Miranda
There’s some similarity in the themes here to Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky – it’s very much about trust and paranoia in a relationship. There’s even a line towards the end – “I was in love with two women – and that was fine, because both of them were her … I love both of them, the good and the bad …” that for me practically sums up entirely my interpretation of Crowe’s movie. I remember somebody – possibly Crowe himself – saying of that movie that it was the nightmare of a regular guy waking up and finding the face of Tom Cruise in the mirror – the irony of course being, how would that be a nightmare? And there’s a sense here in which it’s the nightmare of a regular guy finding himself with Christina Ricci as their ‘f*ck buddy’ (movie’s phrase, I can’t stand it myself, lol). How could that be bad? Oh, let us count the ways …
As a matter of fact, this movie never quite turns into the nightmare it could have turned into. I kept waiting for it to turn into a sour, dark, violent nightmare … even something as awful as Audition maybe. But it’s more a comedy and a love story – and the cuddliest, cutest kind at that – than a thriller or a drama, though there are elements of those too.
Christina Ricci is marvelous, and fans are in for a treat … there’s close-ups of practically all her lovely bits (nothing rude, mind ;-)) and you pretty much get three of her for the price of one (she has three looks in the movie, very subtly different but stunningly effective). I think I would’ve died if I’d seen this 10 years ago when I was nuts about her lol. The story has her breezing angelically into the life of one of the most regular Northern Brit (“I always buy things with preservatives in … it makes you live longer,”) you’ve ever met, played endearingly by John Simm (most recently seen in the BBC show “Life on Mars” which I might’ve watched had I seen how good he is in this first). But she’s not at all what she seems … but is she, though?
There’s interesting support from Kyle MacLachlan, and a hilarious cameo from Tamsin Greig (“Black Books”), and a whole array of great lines. I hate doing this, but I haven’t done it in a while, so I think it’s allowed – I’m just gonna plain list some I jotted down while watching:
“You are my Virgin Mary … coal thing …”
“Your bag’s wobblin’! What’s in it?”
“You’re stiff. This is best night I’ve ever ‘ad.” “You should get out more.”
“Everything she touched … became rude …”
“Boy meets girl … boy loses girl … boy wakes up … and girl’s f**ked off in a taxi.”
“Even Jesus came back after 3 days … and he was dead.”
“I come from a stupid little town where me mates live, and it’s called home.”
“But there are times when even love is powerless – at those times, I like to use a breadboard” whack