why I felt an affair-like addiction to the show, because watching was like uncovering the layers (and the deeper, sometimes sadder details) of the characters like you would a lover. I wanted more, more, more.

So many secrets.

What is it about television dramas that make you feel like you're cheating on your life with your TV set? How can we go hours and hours holed up with only food, sleep and HBOGo like we would with a new flame?

Binge-watching is rampant now that we have Showtime Anytime, Netflix, Hulu, and all the other il/legal streaming sites, but I think the technology is just an enabler for a certain personality type. Not everyone has this desire to tv-marathon. I was talking to a friend recently who said something along the lines of, if he watches more than a few episodes of something in a row, he wants to throw up and then go for a run. Good for him for avoiding atrophied muscles from too much couch-potato time.

I'd posit, at least for myself, that the personality type that can watch tv for hours, even ashamedly, is the same kind that thinks a lot (or too much?) about stories, connection, and possibly also about love and relationships. I've written about media voyeurism before, where I let media teach me lessons instead of experiencing them first hand in the world, and I think we media types like neat, dramatic, and constructed narratives because they are easier to follow than the random events in our lives. For example, how do I even know what an affair looks like? Since I've never had one or known anyone to have one (I'm still in my twenties, and at my age people are young enough that cheating usually leads to a clean breakup before marriage or kids), it's the movies and books and television that show me what the guilt and the illicit pleasure and the heartbreak feel like. While I'm definitely NOT wishing an affair on myself to chalk up to experience, I still use the power of storytelling to show me the truths and authenticity of humanity in the places I haven't gone.

Here's an embarrassing example that might help clarify my point. About a year ago I dated someone briefly (keyword, briefly) who dumped me for another girl. The Facebook message signaling the breakup cited an exclusivity talk with the other girl and not wanting to blindside me when we were going to hang out that night, hence the Facebook message. I wasn't falling in love in the slightest but I still felt rejected and undignified enough by the cowardly message for a good cry. The thing was, this person had made me a really beautiful, wood-carved plaque with a quote from Before Sunrise on it (readers of this blog will know that film is my absolute favorite ever). In my indignation over the breakup I grabbed the plaque, swiped the hammer from my desk drawer, and tried to break the thing. When that didn't work, I took a sharpie and scrawled "Fuck you" on it and threw it away. 

But that didn't make me feel better, only worse. I missed the plaque immediately, not because it was a symbol of our time together, but just because I liked it. What's worse, while destroying it I felt like I was watching my body write the swear as my brain was thinking, this is something someone in the movies would do. Silly, yes. Pathetic, slightly. But the takeaway there was that I should listen to myself instead of deferring to a narrative cliché. I tend to like my rational ability to know what keepsakes and memories to hold onto, however hurtful they once were, and I ignored that disposition in my moment of weakness. Because I watch too much tv, maybe.

Oh well, at least I'll have the Instagram snapshot of the plaque to remind me to listen to the moment. Haha, the irony.

Blue Is the Warmest (Hair) Color

Instead of dwelling on the explicit 10-minute sex scene in Blue Is the Warmest Color, which I've finally motivated myself to watch and which divided critics and the queer community (so much scissoring!), I want to focus on a smaller question:

Why has this movie's title been translated as Blue Is the Warmest Color? 

The French title, La vie d'Adèle, meaning "The Life of Adèle" after the lead character (played by Adèle Exarchopoulos), works so much better as a title for a 3-hour exploration of female sexuality. Ok, so there is the irony that blue is considered a 'cold' color. Yes, director Abdellatif Kechiche, whose previous film L'esquive is a subtle and brilliant exposé on France's multicultural youth, dresses his protagonist in blue and makes her girlfriend's hair blue for edginess and lesbian appeal. But everything that's meant for warmth in the film has the opposite effect.

First of all, Kechiche's choice of constant, extreme close-ups on Adèle's face made her seem bland and vacant rather than emotive. I think this choice was intentional, and it works at the beginning, when Adèle is still discovering herself and her sexuality, but it turns quickly annoying as all I could focus on was Adèle's inability to keep her lips closed. Her mouth had this lazy pout on it that I can't make sense of. Is she a daydreamer? Is she not self-aware? I was relieved by the final scene in the art gallery where we finally see her in medium long shots - still so uneasy about her surroundings but at last not the center of our attention.

 Look at that pout.

Secondly, Kechiche takes the path of least resistance to portray the romantic connection between Adèle and Emma (Léa Seydoux), but it's a shallow one striving for depth. Adèle's into books, while Emma's studying painting. Adèle is a helper, while Emma's a talker. They supposedly have sexual chemistry (more on that in a minute). This is supposed to be a life-altering shift in Adèle's life, but Emma seems to figure only sexually into this shift. There are no coming out scenes, only a meager (yet affecting nonetheless) instance of homophobia, and just one Pride Parade, but no real scenes of romantic support, admiration, or devotion. Aren't they supposed to love each other? I want more of those scenes. Kechiche gives Adèle's personal development a shot in that we watch her graduate, march in an education protest, and become a teacher. But really she's just a muse (Emma's muse and Kechiche's) and we all know that a muse's pedestal matters more than her heart or mind.


Ok, I will talk about that sex scene. There are the obvious criticisms, a few of which I'll name. It turns pornographic and male gaze-y in Kechiche's hands because he's a straight man trying to represent female sexuality.  There is a lot of focus on bums and panting. It involves positions that seem potentially unreasonable for a first sexual encounter (and some, like scissoring, that are stereotypical of lesbians and that may or may not be performed outside of porn, depending on whom you ask). It's not even that sexy but rather borderline animalistic.

Yet my biggest problem with the scene--and really, the whole film--is that it is supposed to represent the apex of female sexuality - pure pleasure, desire, fulfillment, even ecstasy - but we are not really there with Adèle and Emma even though we're watching them. We're not sympathizing or even experiencing vicarious/movie-watching pleasure. Rather, the tone I get is of Kechiche feeling jealous. Later in the film there is a group discussion about how female pleasure is deeper and more complex than male, and I get the sense that this is personal for Kechiche. He's making a movie to try to get at an understanding, but he's actually pushing himself, and therefore us, farther away from that understanding by defaulting to voyeurism. If we understood Adèle better (meaning Kechiche had actually made her a complex character instead of a shell of a young woman), we could have gotten there, together. But as we watch her walk away from the camera down a street in the final shot, her blue dress diminishing against the sunset, we don't know her at all, or what this sexual "awakening" has done. This is a shame, because I could have seen a lot of myself in her.