Some Girls

Let me begin by saying that maybe I'm too old (37) to be part of this movie's intended demographic. That being said – It's also the case that I usually enjoy these ensemble-cast stories.

In this case the premise (some early twenty-somethings struggling with their relationships, or lack thereof) is valid and enjoyable, with some outstanding performances by Marissa Ribisi (Claire), Giovanni Ribisi (Jason), and Juliette Lewis (April). Unfortunately the remainder of the cast of characters suffers from such lack of development that I often felt they were more of a distraction to the plot than an addition.

Marissa Ribisi is stunningly beautiful with her porcelain skin and blazing red hair. She also gives a wonderful performance, demonstrating her wide range of talents, even pulling off a believable drunk (no easy feat). Juliette Lewis gives a strong performance, of course, to a character that remains fairly one dimensional until near the movie's conclusion. Giovanni Ribisi gives a star performance in a supporting role as the quirky brother to the main character.

The production values are outstanding, with some great cinematography and a well-chosen soundtrack. Overall this film serves to further expose Marissa Ribisi's talents in what appears to have been her first starring role.

One commentator below asks: "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."

To me that was glaringly obvious. When Claire went to his house after their second get together because he didn't follow his "I'll call you later" with a call later that night, or "even" by the next afternoon. She was worried because he had ended their perfectly warm chat in her living room without sex by saying he had to shoot a commercial the next day, and wanted to be fully rested and focused. Bad move Claire, made much worse by her failing to in any way dissipate the message of heavy neediness, after he explained he hadn't called yet "because Claire, I only got up about an hour ago." Her face and whole being conveyed a desperate longing for him -- after sex once, and two get-togethers. (Try reversing the shoe girrrls, when a guy is that far ahead of you. Kinda sends the message that he/she knows something you hadn't yet figured out about how much he/she is really worth to others, doesn't it?)

Actually, she started to be in trouble when she apologized for her brother being rude to Chad, and then backed down completely when he responded "was he"?, with a "Well … maybe not." The point isn't being more careful. The point is trying less hard to please. Guys of course fall into the same trap all the time, and if anything, quite a bit more often. (Of course that's what a lot of girrlz want -- with their safe, steady, settle down choice in a guy, anyway. But it's no way to sweep someone off her / his feet.)

The other possibility of course was that Chad was playing a serial seduction game from the get go -- of the full mind as well as body capture variety -- with no intention of it ever lasting regardless of how sypatico they turned out to be. I suspect however that he was always open to the possibility -- without coming close to feeling the sort of desperation that it had to be her, that she did. Other romance minded girls are real easy to find when you've got the looks, skillz and the sort of career that Chad has. (Hell, they're pretty easy to find as well when you've just got the magnetism and skillz, without looks, plus something going on career and future wise.)

Of course this is exactly the position which highly attractive girls with some ability to play the game are in -- and a far higher proportion of girls are in something like this position than guys are. (At least that is while both are in their twenties. It starts reversing fast for those still or once again single in their thirties.)

For those who might be inclined to agree with April's (of all people's) several times repeated warnings that "guys like Chad are the worst" (most dangerous), consider this. Is meaningless sex really better while you are looking for the one that will last? Isn't a much fuller connection, though painful to lose for the one who wanted it to continue, a much richer and more expanding experience -- and much more of a trial run at finding the lasting thing?

In the end a lot of the problem is the simple fact that Claire wasn't really in Chad's league (looks, personality or career wise) -- just as Neal, who might have otherwise been a personality natural for Claire, wasn't really in Claire's league. Yeah, Claire could have delayed the falling apart moment by playing the game smarter. But it would have come apart anyway so long as beneath it all she was so needy. She's not going to get a guy who isn't relationship desperate, probably because he isn't getting much sex (guys being different from girls), until she changes that -- though by the end of the movie it seemed an indelible part of her character to me. Frankly, I think marriage to her, though it might well start out full of passion, lovely romance, and beautiful mutual giving, would before long end up a nightmare. In fact the pyrotechnics at the end of the movie telescope that future likelihood.

She just doesn't have enough else going on in her life, or any apparent drive to make other things go on. She wants to live off her committed partner's vital life force. Her sort of full life (and not just bedroom and occasional emotional) submission may be initially seductive, but it tends to turn to poison -- pretty quickly in today's social climate. She seems the type who would always be consuming much energy jealously patrolling her partner's life with bee-bee guns and worse, and very possibly slipping into a bottle or something else as the poison grew stronger. She'd be enough to drive almost any guy to adultery -- while, ironically, monogamous romantic commitment is what she herself wants most.

This movie is is a great movie. Not only is the cast great, but it's a well thought out movie that is so much like real life. Juliette Lewis did a wonderful job on her part as well as Marissa Ribisi, and Jeremy Sisto. I can watch this movie over and over and not get tired of it. In the movie Claire has trouble with a relationship and meets a guy named Chad at a Magazine stand. They see each other for a while. April has trouble bein in a relationship because she thinks she has a secret of being a Hooker. Her friends don't like her ways but love her anyway. It's just a really good movie to watch and I'm not going to spoil it for anyone. I recommend this movie to all audiences.

"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.)

Good cast - good effort. This drama chronicles the perils of dating in the 90's, and it does it with average results.

The characters are good, and the story is watchable but suffers from a slow pace at times and its sometimes a little too depressing.

Marissa Ribisi - (Dazed and Confused) - who also co wrote the script, and her real life brother Giovanni (Gone in 60 seconds) give the best performances.

All in all, passes the time, although I can't help but think that in a few months I probably wont remember anything about it - still its worth the £1 I bought it for!!