Amour--a movie about caregiving and true love

Last night we went to see the Academy Award nominated film, Amour. You know by now that it is a film about aging and about a couple trying to manage an illness and more.

It's a beautiful film--language of course, and scenery and yes it's French so we see a very French woman being very French even as she ages and suffers. In American movies we might question a coiffure and makeup on someone who is ill but she's French, c'est la vie.

What I didn't know was how well this film would capture the tedium versus crisis of caregiving and the  spouse versus adult-child boundaries. Just for those few scenes you should see this film. But it is of course, as the title suggests, a great love story. Maybe the ultimate love story.

The take-away is also great. We talked for hours afterward about "What if.." and "When we face this...". If you have struggled to initiate those conversations about end-of-life care or preferences  or who will do what then use this movie as a way to open the conversation with your partner, children and friends.

Here is the trailer for the film. It may still be at a theater near you or on Netflix or Pay-per-View.

Why Women Love Bull Durham

The past couple of nights I have been watching Bull Durham. This is the movie from 1988 with Kevin Costner playing an aging catcher in the minor leagues. This is a movie that appears to be about baseball life with its travails and hopes and the desperate desires of men who want to play ball for a living. It is seemingly a men’s movie with all the swearing and ass slapping and drinking and real life baseball lore. But no, this really is THE all time best chick flick.

Yes, we love Kevin Costner from the first moment he arrives in the locker room wearing his navy blazer, rumpled white shirt and the khakis that are the perfect shade of tan with a hint of olive. He’s a manly man who in the first 20 minutes gives the fabulous, if too artful, monologue about his beliefs which includes, “I believe in the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back…that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap”, and which ends with his belief in “long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days”.

Yes! You had us at “long, slow and deep”—and yes, at the Susan Sontag critique too.

But there is a later scene that truly outs women for what they really want.“Do you want to dance?” Sarandon asks Costner, sitting in the kitchen late at night. He says yes, but surprises her by not dancing but instead by sweeping all the food and dishes off the kitchen table onto the floor. He spins Sarandon onto that now empty table and they go at it rolling and clutching.

Oh, that’s part of it. We want a man to want us that much; we want a man who wants to make love a second time so much that he goes for it on the kitchen table. We do want that kind of passion in our lives. But, there is something else in this scene that truly makes this a women’s dream come true.  What most women truly desire is not what Costner does, but what Sarandon does NOT do. As all of her dishes and the leftover food crash onto the floor Sarandon allows herself to be swept onto that table instead of diving for a broom, or a dish cloth or saying to her lover, “Hold on just a second, I’ll clean this up and then meet you in the bedroom.”

No, she is in the moment and desires this man and this sex more than she desires a clean floor or neat kitchen. She wants the rapture of this man and his body even with cereal and milk oozing under the fridge. And she is not saying, “Oh God that was my mother’s china bowl.” Nope, she’s on that table fucking her brains out.

Oh, to be that kind of woman. We assume the power is in the man, that to be taken that way would free us. But what we see in Bull Durham is a woman who CAN be taken. She is not a woman thinking, “When did we last wash these sheets?” while a man is going down on her.

Oh, we do wish for a partner to love us with such sweet abandon, but Sarandon, in Bull Durham, shows us a woman who can abandon herself. 

Cancer in the Movies

Not so much cancer on TV but we do have some cancer in the movies.  They are few and far between but we can find some. Here’s a list of my picks for top cancer flicks:

          Love Story

1.                       The Barbarian Invasions

3.                       Terms of Endearment

4.                       50/50

5.                       Wit

6.                       Sweet November

7.                      My Life Without Me

8.                      Erin Brockovitch

9.                     The Bucket List

10           Stepmom

What movies am I missing?