did you miss me?
preppy threesomes, lesbian revenge, tabi pumps, tortured poets
i’m going to address my lengthy absence from newsletter writing by entirely ignoring it. hi! let’s skip straight to the good stuff.
HORNY TENNIS, LESBIAN CRIME
like everyone on earth who follows ssense on instagram and knows how to correctly pronounce ‘loewe’, i need to briefly discuss luca guadagnino’s tennis threesome movie CHALLENGERS. i saw it at a screening hosted by jonathan anderson (who worked as the film’s costume designer) and jesus christ, i wish more films were this relentlessly horny. it’s like an uber preppy, trent-reznor soundtracked version of the dreamers – only without the incest and with zendaya wearing chanel espadrilles (a really funny “i’m rich now!!!!” affectation on the part of mr anderson). the best shot was one of beads of sweat dripping from mike faist onto the camera lens, and thus onto us, the thirsting audience. also, some dorm room dry humping between zendaya and josh o’connor. it was wildly enjoyable, undermined only by being approx 15 minutes too long and by me having no understanding of tennis.
similarly athletic and horny, but with more steroid use and gun violence, is bisexual director rose glass’s LOVE LIES BLEEDING, a tale of revenge and romance set in the starry-skied wastes of the american west, in which small-town lesbian kristen stewart falls hard and fast for a transient bodybuilder (katy o’brian). the rest of the film could essentially be summed up as: ‘be gay, do crime’. i saw it at a deeply chic screening hosted by club ciné in the selfridges cinema, which came with a little booklet mentioning all of glass’s inspirations, here reproduced for your viewing pleasure:
showgirls (1995), paul verhoven
crash (1996), david cronenberg
a snake of june (2002) shin’ya tsukamoto
paris, texas (1984), wim wenders
barfly (1987), barbet schroeder
mystery train (1989), jim jarmusch
to me, another of its cinematic predecessors feels like gregg araki’s the living end, where ‘bummed out hiv positive homos’ go on the run after one of them kills a cop. i guess a lot of queer cinema – or at least the queer cinema that i like – is about alienation; the necessary outsiderness that comes with a life of desire beyond the bounds of heteronormativity, and that was part of why i loved glass’s film. but, without giving too much away, i was glad to see that it didn’t slide lazily into the lesbian unhappy ending problem – which is exactly as it sounds.
other honourable mentions:
perhaps because i am a loser, i simply cannot think of a better way to spend two and a half hours on a friday night than watching slavoj zizek on a tour through classic films of the last 100 years (and our unbridled ids). yes, it’s THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA! it’s on youtube. you’re welcome.
SCALA! the documentary on the legendary hive of absolute freakery, the scala cinema, is the deeply fun story of the iconic all-night movie venue, a walk down memory lane into london that feels altogether lost
i also had the great pleasure of hosting a little q&a w director of HIGH & LOW, JOHN GALLIANO, kevin macdonald, at the rio cinema for mubi. if you haven’t yet, it’s a must watch; an exploration of cancellation and atonement, and the dangerous pressures put on possibly the world’s most sensitive group of people – fashion designers.
CELEBRITIES AS PERFORMANCE ART, SEX AS BODY HORROR
completely in awe of philippa snow’s new book TROPHY LIVES!
i think about this essay she wrote for vestoj, probably more than most things i’ve ever read. it’s about celebrity and death and image and bela lugosi and anna nicole smith and a woman who requested she be buried seated at the wheel of her ferrari, which, mood. trophy lives is a book-length essay about whether we can consider celebrities as performance artists or self-authored artworks, the kind of criticism i love – a genius sewing together of the high and lowbrow, lindsay lohan and richard phillips, paris hilton and marina abramovic.
i also very much enjoyed a lecture snow gave – titled ‘everything you always wanted to know about sex (but were afraid to ask david lynch)’ – put on with my besties deeper into movies at soho house. and speaking of horny, auteur directors, I LOVED THIS ESSAY ABOUT SEX, BODY HORROR, CRONENBERG!!!, by becca rothfeld. here’s a sliver:
I was in the grip of a carnality that was strange and implacable. I took cold showers; I sucked on ice cubes. But my body was a hungry animal that kept making mad demands. It wanted to choke; it wanted to howl; it wanted to be not just stripped but skinned. In Cronenberg’s 1988 film, “Dead Ringers,” a gynecologist muses that “there should be beauty contests for the insides of bodies,” a remark that alarms the patient lying supine on the examining table. But it made sense to my body, which longed to offer up even its offal.
which reminds me that i need to watch the gender-flipped dead ringers do-over with rachel weisz…
CAMEL TOE BALLET PUMPS, CAVING TO PHOEBE PHILO
although i am having a fashion existential crisis rn (hate all my clothes) i bought some margiela tabi flats to give my battered vintage chanel cambon pumps a break and now quite simply cannot imagine life without them. i also updated my wonky, similarly battered old celine edge sunglasses with phoebe philo’s new iteration. let me just say, i am not, nor have i ever been, a celine woman, altho that joan didion ad rightly goes down in history. generally, i find this genre of chicness stifling and bloodless (which is also why you will never catch me in the row). but these sunglasses are exceptional.
my current fashion odyssey is searching for a spring jacket. so obsessive – and thus far so fruitless – is my search that i have a friend who i think may lie down in front of a bus if he hears me utter the phrase ‘spring jacket’ ever again. so far the closest thing i’ve found is this cropped vaquera bomber (naturally sold out in my size), and this acne jacket (sadly out of budg by about £1000). i’ve been considering some vintage helmut, and bought this heftily reduced rick – yet to arrive so tbc. otherwise, my wardrobe is open to your suggestions.
TAYLOR SWIFT IS CARRIE BRADSHAW, DUA LIPA GIVES US NOTHING
“Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls… but she’s not interesting as an artist.” thus spake courtney love last month, and once again, #imwithher.
the thing about taylor swift, who of course released her 31 track album ‘the tortured poets department’ a couple of weeks ago, is that despite the record’s moodier aesthetic, her image remains in this arrested development, perpetual american girl doll stasis. yes, the reissue of her albums and the eras tour has necessitated this nostalgia, but it goes beyond that. maybe it’s the teenage country singer stardom, the not-a-girl, not-yet-a-womanhood of it all, the years spent unable to speak out politically by the powers that be (as seen in her 2020 documentary, the fittingly titled miss americana).
no matter how many times she now sings the word fuck, she’s a strangely asexual 34, barbie-like in bejewelled bodysuits. “much of (swift’s) success is due to the image she projects — of a woman still coming of age, still discovering herself. Any style that’s too sophisticated or eccentric would spoil the illusion,” wrote cathy horyn in the cut, in an article called ‘the real reason taylor swift dresses like that’ (aka, badly). i think that’s being generous.
and yet… i have clocked up more hours listening to taylor swift than i care to admit. here’s my theory as to why: she is music’s carrie bradshaw. not in that she dresses well, but in that she represents our most emotional, chaotic female impulses, the ways a two-week situationship can destroy you. “i love you, it’s ruining my life” she sings on “fortnight”, a track presumed to be about matty healy, the forerunner to her himbo bae travis kelce.
kelce is also the subject of a viral ai-generated taylor song called “the ring”, a reaction to the couple’s internet omnipresence (‘so happy that my travy made it to the big game’, croons robot taylor about the superbowl). another song that sounds like it was written by ai is dua lipa’s “happy for you”, from her just-released album ‘radical optimism’. “late on a tuesday i saw your picture, you were so happy, i could just tell,” she sings. “she’s really pretty, i think she’s a model, baby together you look hot as hell”.
it’s a song about being friends with your ex with none of the gritted teeth of gwen stefani’s “cool”, the kind of toothless pop song that lipa’s career is built off. maybe it’s because the only thing i wish on my ex is a venereal disease, maybe it’s because my favourite album of the last five years is a concept record about a relationship so toxic it turns to cannibalism, but i’m not buying it.
dua lipa is, of course, the famous origin of the ‘go girl give us nothing’ meme, and while she’s worked hard over the last several years to cultivate a stage presence with significantly more energy, her music hasn’t really undergone the same gear-shift. is it wrong for me to want more meaning from a pop star? maybe it’s a generational thing. while swift’s lyrics are considerably more autobiographical, both artists are aloof, controlled, stage-managed, in a way that feels uptight in comparison to gen-z acts like billie eilish or olivia rodrigo. perhaps this is the curse of the millennial – to have spent years cultivating such an impervious personal brand you’re terrified to exist without it.
that’s all for today x