Idk Let Me Live My Life

2023 will be filled with health.

2023 will be filled with kindness.

2023 will be filled with positivity.

2023 will be filled with happiness.

#She really does 

Oh my God, so. I’d say what makes it work despite having an uncomfortable dynamic at parts is that Selina’s the one who is so transparently into him and always initiating it when they kiss. The way her eyes roam up and down him when they first look at each other and also when he’s in her kitchen and she so meaningfully says “I have a thing about strays”...LOL he doesn’t know what to do with this!! And that line says so much about how she instinctively recognizes another damaged person who has been deprived of so much and hides it, who has reasons for all of his giant flaws, which has to be largely what draws them to each other. I love that it’s never commented on by either of them that they’re both dressed up like weirdos. They’ve both been hurt badly enough to leave any sense of normalcy behind in some single-minded pursuit that skirts the law, and it doesn’t need comment or explanation because they both get it.

And it’s such a testament to Pattinson’s performance that you buy her attraction to him even though she never sees his face. It’s unbelievable how expressive he manages to be with the cowl on. His eyes soften so much when he looks at her closely. This is such a unique and strange portrayal of Batman, the more he acts hard and impassive the more this weird vulnerability seems to come through. He’s so repressed and locked inside himself. How can she resist?

It also definitely helps, at least for me, that I think the relationship is supposed to be troubling and there is a purpose to that. There are a lot of parallels between Batman and the Riddler in this movie, and this Riddler is clearly a representation of the gross, radicalized 8chan incel type. When he describes how Bruce grew up safely removed from the common people’s problems and just watching them from his tower, it’s more apt than he could know because Batman has made a whole damn thing out of studying people from a distance and uses his own technology to survey and record them. His detachment from the world around him and resulting bad social skills definitely includes not relating to women very well. He pressures Selina into situations she’s not fully comfortable with, and so stupidly can’t see her discomfort when Falcone talks to her. He watches her changing through her window, obviously not for pervy reasons and really not seeing much compared to what she was wearing before but DUDE NO. (I think it’s interesting, though, that once he’s made himself known to her and wants her to cooperate with him he lets her know right off the bat how long he’s been following her and that he was watching her at her place, by saying something regarding Annika like “She did seem upset.”)

I feel like I have to talk about an interpretation I’ve only recently come across, that what Bruce is really freaking out about re: her knowing Falcone is the possibility that she is OMG a sex worker!! And that the twist about him being her father disappointingly lets him off the hook for his non-empathetic attitude about that. If that is actually what’s intended without the film more clearly saying it (ridiculously, it's trying to not be completely inappropriate for children), then indeed that is exceedingly gross and ugly and can’t really be excused, just adamantly ignored as subtext.

I really don’t think that’s what’s going on, though? He knows Selina didn’t work in the 44 Below like Annika, she isn’t recognized there. When Bruce starts obsessing over whether she might have slept with Falcone, to me it’s clear he’s imagining something more personal than the transactional and coercive situation of being an escort for dangerous men like this, hence the judgment. The fact that the latter, much darker possibility doesn’t even seem to occur to him probably further shows his privilege and cluelessness about women’s experience, and maybe that should have been addressed somehow. But it just seems absurd to think when he’s obsessively replaying the footage of her talking about Falcone, he’s disgustedly imagining that she’s *gasp* been paid for sex. That’s so uninteresting and cartoonishly puritanical it’s hard for me to give this otherwise really good screenplay that little credit. It’s more than that, Bruce is trying to figure out what her deal is and if she’s even a trustworthy person. She doesn’t seem like someone who’d be messing with a place like the Iceberg Lounge out of desperation; she’s a skilled cat burglar and there’s clearly more to her than she’s told him. Bruce is unforgiving of weakness in himself and he is very attracted to Selina despite not being sure he can trust her, so he’s really unfair in judging her based on what information he has as if this can guard him from being femme-fataled. Yeah, it’s sexism. But hopefully not that level of sexism.

After she gets the cash, his ultimate conclusion before she tells him the truth is that she got close to the mob to steal from them. It’s money earned by destroying lives which as far as he can see she is taking for purely selfish reasons, and he hoped there was more to her than this. That this was apparently her motivation for associating with such terrible people, selling drugs in the club and who knows what else, is disappointing. It’s definitely a bunch of bullshit how judgmentally he confronts her about it (she just found her girlfriend dead in a trunk, you could at least just ghost her if you don’t like her anymore like a normal person but nooo).

So yeah, Bruce treats her in a fucked up way through some of this movie. But she calls him out on his privileged way of thinking and shows him that other people’s lives and choices can be much more complicated than his have ever been. And honestly, I’m not sure that their connection evolves to much more than sexual attraction until the moment he stops her from killing Falcone. Earlier when he gives her the “Then you’re no better than him” line he is as usual applying to everyone else the rigid moral standard he holds himself to as if he’s just like everyone else (and projecting like hell since he’s just learned how one mistake of his father would have tainted all the good he ever could have done from that point on if he was able to continue a political career). But later he’s empathizing with her, actually meaningfully reaching out to her as someone who is also traumatized, because he cares and killing her own father isn’t something he wants her to carry.

THE BATMAN

Bruce Wayne: