Playlist: 35 Shots of Rum

Why? Trying to class this place up

Seriously, though, this film was on several "Best of 2009" lists and I did think it was good to expand my cinematic diet. A little French cuisine now and then to offset the usual American mac & cheese. Good intentions, right? What's French for "Oy"?

I should have known. The DVD came with an essay by Film Quarterly editor Rob White. I've read Film Quarterly. Rather, I've tried to read Film Quarterly. It's not written to be understood, but to be the print equivalent of self-fellating to the sound of your own pomposity. Film is art and art criticism has a vital role in society. But so does perspective. Not every foreign experimental arthouse film is a transcendental life experience. Just like not every summer blockbuster is deep-fried crap. You don't have to like or dislike anything until you actually like or dislike it. Novel concept. Maybe I'll start a School of Thought around it.

Right, the essay. White writes 35 Shots "lacks the menace of her (director Clair Denis's) recent work..." If only I had Babel Fished "Critic to English" I would have gotten the word "boring." I'm particularly dissatisfied that the late Vin just watched one of Denis's "menacing" movies, Trouble Every Day. It sounded tres wild.

Nothing happens. Not true. We get extended scenes of the characters driving a train, sitting on a couch, doing laundry, and in what may have been the climax, making an omelet. No one speaks in the way people only do in art films. Small talk, evidently, is so bourgeois.

Thought: could Denis have intended the title to serve as a supplemental instruction, an attempt to transform the medium to an alive, interactive experience, to blur the century-old chasm between creator and audience? Basically, should I have been drunk?