My Basic Ramblings: I think all the little Titanic fans running around should be required to watch this movie, so they can see Kate Winslet really act in a truly good movie. (On second thought... maybe they shouldn't. I could see two little best friends taking the idea of this movie a little too far, and writing volumes and volumes of "The Further Adventures of Rose and Jack", and then refusing to answer to any name other than Rose or Jack, making little plasticine figures of Rose and Jack [and their children, grandchildren, tennis instructors, etc.] then getting real psycho and killing someone [probably someone who threatens their relationship, who tells them that their wonderful fantasy world of Jack and Rose is based upon a shaky foundation of lies and cliches. In other words, me].)
This movie got me to thinking (as movies are wont to do), and I realized that in the last six years or so, I can count the number of really good female friends I've had on one finger. I don't know why; it just happens that 99.9999% of my friends in college and afterwards are guys. The last time I hung out with more than three girls at once was in high school, where I didn't really have a choice because it was an all-girls high school. I've discovered, in my travels, that women tend to be petty and self-serving and opportunistic (I'm sure I'm the same way, but I can't be objective when it comes to me). I remember having what I thought was a deep and meaningful conversation with a woman of whom I was slightly afraid at the time, and I thought that this conversation was a growing point, a jumping off point to a true friendship.
Less than a month later, she stole my boyfriend.
Even though she was married.
Kinda put a damper on any interest I had in being friends with women.
But I do understand Juliet and Pauline's passion for their little world they created. I could see me slipping into a fantasy world real easy. I mean, think about it. You get up in the morning, go to school/work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV/dink around on the computer/do homework, go to bed, and every day it's the same mind-numbing thing. Who wouldn't want to escape to a fantasy world? (And, when I was in 7th-8th grade, my best friend at the time and I would write (well, type) long letters to each other, except instead of detailing mystical worlds and royal histories, we'd review episodes of The Monkees.)
There's something about Kate Winslet's wardrobes in movies that makes me insanely jealous of her. In this movie and in Titanic she has the most amazing clothes, big floaty dresses and tiaras and big huge hats. Sigh.
Let's take a brief moment to compare Kate's co-stars in the two movies of hers that I've seen. Melanie Lynskey and Leonardo DiCaprio. Both look like seventeen year old girls.
I do have to disagree with Juliet thinking that Orson Welles was a hideous man. Back then, he was pretty studly.
Pauline's mother's death, the very last scene of the film (and whose aftermath is the first scene of the film) was quite disturbing. Usually in a movie, when someone hits another character over the head with a heavy object (a brick, a wine bottle, a copy of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest), the character who is hit merely slides to the ground, peacefully unconscious. Here, Pauline's mother is conscious during her attack, and lets out awful (and I would imagine, realistic) howls and groans. Very upsetting.
Little Trivia Bitlet: All the settings in the film were the places where the actual events took place. The tea shop where Juliet, Pauline and Pauline's mother go before the murder was torn down a few days after filming the scenes there.