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Under discussion:

Trust  (1990)

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg  (1964)

Wish You Were Here  (1987)

Stephanie Daley  (2006)

Last week, I introduced a new feature called The Micro Five, with the basic concept being that every Tuesday, I would come up with a five-item list based on a micro-specific topic, and then toss the baton to five other film bloggers, who would then rebut my list with a list of their own. I had fun putting together my list of Five Improbable Werner Herzog Anecdotes, but that whole baton tossing part didn't work out so great--the feedback I got indicated that the topic was *too* obscure, and that the rules were too vague.

So, we're trying this again. This time I've picked what I think is a more accessible topic, and instead of tagging specific bloggers, I'll leave it open to anyone who wants to respond with a list of their own. If you put together a list, please paste a link in the comments to this post. If you'd like to put together a list but don't have a blog of your own, may I suggest starting one for free at Spout? Next week, I'll do a round-up post linking to all responses.

This week's topic was inspired by this blog post, which is just the latest in the "I think Knocked Up is plum unrealistic!" meme that's been going around all summer. Katha Pollitt's angle is an interesting one--basically, that Knocked Up isn't so much about an unwanted pregnancy as it is about Seth Rogen's character wanting to be saved from himself--but it's still a bit hung up on the idea that the plot wouldn't fly if abortions were more commonplace in movies. I personally disagree--I think everything Judd Apatow tells us about Katherine Heigl's character indicates that she's exactly the kind of woman who would keep an unplanned baby as part of a quest for unconditional love--but this seems like as good a time as any to compare and contrast unwanted movie pregnancies. So, in no particular order:

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve) loves Guy, but he's a mechanic, and her mother would prefer her to be with this older businessman dude with a creepy moustache. Guy gets drafted and has to go to war in Algeria; shortly after he leaves, Genevieve discovers she's pregnant. After a few months of mooning for the absent Guy, Genevieve acknowledges that her mom's got a point: a rich baby daddy that she doesn't love but who is willing to financially support another man's child is better than a genetic baby daddy that Genevieve "would die for", but who is penniless nonetheless. Demy's treatment of Genevieve's situation is frank and nonchalant for its day, particularly considering that the film itself was an homage to Hollywood's fantasy-driven Technicolor musicals. The final scene (embedded above), in which (spoiler alert!) Guy is reunited with his child, gets me every time.

2. Wish You Were Here

A near-forgotten gem of 80's British cinema, Wish You Were Here follows Lynda, an ostentatiously promiscuous 50s-era teen tart (director David Leland based his script on the memoirs of famed madam Cynthia Payne) through a series of seriocomic coming-of-age encounters in her seaside hometown. Lynda's mother's dead, and her father can't be bothered; her sluttishness is clearly coded as "looking for love by any means necessary." When a friend of the family gets her pregnant and then abandons her, Lynda's aunt provides the cash required to "take care of it." Lynda takes the money, skips town, keeps the baby and starts a new life. The unexpected cloying ending (blah blah blah, the baby gives her the love she was looking for all along) works thanks to the mult-layered breakout performance of Emily Lloyd, who was nominated for a BAFTA ad generally became something of an international It girl for a brief time after the film was released.

3. Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Not only the only movie I'm aware of that deals with an unwanted pregnancy with a total lack of hysteria, but the only film dealing with the A-word that I could find that was actually directed by a women (Amy Heckerling). All of the drama surrounding Jennifer Jason Leigh's unwanted pregnancy in this movie has to do with how she's gonna get to and from the clinic. The douchbag who knocked her can't even pay for his half, let alone give her a ride. She ends up lying to her brother, telling him that she needs a ride to the mall, and then sneaking off to clinic when she thinks he's driven off. He ends up following her, and drives her home after the procedure. Today, Heckerling is praised today for refusing to moralize the abortion subplot, but it's probably worth noting that at the time of its release, Fast Times was widely panned. "How could they do this to Jennifer Jason Leigh?" Roger Ebert wrote. "How could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into such a scuz-pit of a movie?"

4. Stephanie Daley

Hillary Brougher's harrowing second film is a study of two very different pregnancies. Amber Tamblyn plays the title character, a religious high school student who loses her virginity to a stranger and gives birth in a public restroom several months later, claiming she never knew she was pregnant; Tilda Swinton plays the pregnant psychologist hired by the court to pass judgment on Stephanie's sanity. The film revolves around Stephanie's fractured testimony--is she crazy? Lying? A little of both?--all of which Tamblyn manages to pull together in an incredibly nuanced performance. The film came and went in limited release earlier this year (I saw it at Sundance in 2006), but it's worth seeking out. The birth scene, shot something like a Lars Von Trier remake of Carrie, is absolutely terrifying.

5. Trust

Many Knocked Up skeptics mention the film in the same breath as Waitress, another 2007 comedy centered on an unplanned (an inexplicably un-terminated) pregnancy. That film's director/co-star, the late Adrienne Shelly, was best known to many indie film fans for her starring role as a pregnant teenager in Hal Hartley's Trust. Shelly plays Maria, a gum-snapping suburban high school dropout whose pregnancy prompts her football-star boyfriend to leave her, and her father to drop dead of a heart attack. Matthew, a TV-repairman played by Martin Donovan, is probably twice her age, but he's struggling to break out from the shackles of his own dysfunctional family. The two form a tentative bond based on their mutual alienation. Matthew offers to marry Maria; Maria, believing Matthew has fooled around with her sister, eventually gets an abortion. Just as Maria and Matthew's relationship hinges, as he puts it, on mutual "trust, admiration and respect," Hartley asks us in good faith to invest in a relationship devoid of the usual romantic fireworks, and then suddenly removes the one traditional bit of plot glue holding the two characters together. Due to Hartley's magic formula of deadpan melodrama, it works.

I've been following this whole "Google encourages anti-Sicko ad buys" thing out of the corner of my eye, but now that it seems to be all but wrapped-up, I have a few thoughts.

Here's what happened: On Friday, a Google Ads "account planner" named Lauren Turner wrote a blog post inviting health care companies, which she posits are surely feeling real or indirect bruising from Michael Moore's Sicko, to contact her about Google's "issue management campaigns." Turner did not specifically say, "Health care companies should combat the Michael Moore Effect by buying text ads on searches for Sicko," but that's basically what was inferred by the many (mainly tech-focused) bloggers who picked up the story.

Google really shot themselves in the foot with that whole "make money without doing evil" thing--it was basically equivalent to asking the anti-Capitalist wing of the blogosphere to stand on constant watch for even the slightest sign of moral impropriety. Thus, a simple marketing message turns into a scandal, which reaches its peak when BoingBoing runs the story with the headline "Google to HMOs: pay us and we'll defuse 'Sicko'".

On Sunday, Turner, in response to blog outcry, issued a weak "apology", in which she clarified that the original post represented her views and not necessarily Googles, but basically maintained her original point, which was "advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have." Turner continued:

Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore's movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.

This apparently turned the incident into a big enough deal to warrant coverage by The Hollywood Reporter, which in turn prompted me to try to break it down and determine what, if anything, this series of events actually means.

Going on a Technorati search (which, admittedly, may not be the best form of research), it seems as though this story was of most interest to blogs about blogs--at the very least, it hasn't made much noise in the movie blogosphere. That in itself is significant, I think, because at the end of the day, this whole thing has the potential to spark questions about whether or not there's a fundamental difference between art that aims to function as ideological statement, and advertising that aims to protect ideology.

In other words, if this little roadbump will have lasting impact, it's because it suggests that advertising--particularly, Google's text-base advertising, which obliterates any illusion of seperation between medium and message--is as valid a vehicle for ideology as a film (which, in this case, is ultimately itself a corporate product). This could be fertile territory for debate--if Google wasn't already selling ads for the purpose of "image management." The fact that the practice is already in progress sort of makes the issue moot. A lot of bloggers who jumped on this story seem to have this attitude, like, "Is nothing sacred?" Well, no--at the very least, Michael Moore is not entitled to have his message (through which he earns a profit) protected from the paid objections of his detractors, who are essentially just trying to protect their own ability to make a profit.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but for me, it boils down to this: if Moore has the right to spend Harvey Weinstein's money to make a film in which the flip side of his argument is not represented, then why don't the people whose business could be affected by the film have the right to spend their own money to respond?