Caging Libertine

BOXING HELENA

Jennifer Chambers Lynch, 1993

Nick: You're everything to me.

Helena: You're nothing to me.

Boxing Helena is what happens when Fatal Attraction makes love with Misery. After seeing the greatest f*ck of his life once again, brilliant surgeon Dr. Nick Cavanaugh (Julian Sands) decides to leave everything behind: his career, his girlfriend, his sanity, his everything – all just to be with Helena (a stunning Sherilyn Fenn), the woman of his wet dreams. Helena is everything to Nick, just as much as Nick is nothing to Helena.

To be closer to Helena, Nick moves in to the house he inherited from his recently deceased mother. And so he feeds his obsession by stalking Helena from his car, from the tree, from every corner of his timid existence.

Nick later invites Helena to his house party, to which Helena obliges. After leaving her purse, Helena is forced to go back to Nick's house. A terrible accident would later leave Helena at the hands of Nick's mercy (and obsession), making her a captive in Nick's mansion.

Boxing Helena is very much like Helena the character. Helena is essentially a libertine and a drifter, the kind so aloof no one can ever have her for themselves. Such personality is what attracted Nick to Helena. He knows he can't have her, so he wants her that bad. (Even though they only had a one-night stand.)

Venus de Milo, mother, and Helena – these three women would play a vital role to Nick's manhood.

"What the F*ck," Said the Audience

ALICE
Jan Švankmajer, 1988

Using stop-motion animation, Švankmajer creates a surrealistic version of the already strange tale of Alice, the dreamy girl who dreams her way to Wonderland.

Through a drawer a.k.a. the rabbit hole, Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) follows a stuffed White Rabbit, leading her to Wonderland. I'm sure you already know the rest of the story.

Dubbed in English, this Czech weirdfest might seem tedious to some audiences. For some unfathomable reason, Švankmajer likes to show close-ups of the narrator's lips while uttering the perpetual: "...said Alice" "...said the White Rabbit" "...said the Caterpillar" "...said the March Hare" "...said the [insert character's name here]." This sh*t goes on throughout the film. This particular technique makes the film ridiculously monotonous, to the point of droning.

A Personal Apocalypse Now and Then

BLACK HOLE SUN

Howard Greenhalgh, 1994

I grew up listening to '90s music, mostly pop — basically anything that comes out of an FM radio, which was a refuge for an eight year-old who is tortured by cheesy old songs that are permeating the Sunday airwaves. A shelter from her father's daily dose of Elvis' songs.

Whenever the King would haunt me in a somewhat annoying and redundant manner, I would turn on my cassette player (mostly the Spice Girls and those silly boybands who sound the same). Sometimes I would tune in to MTV and watch a bunch of music videos. (Yes. MTV used to play music videos before they were infested by the "reality show" crap.)

Fave Movie Moments: Mulholland Dr.

Coffee makes my day. Or night. I guess I can qualify as a coffeeholic, although I only have two or three a day. A charming cappuccino. A f*cking Frappuccino. And an excellent espresso.

In David Lynch's mystifying Mulholland Dr., there's this singularly yucky yet funny scene involving some bad coffee and an irate mobster: the espresso incident.

The Beauty of a One-Way Mirror

EXOTICA
Atom Egoyan, 1994

I've always been a fan of surrealism — may it be paintings, poems, or films. There's just this enormous fascination with what's lurking in the great beyond. Predictability just doesn't sit well with me, just as tracing or merely copying a picture doesn't appeal to me as a drawing or a painting. Predictability is emptiness. Chaos is substance. You know what Banksy said, "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

Well, Atom Egoyan's Exotica sure disturbed me just as much as it comforted me. This somewhat Buñuelesque film is mostly set in the fictional Exotica, a Toronto strip club where various lives converge to make up a discombobulating tale of love, loss, and heartbreak.

No Plot Necessary

DYM
Grzegorz Cisiecki, 2007

Dym, which means "smoke" in Polish, is an enigmatic short film by Grzegorz Cisiecki. It's about a young man (played by Grzegorz Golaszewski) driven to surreal reverie after turning on a cassette recorder.

The Final Work of a Master

Tagline: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.

EYES WIDE SHUT
Stanley Kubrick, 1999

Eyes Wide Shut is the final work of celebrated film director Stanley Kubrick. It is also an intriguing look at the realities of marriage.

You'll Never Know What's in The Package Until You Open It

Tagline: Luis Bunuel's Masterpiece of Erotica!

BELLE DE JOUR
Luis Buñuel, 1967

This film was probably daring during its time. It's not afraid to be spontaneous with the plot execution. Directed by celebrated Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, Belle de jour tells the story of Severine Serizy, a young married woman who enlists in the employ of a whorehouse, without the knowledge of her husband, Pierre (Jean Sorel). Severine obtains the name "Belle de jour" (Beauty of the Day) as a prostitute. She works only during the mid-afternoons, hence the name.