rogercilantro

A movie about 3 friends, whose cores of issues orbit around relationships, dealt with a touch of humor here and there, while life complicates things. I don't think it passes the Bechdel test though other than a couple of minutes, each woman also mentions a man, whatever they go through.

Jeong-hwa Eom/Jung Shin-Hye is a station chief, whose professionality is thrown away after a 5 years relationship ends, in a public meltdown (is this big in South Korea? Ceasing to function in public is a recurring theme). At least it was out of the office, although, hers is a complex role (her friends will get their own dept later in the movie): producing softcore pool videos, dealing with male coworkers also being emotional, dealing with male coworkers using her. It's up to actual women to judge it as well or bad handled. Anyway, it leads with a new relationship with a younger man (beefcake Jae-yoon Lee), her thing to deal with in this movie.

Min-soo Jo/Lee Hae-Young a mother whose daughter keeps getting in the way of enjoying her new partner.

So-ri Moon/Jo Mi-Yeon is a wife whose husband (the very stressed Kyeong-yeong Lee) can't keep up with her libido, and experiences a crisis regarding his expected masculinity.

I was surprised by how upfront this was about sex, but I guess given the maturity of the circle of women involved, it was natural. It comes and goes. It's fun to watch the lenght they go to hide nipples in sex scenes, but the director made good use of all that was left possible.

The editing at times is too fast, for example jumping from actress to actress during brunches, and it clashes with the long wide angles scenes in other segments. The sets were generally nice, posh, and a nice food photography. There's an element of women magazines photography to the backgrounds.

I like Whitney Cummings, she's naturally funny in interviews and podcasts, and apparently had her fair share of issues to give her depth (ok, maybe white woman's issues, I know, "boo hoo mental health" right, feel free to point out how other people have it worse, thank you for reminding us). Anyway, since 'Money shot', I look forward to her works.

"I love you" is a well timed machine, movement, gestures, poses and expressions, all flows naturally. The public can only respond. She talks a lot of gender roles, in a dialogue that is both equally directed to men and women, playing with stereotypes, or deconstructing them. At times it feels like she is ignoring the elephant in the room, but you got to realize that she put a lot of effort to keep things light without bringing up murder and rape into your evening. If you ever heard about the Fallon/Poehler "That's not cute" anecdote, Cummings is not afraid to not look cute. She'll go there and be as honest as it takes to show you her humanity.

Props for going back to stand-up after a long pause with a new hour and looking like you didn't miss a beat.

Latest installment of the trademarked "Christmas at INSERT PLACE HERE". The story is very similar to the previous movie of the series (Christmas at Miami). De Sica and ghini's acting is the usual and even if the characters are slightly different they don't add nothing of good to it. No surprise here. The MTV-generated boys, Mandelli and Ruffini, confirm their involvement in the series after they first joined in last year's movie, and even if you can notice some improvements in their screen presence, they still need some more practice. The new guys are Bisio and De Luigi. They both build their characters on those they performed in years of TV appearances (weared out, if i may say), and sadly, because Bisio can be a great actor (La cura del gorilla, i.e.), only De Luigi succeeded in coming out with the "funnier" performance. It's fun to notice how the American cinema had an influence on this movie: there is an almost literal citation of There's something about Mary, and even a moment when a scene of American wedding is instantly reminded. In the end, a lot of potential, but the same bad script that leaves to the actors the duty of filling the gaps, but with things that we already saw.