I’d seen the trailer for this film. It looked funny, sweet,
even like it might be romantic. A man (who acts very much like boy) writes a
story. The main character is a pretty, lovable, slightly odd girl. The
impossible happens; she materialises, true to the way he has written her and
they fall in love. Aw. Ignoring the fact it was a blatant plagiarism of ‘Stranger
than Fiction’, me and a friend decided to go and watch it.
Now initially you feel sorry for the protagonist, Calvin, an
isolated writer, with no love in his life, frustrated that he cannot live up to
everyone else’s expectations of him, and when you first meet Ruby, she seems
insolent, arrogant, attention seeking; an older and duller Lolita with
aspirations that she projects onto older men.
They used every cliché in the book in this film: jumping in
a swimming pool, frolicking in an arcade, going to an open air cinema, cuddling
in an open top car. Now I’m not against any of these activities and have been
known to participate in said clichés, but the effort that went into this
self-indulgent over display of passion was painful to watch. Apologies to
anyone in the cinema who heard me audibly groan whenever a fake instance of
overwhelming desire occurred.
If it had just been hack and sentimental, I probably
wouldn’t have written this. I wasn’t quite prepared for the dark twist the film
took. Inevitably the honeymoon period ends. Initially I was satisfied by this
admission of reality, but when the cracks start to show, Calvin tries to glue
them back together with his typewriter, by writing Ruby into the person he
wants her to be. When she starts an art class, becomes independent and wants
to stay out with her art friends, he makes it so she comes home, when this
backfires and she becomes needy, he makes her act joyous all the time. Whenever
something goes wrong, he sneaks up to his room and gets out his typewriter to
change the way Ruby is acting, like Dorian Gray sneaking up to look at his decomposing
picture; it’s sinister.
Calvin’s ex-girlfriend, Lila is discussed by Calvin and
other characters before we meet her. We find out that she left him just after
his father died, but not much other information. I think you are supposed to
feel more sympathy for Calvin for knowing this fact, but when you actually meet
her, Calvin’s behaviour has started to falter and she’s vulnerable, smart and
likeable. She explains that she’s been writing, with no thanks to him, that he
never encouraged her and that he always made her feel like a dilettante. After
getting to know Calvin, you have a whole new perspective on Lila; it’s crazy to
think that she stayed with him for 5 years.
The film reaches a climax when Calvin shows Ruby he can make
her do anything he wants to her do. He sits at his typewriter and controls her
like a puppet. He stops her from leaving, starts to undress her, forces her to spin
round and makes her repeat that she loves him and she’ll never leave him. The desperate,
selfish, controlling scene is horrific to watch. She finally collapses to the
floor, broken and destroyed like a rag doll, who can’t be played with anymore.
After this, he realises what he has done and writes that he
has set her free from the past. He leaves her a note and in the morning Ruby
and all traces of her are gone. It’s not over though. Calvin decides to write a
book about writing a book about a girl who came to life. He dedicates it to her
and gives a seriously pretentious speech about his book, with some obligatory
Catcher in the Rye references thrown in.
After this, he goes for a walk in the park and who should he
bump into, but Ruby, who is reading his book, but obviously has no
re-collection of what has happened between them. They begin to flirt and he
reveals he is the author of the book. They share a few moments and the film
ends with the insinuation that they will start afresh, that they’ll fall in
love again and everything will end happily ever after.
What? He gets the girl? After all that? After treating her
in such a disrespectful way? He still gets the girl? This can’t be right.
It saddens me that this is the way they chose to end the
film. There is no punishment or justice for what Calvin has done. There’s no
opposition to the concept of men’s urges to control and suppress women that
this film seems to represent (or disapproval of any person’s need to control
another human in this way, not just male to female). If anything, it’s made to
seem acceptable, as long as you appear to be sorry for your actions. It’s like
saying domestic abuse is okay if you write an apologetic book about it
afterwards.
This film wasn’t kooky, quirky or romantic. It was a sick
and depressing movie, masquerading as a rom-com and I would not recommend it.
And the worst thing is, you can’t help but think they only
named the lead character Ruby so they could play THAT song.
No comments:
Post a Comment