On a lazy Saturday afternoon I picked up on two films mostly by instinct (who else choose films like that on Netflix/Hulu/Other) on my Mubi account. It seemed my life had taken a detour and it had led me on a different route than my normal cinemaphile self, but on that Saturday I was back to just wanting to chill out and watch a movie. I first picked The Punishment by Jean Rouch followed almost immediately after by Buffalo '66 - Vincent Gallo. I was surprised to learn that Buffalo '66 had come out in1998 but somehow I had missed the movie which seemed doubly odd because I've always had a kinship with Christina Ricci especially after watching her debut in Casper and then following her career with the Addams Family. She had expressed at a young age the same milieu that I found for myself.
The Punishment I knew nothing about but something drew me to it anyway. If these two films could be a representation on a theme: it would have to be the heaven/hell scenario of what a handsome stranger can offer, and a woman's natural desire to escape the drudgery of modern life for a romantic adventure. The Punishment (La Punition) premiered in France in 1962. It's a short 58 minutes. We follow a listless young woman around Paris after she is dismissed from a day of school. She is temperamental and bored; perpetually on the verge of a great discovery if she could only pay attention. In Buffalo '66 we meet Christina Ricci's character, Layla as the camera swoops by her and follows Billy down the hallway. It's almost as if even the camera is uninterested in her while she dances away from the rest of the class.
While these two women on the surface seem to have nothing in common, they both are victims of the same sentimentality that most - if not all - young women are bombarded with from learning of the concept "fairy tale love". This is the story in which a prince arrives unannounced to an unhappy princess who being rescued is finally allowed to explore life.
Nadine played by the ever lovely Nadine Ballot, is presented with a few choices on the streets of Paris and it is clear that she is a woman never shy of attention or praise from the masculine sex. She immediately reminded me of a line in A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger, "She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing.". Layla who doesn't even get to keep her name later in the film and who can't even get noticed by the camera in her introduction is dressed childishly and provocatively - a more realistic representation of a Lolita than Lyne would have us believe - her dress is too short, the colors don't go, she has a young face but a budding body that can only create confusion to a girl on the verge of adulthood.
Both women are confronted by the "happily ever after" that we rarely get a glimpse of in the Disney films. For Nadine, the strong and independent Frenchwoman remains bored at the lack of vision of the men she meets and eventually realizes that to actually enjoy the adventure she will have to go alone. Layla, the tragic victim of romanticism winds up saving the life of Billy- repaying the prince in full for the life he rescued - but at what cost to herself? Neither finding a satisfactory end to their own princess mythos but finally attaining that next chapter in adulthood by their self-realization of it.
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