Ragazzi e ragazze

Stars twins Giovani and Marissa Ribisi, Michael Rapaport, Juliette Lewis, Glenn Quinn, Trevor Goddard. Living and dating in the 1990s. Written by Marissa Ribisi, and produced by Gay Ribisi (their mom), so it's a family production. Highlights the coming-of-age dating challenges. falling in and out of love. if you liked Mystic Pizzer, you'll like this one. although they say and do much more raw, adult things in this one. pretty good. Sadly, both Goddard and Quinn OD'd, and are with us no more. Directed by Rory Kelly... not much info out there on him. This one is pretty okay. not shown very often.

"Some Girl" is interesting primarily as a piece of urban anthropology which delves into young female dating despair amidst late 90's West LA plenty, of all sorts. It also seems to me to really be about female downward mobility, by a route more usual in real life but less movie cliched than the full fledged drug addiction, leading perhaps to prostitution, chestnuts of yore. None of these girls are going to either themselves, or by marriage "success", earn the sorts of incomes their parents did. Not even close. Dissolution.

It tracks a few weeks of the "dating" lives of four late 20's upper family income girlfriends from a quasi hip strata of west LA. What they have in common is a battle weary and cynical participation in a relationship scene where low meaning sex is plentiful for reasonably attractive girls (like themselves) and a smaller number of in the scene and very attractive (or skillzed) guys, and taken as the background given. But where lasting emotional connection, much less love, is very, very elusive -- or non-existent. Sex with and mostly without lasting personal connection. But utterly without real romance. Meanwhile large numbers of guys who don't have player status and who aren't getting any, litter the landscape as a sex needy silent chorus, from the nerdy wannabe younger brother of Claire (Marissa Ribisi), who at least has future possibilities if among other things he'd lose the glasses (and get a few notches in his belt), to Jason's (Giovanni Ribisi) four house mates, who have apparently largely given up, and spend their time endlessly playing scrabble as mating games unfold around them. All of this is quite realistic, at least as a portrait of the two poles. (Meanwhile, in the middle, there are a lot of couples that have already paired off, married or most likely not at this late 20's age in the leading urban areas. But they aren't the subject here.)

Counter the usual stereotypes, here it is the girls who are easily the most messed up among the ones focused on -- with the partial exception of Neal (Michael Rapaport), April's nice guy and doormat boyfriend, who has a severe case of masochistic clinging and an utter inability to play the game. One can imagine though that there is hope for him with the right stable relationship sort of girl -- ironically, someone somewhat like Claire, if a bit lower voltage and with more of a take charge personality. In fact the film frequently draws subtle parallels between Neal's and Claire's positions with those they are seeing -- the situations aren't exactly the same certainly, but there are also many similarities. Of course neither sees this whatsoever.

Though the friendship of four girlfriend players (who boast among themselves and for all who care to overhear about the oral skillz) is the near background, the film focuses on Claire, and as well the sort of sex she has decided she doesn't want (any longer), illustrated by her friend April (Juliette Lewis). April is a full-fledged slut if ever there was one. In fact her character serves as a current pop culture archetype. The only possible missing requisite is a fondness for stranger gang bangs, though one could hardly rule that out. Mostly she doesn't seem ambitious enough to organize them herself. Her normal operating routine, most nights a week, is to wake up the next morning in some new house she doesn't recognize, stumble to the curb so as not to have to deal with whoever she discovers is lying next to her (and we almost never see these he's), and call one of her girl friends or her doormat boyfriend (!) to come pick her up. "Don't ask", she always says. So much for the background.

Claire, whose wildly red and wildly curly hair, framing alabaster skin, make her easily the most interesting looking and exotically attractive of the four friends (if you can overlook her increasingly beaten looking eyes), has settled into a pattern of serial short term relationships, which invariably break her heart. This, she quickly spills to Jason, is because within a couple of weeks they either stop calling her, or she discovers they are real jerks. Either way, another broken heart. (A bit easy in the heart department, per chance?) She doesn't want to get it wrong again this time, she plaintively tells him. "OK, we'll take it slow" he reassures her. Actually, he tries to, within the ready sex ethos they are living in. It soon becomes apparent that she is the one who can't. What she always does wrong becomes glaringly apparent, for those with eyes to see and enough knowledge to understand. The problem isn't really sex too soon. The problem is clinging dependence too soon -- and too much.

Claire begins as a winningly vulnerable and open character, and initially I had real hopes for her, and for her with Jason. She may not be good at the game, but she sure seemed to have an open and beautiful heart. She believes in devoted love. Their relationship begins promisingly enough. Their magazine rack scene together is sweet. He too is a romantic, looking for emotional connection far more than sex (which he takes for granted, as do all the players, especially the girls). He picks Claire up at a magazine stand in a way that at first appears to be simple understated confidence, combined with disarmingly dispensing with line routines. He sees her, and as he pretty much just says, is intrigued by the contrast of her flaming hair against her pale white skin, as she is more than used to hearing. (He is also attracted to her subtle but evidently submissive demeanor, though that is something he acts upon, rather than expresses.) He manages to disarm Claire's reasonably robust shields against pretty boy pickups, by calm, not going anywhere, persistence and innocent charm. It's also the last time she manages to try to resist him.

By the first scene of their ensuing next day date, I was clued to him being a master pickup artist. His not specifying on his call where they would go on their first date was a clue to his having already scoped a good part of her nature, but wasn't conclusive. He first brings her to a laundromat where he casually folds the clothes he had previously left, while soothingly reassuring her, asking her if she's upset. "Well" she says smiling uncertainly, "what's next -- the supermarket?". "No" he reassures her, "although I'd like to do that with you too. I had something more like a nice restaurant in mind." Then I knew. Pure seduction genius, for someone like Claire (and a lot of women). (It's about being together, not about him having to prove his worthiness to her.) He has her totally on the way by then, of course. Back at his room, after he's lit the two candles and turned on the opera aria, he says softly after stroking her: "I don't want to f*** you tonight Claire". This is followed of course by her hiding her crest fallen disappointment, her shields of "of course" and "I brought my car" coming up as she bravely tries to mask that and HOPES he's just going TOO slow, as he said he would, but will want to the next time. All this we can see in Marissa Ribissi's wonderfully expressive sad but bravely smiling face. After a pause, and after gently stroking her arm and the side of her face again, Jason follows that with: "No Claire. No. ... I want to make love to you tonight, really make love". Of course it's her coupe de grace. Not for her sex -- that was long a sure thing. For her heart -- for emotionally deeply connected first sex. She is totally, totally gone by then, or anyway by the time he follows through. You can bet they made beautiful music together.

That's the sort of thing a whole lot of women want the first time with someone, almost all women (with whatever lead in approach works for them), but lots of guys seem to either not want, or be unable to pull off with someone they aren't already head over heals in love with. He's a master, natural or otherwise -- if we overlook his cliched "just released from college" room props, which are after all good enough in this context.

Still though, I wasn't counting out a relationship between them at this stage. He really is the romantic type. Relationships and the heart are what he is after. We never actually learn enough about him to know if he feels compelled to endlessly move on to new full mind and body seductions, or whether he is just looking for the right one, but doing it skillfully. We do learn that he's the sort of guy who's got it down so well that he doesn't have to spend much time in the desert between relationships. Choices he's got. More than anyone else in the film. This too is realistic, though he represents the top of the male magnetic pyramid. (The ones with by far the least choices are the sex needy guys, rather than any girrls, which the film uses only as background noise, and most young female viewers are unlikely to even really notice -- or dismiss simply as losers.)

Wow! I am so impressed by this movie! I really recognized myself in it. It really shows how most girls thinks and what we have to go thru today. About trying to find the love of your life, and about unanswered love. It's hard to describe this movie, but I promise you, you WILL recognize yourself.

Guess what girrls, it's right under your noses. And you haven't even seen it, most of you.

I find it amusing and a reflection of the heavy female slant of popular cultural ideology at the moment, that the commentators here focus on Claire's heartache in discovering her "boyfriend" graphically "cheating" on her -- while completely ignoring April's relationship with her boyfriend Neal. Claire and Chad had spent all of two evenings together and had sex once before that happened. OK, so it was meaningful sex. Chad had made no promises and done nothing to pledge monogamy. They were beginning to explore each other. They had connected. His statement "Claire, I love you", as she walked away from his house the morning after was clearly an expression of feeling and connection, rather than a commitment -- if she was able to understand him at all. As well we know, although Clare doesn't, that he was set up and probably didn't go out looking for it. Clare's hot hurt that Chad's having sex with someone else was "cheating' at that infant stage was about as unjustified as it's possible to be in the modern urban context -- and entirely a product of Claire's projections ahead of reality. In contrast, April privately and publicly humiliates her long term boyfriend just about maximally by spending more nights a week than not sleeping in some new pickup's home, only to extricate herself the next morning without waking up Mr. Strange, by calling any one of their mutual friends to come pick her up -- or for that matter her boyfriend himself. Meanwhile, Neal is reduced to supplicating her to stay with him "tonight, at least". When Neal succeeds for a while in extricating himself from this utter self-denigration by finding someone new -- she lures him back to her, by convincing him she sees and needs and truly appreciates (no kidding!) the real Neal, as no one else can.

This scene is even described by one girrrl reviewer thus: "Theres this scene with juliette and Micheal Rapaport(april and neil) sitting in his car. She finallyl explains to him how she really feels and what she sees in him, and that she's sorry for being so "slutty." Juliette delivers this scene with such raw emotion that every time I watch it I tear up myself." Yeah, well anyone who believed she was going to change much of anything because of that bit of emotional manipulation doesn't know much about people. She wasn't remotely close to changing -- which in any fundamental way is always dicey and at best a long road anyway. Try reversing the genders girrrls.

Finally, any guy who would marry an April is freaking totally out of his self-deluded mind, unless he gets off on thoroughly masochistic self-destruction, and wants that as the predominant and public theme of his personal life. She is a good definition by example of a total slut. And no, that judgment doesn't reflect a general prejudice against girrrls who like me have been with a whole lot and even scores of the opposite sex. I often prefer women with considerable experience of different men. Instead that judgment reflects the way that April habitually does her maximally casual sex, long after she's proven she can (to the limited extent that's ever much of an issue for girrrls), how little she really looks for anything else, and how she likes instead to relate to her steady "relationship interest" while she's doing her all consuming thing. Well, conceivably if she had followed her genuine total slut period by an extended period of abstinence, or a previous year or longer of monogamy with someone else -- to show me that what she was looking for really had changed. After all, cheating is as easy, and habitual, for a total slut like April as the nearest bar and an evening supposedly spent with her girlfriends -- any evening randomly chosen without effort or pre-planning. Although actually, her history of total slutting while simultaneously manipulating a man who was emotionally committed to her, would permanently disqualify her so far as I'm concerned.

As well, now that I'm on the subject, it's hardly an accomplishment for any reasonably attractive mid-thirties or younger woman to casually bed scores or hundreds of men -- even if she limits herself to attractive men. Most young women above dog status (bad fat) can if they want to, if they dispense with any sort of commitment or even a strong (if sometimes fast) emotional connection as pre-qualifiers. There's a vast sea of men out there, including attractive ones, who are interested in casual sex but can't get it at will just because they want it -- or can only get it by working really, really hard at it. It's only an accomplishment of sorts when men rather than women do something like that -- for the simple reason that only a small minority of men CAN, although the great majority of young men would love to be able to (sometimes desperately so). That in a nutshell is why women can be sluts and men really can't. (Although many men use the word unfairly, and with more than a little jealousy.) A slut is someone who habitually has careless, easy sex. It's not simply blind social prejudice, as the current feminist line would have it. It's the nature of the different "market conditions" for casual sex between the two sexes. For women, screwing lots of men very quickly and easily merely involves relaxing or abandoning requirements which most women enforce (most of the time) before sex. For men it requires being very unusually attractive, in one way or another.

As for my downward mobility premise -- consider who appears as the possible happy ending guy, who picks up our West LA (parents') upper class mansion dwelling late 20 something Some Girl, as the movie is ending. A nondescript in looks and personality, but moderately forceful, young member of the LAPD.

I think I missed something here.

The plotline of the movie was tried & true, I guess that's why we have another one. The characters all seemed to muddle along...I kind of wanted them to show off their weirdness a little more. The best scene was when the brother (Jason?) tells off April in the club -- very well done!

But I still have a few questions.. That bruise on April's head...I thought that was Karposi Sarcoma (sp?), one of the precursors of the AIDS virus. It would make sense.

At what point did Chad fall out of love w/ Claire? I feel like I missed something...though I rewound that part of the movie a few times.

The ending was predictable..but was anyone in the house?

I agree w/ one of the reviewers on here, who said the movie should've been titled "Burned". I think the version I saw was called "Some Girls" but dont quote me on that -- I just set the VCR to tape after I read the description..