The kitchen sink drama

I cannot watch emotional domestic dramas but will recommend funny french films

The book that put me off fiction almost permanently was Julian Barnes’
”The sense of an ending”. Ironically (or not), this was the book that finally won him the Booker. It was the end of 2011 and I had been annoyed by several promising novels turning out to be less stellar than they were billed to be. I was studying for a very difficult exam and not in the best place emotionally when I picked up this book for some light reading. Light it was not! It was emotionally harrowing, I cried buckets and left it about two-thirds of the way through. It was the last straw and since my interest had been piqued by non-fiction over the past few years, I switched to it almost exclusively.

I was introduced to the term “kitchen sink drama” in college when I first read John Osborne’s “Look back in anger”. It is a form that we see a lot in films and books - the domestic drama of mostly heterosexual relationships played out over the kitchen sink, as it were. Since this was written for the stage, what it did was confine the action to one room in the house where the couple’s strained relationship plays out and if I remember correctly, the core issues were wealth and class. As I’ve grown older, my tolerance for watching the emotional dynamics of a breakup play out has decreased significantly. I couldn’t watch more than an episode of “Scenes from a marriage”, nor did I finish “Marriage story”, to name a prominent two. My already overactive, anxious brain does not need more ideas for how relationships can fall apart while you are oblivious and think everything is hunky dory. All those years of reading novels centered around messed-up relationships (from “Wuthering Heights” to “Love in the time of cholera”, take your pick) has already done quite a number on my brain, so I’d rather not give it more fuel, thank you very much.

Recently, however, I went to watch “Past lives”. My sister saw it in cinema in Cambridge when it came out last year but it wasn’t playing in Pakistan (because obviously if it doesn’t feature Tom Cruise flinging a heavy bike around, why would cinema owners be interested), She liked it so I was curious and a couple of weekends ago, I saw that it was playing in a cinema in Austin so I bought tickets. It is, for the reasons stated above, usually the sort of film I avoid but I was like “what the heck, let’s try it.” It did give me some anxiety, not gonna lie, but it was so beautiful! The cinematography was amazing, especially for the scenes set in Japan. It was a visual treat and even though it opened up the question of what makes us love someone, enter a relationship with them and, most significantly, what makes us stay, I did not cry as much as I feared I would ✌🏼.

This post is not about how big of a crybaby I am - it’s more of a trip down memory lane, something I clearly love doing. I was thinking again of “Past lives” today and it reminded me of a French film I saw in London in 2018 in a similar vein. Starring Juliette Binoche, “Non-fiction” (LOL, the irony) is about a marriage that’s broken down. I went to the cinema for solace (beats me why I thought I’d find it in a movie like this and a French one too!) but walked out pretty depressed. I wouldn’t recommend watching it, which may make youw onder why I brought it up then. But I’m writing almost exactly as my brain works. So the next treat on this meandering path is a really heart-warming gem that I also saw in London.

It was December 2017 and I was annoyed because plans with some friends had proved to be frustratingly difficult to make. So, I decided to take myself off to teh movies to cure my bad mood. The Institut Francais in London was showing a film called “Lost in Paris”. I took the Tube all the way to Kensington and walked in the crisp winter evening to the Institute, which shows French films under its appropriately named “Cine Lumiere” program. The film is about this awkward lanky girl, Fiona, who goes to Paris for the first time to look for her old aunt after receiving a troubling grubby letter about her refusal to move into an old people’s home. The film follows her hilarious adventures around Paris. I loved it and I especially loved the insane way in which it’s made - the comic timing is excellent.

In case you need to be convinced to watch it, here’s one of my favorite scenes from the film:

Bonus points for featuring La Revancha del Tango 🤝🏼.