#cuaron

A Little Princess (1995)

Dir.: Alfonso Cuarón

An observation, I said out loud. Friends who meet in Uni drift apart.

By their own doing, my acquaintance finished for me. We were at a coffee shop in 2018. The autumn air was chilly, an omen to the mass pandemonium that would arise next year. But that afternoon seemed to give us all the time in the world to get a little philosophical.

If you want to up with someone, she continued. There's always something that you could be doing that you aren't. If only you dedicated 10 minutes to calling them. If only you thought a little bit harder about their birthday. If you were dedicated to making things happen you would. Most people just don't put in the effort.

As a child who never lived in the same city for more than a year, I knew this kind of pain intimately, the fatalistic pain of forgetting and being forgotten. It's a pain which unlocks the magical ability to jump out of the present and always to the total timeline of patterns which you can never affect. When every scene starts and ends the same, and coalesces into a mass of half-touched milestones, you wonder what lesson there is to be had.

Painful, but worthwhile

Within 10 mins I knew I would love this film.

The opening had an air of tragedy, despite the foolhardy innocence of the boys and their juvenile sexual posturing. I think my own experiences spoiled me. I'd seen too many scenes like this to not know where it would go.

And when things go south and are executed so sensitively by the Cuarón, you can't help admire them.

Things stood out to me:

The question of inevitability. Was it all going to end one day anyway? Did it take an unexpected roadtrip to release that tension toward each other? Was it inevitable that this release prevent them from ever being friends again?

When Tenoch and Julio's bitter feelings are finally unearthed, the friendship unravels with a destructive, unstoppable force. The things they choose to reveal seem to come from the foulest parts of themselves. They did not seem spontaneous. They attack each other with a sort of ferocity that can only be seen as each boy's lack of ability to understand and regulate his own feelings. It seemed that they were each hoping for something more, but there was no scaffolding in place, no inkling of what that could even look like.

And Luisa, the grown woman on the trip with them. I could see nothing positive of her intentions at first. I saw her as an opportunist whose personal tragedy got in the way of rightful action. But having replayed clips of this movie close to 20 times now, including the culminating fight in the car, I believe there she possesses a kind of spiritual knowledge and intuition for closeness, and tried to bring the best out of the boys.

Lady Gaga fixing Rami's bow <3