i was very much a guadagnostic prior : the last two features of his elicited little but an apathetic shrug. the concept of this intrigued me so i assumed i’d like it more but i didn’t realise my enjoyment of it would be so free of reservations & that i’d be emotionally opposite to the remove from the material that characterised my reactions to cmbyn + suspiria.

as it’s very hard not to do when making a movie in 2022 it holds up its forebears with clarity (i.e. badlands in its basic conceit ; the location title cards & search for absent mother bringing to mind my own private idaho) but its sufficiently transformative of those influences to not feel like retreads of well-charted paths.

the thematic subtext feels ripe for plumbing on maybe a second viewing, because the state of perpetual otherness our twin-flames trawl thru, that seems incarnated in all they encounter but one another, feels applicable to a queer reading  (& yeah the only onscreen sexual act in this is a gay one). but also the onset in infancy of the protagonists’ cannibalism, both involving figures of care & then repressed, made me think there’s plenty allegorical here for a sympathetic take on two survivors of child abuse (‘strangely she had a way of making the violence seem like it was their idea’ - possibly in michigan). 

while not reaching how difficult to watch the cannibalism scenes in trouble every day are, there are some truly abject moments here (not just in image like the one shot late in the film that set the entire audience to flinch, but even in dialogue & implications of past occurrences) & i have to thank timothee chalamet’s star power for meaning something like this gets a wide theatrical release.