Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/28/23

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, December 28, 2023

The House of Yes (Mark Waters, 1997

Tori Spelling, Josh Hamilton, and Parker Posey in The House of Yes

Cast: Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Tori Spelling, Freddie Prinze Jr., Geneviève Bujold, Rachael Leigh Cook. Screenplay: Mark Waters, based on a play by Wendy MacLeod. Cinematography: Michael Spiller. Production design: Patrick Sherman. Film editing: Pamela Martin. Music: Rolfe Kent.

Meeting the in-laws is such a familiar rite of passage that it's no wonder it has become a common movie plot device, as in Meet the Parents (Jay Roach, 2000) and its sequels in 2004 and 2010. Wendy MacLeod's play and Mark Waters's film The House of Yes turn the device into a black comedy influenced by another genre: the wacky family comedy -- think You Can't Take It With You (Frank Capra, 1938) and Auntie Mame (Morton DaCosta, 1958), in which a prospective spouse is introduced to a household of eccentrics. In The House of Yes Marty Pascal (Josh Hamilton) brings his fiancée, Lesly (Tori Spelling), to meet his family in a D.C. suburb. Lesly, who works as a waitress in a doughnut shop, finds herself out of her element: For one thing, the Pascals are clearly more affluent and better educated than she is. Moreover, Marty's twin sister (Parker Posey), known as Jackie-O because of her fixation on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, has recently been institutionalized, his mother (Geneviève Bujold) is hardly the most stable of parents, and his younger brother, Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.), only appears normal. Marty's no-nonsense manner also turns out to be a façade as Lesly becomes the vehicle for the revelation of various family secrets, including incest and possibly even the real reason for the death of Marty's father. In fact, Lesly's obvious out-of-placeness suggests that Marty's invitation to spend Thanksgiving with his family may even have been a kind of sadistic prank. There's some smart dialogue and some wincingly funny moments, but the film is stage-bound. It never touches base with reality, suggests an idea behind its conception, or reveals a satiric target.