Film Studies Portfolio
Xavier Dolan’s “Laurence Anyways” Film Review
An extremely ambitious project from a very young director, Xavier Dolan, the romantic drama “Laurence Anyways” follows the love story between Fred (Suzanne Clement) and Laurence (Melvin Poupad). Ironically, although they both have masculine names, Fred and Laurence are women. A transgender who had lived as a man, Laurence comes out with the revelation that he has always felt as a woman inside, and continuing his fake male life would kill him. The filmmaker situates this unique love story in the 1990s, a time when transsexuality was still considered an illness, and the new generations was making the first steps to move away from old prejudices.
Viewers can understand the crisis and the pain of the two characters which love each other madly, but suddenly realize that do not fit any longer. Fred is a particularly tragic character because she decides to support her partner throughout his transformation into a woman, although each new step into the skin of a woman takes Laurence away from her. Eventually, Fred becomes depressive and leaves Laurence for another man, starting a journey without return, where none of them live ‘real’ lives, because they still love each other, despite being in different relationships. It seems that they can only be happy together, but Fred’s deeply embedded conception of a relationship, where the other has to be a masculine figure, stops her from allowing herself to be happy. Unlike her, Charlotte, Laurence’s new partner, is more willing to give up predefined conceptions, and to take Laurence as she is.
The film’s power comes from Xavier Dolan’s willingness to lead viewers at a slow pace deep into the characters’ soul, and to pursue the transformation of their lives almost as if he was filming a documentary. Thus, the 2 hours and 40 minutes film becomes a love chronicle that keeps viewers interested because they are able to relate in one way or another with the characters’ struggle. While the film may seem too long, once one begins watching it, the length seems justified because the director is able to create complex and rounded characters which undergo transformations so important that they seem perfect strangers by the end of the film.
The realistic imagery is contrasted with poetic sequences which increase the romance of the story, but also with scenes of high dramatic power, where Fred and Laurence both seem lonely and vulnerable. The sheer talent of the director is proved by the fact that the viewers can understand both characters’ point of view, and relate to them equally. This love story is impossible because the characters cannot be together without compromising their true selves.
Reference List
Laurence Anyways, 2012. [Film] Directed by Xavier Dolan. Canada: Alliance VivaFilm.
Foodwork in Newly Married Couples
Article Review
Food is an important aspect of family life and the way in which partners choose to share responsibilities in the preparation of meals is influenced by culture and society. In their article, Bove and Sobal (2006) looked at the way in which young married couples negotiated their roles in all the steps related to ‘foodwork’, from food shopping, to cooking, setting the table, serving , removing and cleaning the dishes after the meal. The authors interestingly point out that foodwork is deeply connected with culture and each society forms its own rituals related to meal preparation and eating, from choosing the food spaces, to establishing the order to serving, and appointing the persons who will be engaged in different types of activities related to foodwork.
As the authors explained, in Western societies, the family dinner represents a ritualistic event, with multiple significations, and negotiating the participation in foodwork is an important step in forming the new family (Bove and Sobal 2006). In order to study the formation of family food preparation rituals, and the role of negotiation in establishing systems that would last even for a lifetime, the authors conducted a qualitative study on newly married couples. The researchers interviewed 20 newly married couples soon after their marriage, and one year later. The authors found that, as compared to the past, partners were more willing to share responsibilities, but women were till more likely to be primary cooks, even when they resented this role. The authors also found that food shopping was performed mainly by the same person who cooked, or jointly by the partners, particularly when both cooked. The authors also showed that assuming the role of cook was a way of showing affection for the partner aw well (Bove and Sobal, 2006). Overall, the authors explained that making food to be enjoyed together was a way for the partners to bond and really become a family.
The researchers showed how preparing food is strongly connected with the idea of family life, and further part of a society’s culture. The relationship between creating food spaces and rituals and creating new family bonds is shared among many of the world’s cultures, and the authors expose this relationship by looking at the way in which the roles in the preparation of food are negotiated in American families. The study is clearly organized and the chosen method of study is very useful because it allows a unique and nuanced insight into the experiences of different people.
Reference List
Bove, C. and Sobal, J., 2006. Foodwork in newly married couples. Food, Culture and Society 9(1), pp.70-89.
Promotional Material on FMPAL
The Oriental Food Porn!
Preparing a meal is so much more than just putting all the ingredients together in the correct order! Choosing the recipe reveals a small detail of your unique self. Who you are cooking with and who you are cooking for however show who you love. An oriental recipe is a perfect love statement. It can be a subtle and mesmerizing erotic whisper or a strong proof of family bond and affection. A simple traditional Asian recipe can send hot signals to a lover, and can become at the same time a tribute to one’s origins.
Food items suffer a major transformation to become a meal that you would kill for. For this recipe, preparation is key, for one cup of cooked white rice needs to be kept in the fridge overnight. The next day, 2 eggs are beaten, adding a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil, the secret elements of oriental food orgies. They are stirred occasionally in the pan, until they are nearly done but not quite. One bunch of spring onion is chopped, separating the white parts of the scallions from the green parts, and then, it is fried for a minute or two, until its fragrance invades your cooking space. Meat is then thrown into a hot wok without mercy. Half of a cup of frozen peas and half of a carrot are chopped carefully and gently, and then they are thrown into the wok, in which the oil already frizzes impatiently.
The film illustrates all the stages of the preparation of this oriental delight, and will carry you into the secret world of Taiwanese food spaces. Do not miss the opportunity to watch how food can become something more, a way of remembering those you love, and a secret weapon for luring that special someone into your life. If cooking is an art, it is also a love ritual and each culture has its own secret tricks.
The Meaning of Food in Film
Food is basic human necessity, but over the course of time, cooking has become an extremely ritualistic habit that is very closely related to the culture in which it develops. Usually, food is prepared in the family and shared between its members, and thus, it can strengthen the bond between people. The different cultural meanings of food and the effects that different ingredients have on humans has determined food to become a very important aspect of our lives. In film, food is often associated with feelings of love, nostalgia, yearning and desire. By looking beyond the actual process of food preparation, serving and eating, one can notice the hidden meanings and messages that the cook transmits through and with food. The experience of eating not only represents a necessary daily activity, but also refreshes the memory of being loved.
Food and love are deeply connected due to the image of the mother as provider of food and love. Within the family then, food represents a necessary bonding element, and usually, it is the woman who fulfills the task of preparing food. As Bove and Sobal (2006) showed, in the study they realized, female participants “felt “responsible” for their partner’s health and well-being and they were motivated by “love” not just to prepare food but to prepare it in ways anticipated to please their partner’s palate” (Bove and Sobal, 2006, p.80). Therefore, preparing food that a partner or children would like is a sign of love. Many other love gestures and rituals are associated with food, because senses are specially design to appreciate it. As Baggini argued:
..In an experiment conducted by Rachel Herz, a psychologist at Brown University in Rhode Island, subjects were given three kinds of cues — a film clip, a short sound, and a smell — and were asked to generate autobiographical memories from them. When these were rated on various scales, the memories provoked by smell were judged to be more emotional and evocative but not more vivid or specific” (Aeon, 2015, n.p).
Thus, sensing the smell of a childhood dish can trigger powerful memories about family. As Toffolo, Smeets and van den Hout (2012) showed in this respect, the Proustian phenomenon refers to the fact that smells have more power than any other sense to recall distant memories. Likewise, the taste, appearance and texture of food can cause either feelings of pleasure and disgust. For this reason, family meals, romantic dinners and children’s school lunches for example, have become highly ritualistic and sharing meals is considered a very important social act. People generally resent eating alone. The same phenomenon has been noticed in other mammals as well. For example, Chimpanzees not only share their food with their young but also with others outside their groups (Hamilton 2013). While sharing food may have been a survival mechanism for humans, today, it has more to do perhaps with the fact that, with food, people also share feelings.
Also, because certain foods are aphrodisiac, eating can become a deeply erotic performance. Certain foods are said to stimulate the sexual appetite, while certain ways of eating are erotic in themselves. Sharing food can become way of initializing a relationship, or of maintaining it alive. In the Fifty Shades of Chicken Book Trailer (The Recipe Club 2012), the narrator refers to the whole raw chicken as if it were a potential sexual partner, and preparing it for the oven is described as if it were an erotic bondage scene. As Keller () showed in his work, food cinema invokesthe appetite of the viewers in a similar fashion in which the libido is aroused by sexual imagery, using gustatory images in order to increase the sensorial response of the viewers. However, the author further shows, in most cases, food is used to suggest abstract cultural processes, such as race, gender, history or spirituality, or more subjective psychological or emotional conditions, such as depression, obsession, love, desire, o mental illness.
In relation to the sensorial response to food imagery, the cinema has invented the expression food pornography. The most engaging food scenes on the screen are those that depict exotic or unfamiliar foods, because their preparation generates a sense of amazement in the viewers (Keller). Thus, food pornography represents the manipulation of food imagery in the same way that sex is depicted in order to arise the viewers’ interest.
The film presented here documents the way in which a Taiwanese student prepares a daily meal in a European country. Taiwanese students can have a very serious food problem here due to the unusual foods that Europeans consume. In addition, the important cultural differences may become unbearable at time and so, preparing homemade food from one’s native country is a very efficient way of feeling safe and at ease in a foreign country. Consequently, the film is recording a life-changing event when a student decided to prepare a dish that reminded him of home (Chih Ou, 2016). The film begins with the students’ hands washing the rice, and it ends with consuming the food in the company of an intimate friend. Rice is a basic food in Taiwan, and fried rice is consumed by the entire family on a daily basis. The film then cuts to credits, and then to the student going to Tesco to buy the ingredients for the recipe. This is a crucial step in the food preparation ritual, but the fact that the ingredients are bought in a large Western supermarket, rather than Taiwan, suggests the nostalgia that surrounds the preparation of this traditional dish. However, once it is ready, the image of the hot exotic dish stimulates the senses and nostalgia is replaced with craving.
Food is an important element in cinema today, having the same power to trigger a sensory response as sexual cues. Food is very deeply connected to cultural symbols and rituals, and its meanings are associated with love and care, both within the family members, and between lovers. Due to the interest of filmmakers to use food imagery in order to generate a sensory response from the audiences, food has been used as the main topic of different cinematic productions, with different intents. In the film showcased above, the topic is the preparation of a traditional Taiwanese dish by a foreign student in London. The process of buying the ingredients and preparing the dish triggers feelings of nostalgia, but once it is ready, the meal triggers a sensory response that can only be described as Oriental food porn.
Reference List
Aeon, 2015. Childhood foods may evoke lush memories, but are they true? — Julian Baggini — Aeon Essays. [online] Available at: https://aeon.co/essays/childhood-foods-may-evoke-lush-memories-butare-they-true [Accessed 19 August, 2016].
Bove, C. and Sobal, J., 2006. Foodwork in newly married couples. Food, Culture and Society 9(1), pp.70-89.
Chih Ou, W. (2016). FMPAL. [Film]. Available at: https://vimeo.com/148228781. [Accessed 19 August, 2016]
Hamilton, J., 2013. How Did Our Brains Evolve To Equate Food With Love? NPR. Org. [online] Available at: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/01/173245261/how-didour-brains-evolve-to-equate-food-with-love [Accessed 19 August, 2016].
Keller, J. (2006). Food, film and culture: a genre study. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
The Recipe Club (2012). Fifty Shades of Chicken Book Trailer. [video online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa3eC02delM. [Accessed 19 August 2016].
Toffolo, M., Smeets, M. and van den Hout, M., 2012. Proust revisited: Odours as triggers of aversive memories. Cognition & Emotion, 26(1), pp.83-92.
Short Films Archive
Tangerine - Red Band Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALSwWTb88ZU YOUTH International
Red Band Trailer (2015) - Paolo Sorrentino Movie HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shvJdbQyjQw
Fifty Shades of Chicken Book Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa3eC02delM
The Idiots (trailer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g- 1nIUuImbU&index=2&list=FLojHQfcliEUhD3lrn7BbJ7g dogtooth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUAM1tOEsw&index=29&list=FLojHQfcliEUhD3lrn7BbJ7g
Apparat - Black Water (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv6sHgq6hFc&index=12&list=FLojHQfc liEUhD3lrn7BbJ7g&spfreload=10
Blur - Go Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1ks7PTzng Stray Dogs Official Teaser 1 (2014) - Taiwanese Drama HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWarE0cXz0M
Nocturne (Lars von Trier) (Short Film 1980) (English Subtitles) https://vimeo.com/42213086
Quentin Tarantino's Foot Fetish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfnVbYKKQ_Y
《尋情歷險記》Let's fall in love 預告片_導演 吳汰紝_舊視界 出品 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YWafac69T8
