I have placed myself on a corner, or so like Luke Wilson says on the movie Alex and Emma. I have nowhere else to go. I have stopped churning out things deemed productive and just resorted to being irritated with my outputs.

And like any struggling underpaid poor and hungry young (graphic) artist, I am in dire need of my muse. I need to finish things asap, and I’m nowhere near starting. I knew this was headache the first time I thought of it, but I wanted this, so there.

Or maybe, like any other struggling underpaid poor and hungry young (graphic) artist, I am in need of a good lay.

Kidding. hehehehe.

Di nga, biro lang. Baka may ibang makabasa nito, mapatay ako. hehe.

———–

Two of the most used (used, being films set on our player for another run for mind rape) films on my list of top visual stimulations/distractions are the film made by one of the best filmmakers in Korea, Chungking Express by Wong Kar Wai, and the queer french film Amelie. They have all the scratches and skips to prove for it.

But aside from the visual orgasm it gives, one of the reasons I have always adored watching them is the inner human struggle that always haunt the main characters - also known as the reality check. Although of course this is probably the most passe tale known in all human stories, the way they have presented it is almost light and sometimes even in passing, but still makes its mark.

Take for instance, the way Nino looked with anticipation on this beautiful girl who entered the pub Two Windmills where Amelie worked while he awaited the arrival of the girl who has boggled his mind for the past hours. Unlike most of the movies where in the leading lady is this girl who always took the viewers’ breaths away, Amelie is instead depicted as the simple girl who was not entirely the dream of every man to walk inside Two Windmills, and Nino, being a normal guy who also somehow hopes for someone beautiful to walk into his life, naturally gives this longing gaze to this pretty girl who walks in and in fact even shows a hint of disappointment when he realizes Amelie was the girl he was tracing. Yet of course, in the end, it was Amelie whom he realizes complemented his life.

It was the same with Chungking express, when Tony Leung tells of how “on every flight, there’s a stewardess you want to seduce. And there, 30,000 feet above, I successfully managed to seduce one.” Everyone has their idea of the person they want to lust over, the archetype of a person they wish to have but sometimes maybe they don’t really deserve. The person who’s more beautiful than the stars. People who make us ache with desire. People like Josh Hartnett. Or Natalie Portman. For Tony Leung, it was this stewardess he knew wasn’t meant for him although he has lived his life around her because somehow, she was the one he wanted. Even if at a point he knew she wasn’t for him. So when after a weird twist of fate he finds Faye Wong–this amazingly half-irritating half-charming waitress at this 24-hour restaurant he always buys his food at–inside his apartment, he decides to clear “the runway” for another flight, this time, with Faye. And even when he sees the stewardess again, he just smiles, because maybe somehow deep inside, he knew it wasn’t her who would work out with him. It was, forgive me for using this, the substandard Faye.

But I am using the adjective “substandard” on a relative case. Upon watching last night an old movie by Kate Hudson and Luke Wilson, Alex and Emma, I was presented with a more concrete explanation of the ever present dilemma. In the story, the struggling writer Alex dictates the story he was desperate to have published to his stenographer Emma, about a man in the 60’s who falls in love with two women: Paulina, a girl his words of beauty were not enough for, however he would need $500,000 in order to win her because of the social status; the other, Anna, a simple maid in the house of Paulina but he feels a connection with. But Paulina may be the girl every guy would love to lose himself in her perfume being dabbed in her soft bosom, until, like Emma says, the time when the laundry needs to be done. In the end, Alex tells these words to Emma, on a last effort to win her:

“…emotions that he hoped he could catch on paper. When his thoughts turned to Paulina, it was as if she were some kind of dream…he remembered her flawless skin. Her dark intense eyes. Her captivating smile. Then one day that dream walked back into his life–her beauty was still undeniable. But it wasn’t the same. And she spoke of her feelings for him all he could think of was Anna–the sweet, caring beautiful Anna–and how his own failings had driven her away. Anna had become part of him. He had fallen so completely in love with her that it was hopeless to think that he could ever be with anyone else. And so, he said goodbye to Paulina and set off to win the heart of his true love. Yes, Paulina had been a dream like a creation from one of his stories but Anna was real. For the first time in his life that felt more powerful than anything he could ever invent.”

Yes, true enough, it’s cheesy. And yes, I quoted it from a cheesy love flick. But it is these movies that I learn to like–the same movies that prove that the truth is more powerful than those flawless, pimple-free people on celluloid who have undying love for the other because of their flawless, pimple-free loved ones, the truth being in the end, the physical beauty transcends that of the need for real people who do the laundry, or become witty waitresses. Because at the end, they become more beautiful than Natalie Portman.

Yes, that’s a tinge of bitterness for the beautiful people you hear. Yes. Shut up.

(I don’t mean, though, that males need girls merely to become their maids. I meant real people. Okay? I’m not yet a full-blown feminist, but I know what you mean if you’re thinking this, so stop. I’ll argue with you the next time. hehe.)