i am laboring under a terrible curse in which my brain wants to write
a loustat Love in the Afternoon. which is emphatically impossible, not least of all because this film only barely works in its very very very specific misogynistic infantilizing twee moment in history. nothing about it is realistic on every level and the characters are destined for doom after the credits roll. but it has *something*.
mostly i just want the dynamic where louis thinks he has to pretend to be something heās not in order to get lestatās distracted (and then very focused and jealous) attention, and louisās heart is in a very vulnerable position playing this game because heās stalking/toying with a guy heās down bad for, but can never let said guy know that he actually cares about him for fear of scaring him off. ā¦.hopefully that makes some kind of sense if you havenāt seen the movie.
but
itās impossible to write? i need a crack team of experts to write this motherfucker with me. so much of it hinges on louis being 33 AND naive AND inexperienced (iāve toyed with having him institutionalized for quite some time or smth a la Paul), but the conflict comes down to me wanting louis to have more of an edge. and louis having an edge (he needs that edge!) might break the story. bc writing louis as 50ās audrey hepburn is kinda boring as shit in theory: i love her in that moment, she made it work, but it was very much its own thing. i donāt want to write louis pinned in by misogyny, which is kinda the crux of hepburnās characterās conflict.
just throwing this out into the ether in case thereās a soul who knows wtf iām talking about
