Apr 11, 2015

Crazy Eyes

Saw Crazy Eyes (thanks, Anne! In your recommendation you said this film was from 2013, but I could only find one from 2012. I assume it's the same film.) It follows the adventures of Zach, high-functioning alcoholic and unaccountably rich dude. He falls in lust or something with a girl named Rebecca AKA Crazy Eyes. Night after night, they get drunk together and go back to Zach's place. There he always tries to have sex with her and she always shouts "no!" until he stops trying. So, on one hand there's an explicitly rapey vibe to the whole thing, but on the other hand Crazy Eyes always happily agrees to go to the bars with him the next day, so who's to say what's going on. This is some abusive nonsense beyond my understanding.

It is very uncomfortable however seeing the two of them, drunk and nude, wrestle back and forth in bed, her whining and slurring protestations while he snorts like a bull. We also meet some supporting characters who are similarly bewildering. A douchey coke-dealer who is Zach's best friend, a lingerie designer who's interested in Zach's money, an ex-wife and mush-mouthed son. An epilogue montage of all of these characters crying suggests that this film is supposed to be some poor-man's Leaving Las Vegas, but since it focuses on the manipulative drunk (who anyway only seems interested in Ms Eyes because she won't have sex with him) I find it hard to feel very bad for anyone. I mean, there's the people Zach hurts of course, but they both don't seem very hurt and they also don't seem very nice themselves. Eyes is the nicest one of them and even she is obviously in an advanced stage of alcoholism herself.

This is kind of the flip-slide of yesterday's film, Young Adult. This time, instead of being mostly an ephemeral chick flick, it's mostly an ephemeral misery porn, and without anything new to say either. All we get is a shitty situation circling the drain. It's not being solved, but it's also not getting any worse, just dragging on and pointedly failing to resolve itself. Kind of a miss for me, alas.

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