Hello uncultured swine,
Is this email looking more chic than usual? That’s right, I invested an hour of my expensive time into creating a header so Dis Content appears the professional outfit it truly is. See, I need to sharpen the pencil because I’m man hunting, folks – specifically for the wealthy toy-boy variety.
Being of toy-boy age myself, this is a long term projection that I didn’t know was exclusively available to me as an art historian (yes, I actually study this, no that does not make me reputable). Thankfully, seminal film and Amazon Prime original, The Idea of You, arrived as my crystal ball and today, we’re diving into Their Idea of an Art Historian.
Jeffrey Preston Bezos, you son of a bitch. Yet again I find myself paying for his streaming services as the world burns around us at his behest and for what? A story about a 40 year old woman getting railed by a 24 year old member of a boy band curiously titled August Moon? Was it worth it? Was it? Yeah. He can go to space again and live in his bunker, I don’t really care, this movie’s great.
Based on fan-fiction of the same name, The Idea of You, is about two exceptionally attractive people putting their genitals together, and it has a tenuous link to art history that I intend to milk. Central character, Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway), is an art history major who owns her very own gallery. The sexy gallerist, also unconvincingly posited as a ‘dowdy’ 40 year old mother, meets 20-something heart throb, Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), when accompanying her daughter to his boy band’s ‘meet and greet’. Lots of sex happens, then the movie ends.
This flawless plot was met with a mixed reception. Immediate issue was taken with the casting of Hathaway as Solène, because this is actually what 40 year old women look like..
And this is what Anne Hathaway looks like...
An egregious oversight. Bones have also been made about the likelihood of Solène’s raunchy affair with a younger beau because we all know? reality? is what drives? the sexual fantasies? of women? This said, the unlikely romance in The Idea of You did detract from an otherwise very moving and very true documentary about an art history graduate cum gallerist.
Life is very murky for me at the moment. This might seem tangential but stay with me: I don’t want babies, I don’t want marriage, I couldn’t afford a house even if I wanted to, and I don’t know what I want in place of those things. All I seem to care about from the depths of my confusion and muck and mire, is having sex with The Idea of You’s Hayes Campbell. That, and art. Solène seemed to perfectly fill the aspirational fictitious character void I didn’t know I had (then Hayes filled the void she had).
Solène lives amongst the aesthetically messy belongings of a Bohemian Gallerists’ House. Her hands elegantly wrap around a mug of tea as she contemplates the feminist work of Tracey Emin. There’s an upright piano in her lounge room - no one knows how to play it, doesn’t matter. Does she experience the emotional turmoil of an age-gap relationship and its misogynistic hypocrisies sitting on a mismatched piece of antique furniture? Of course she does. She has exactly the kind of hunky dory, lordy lordy look who’s forty décor I desperately need in order to pass my questionable mental health off as arty quirkiness.
But it’s not all optics, Solène knows her shit. When young beau, Hayes, visits her gallery, she tells him what format the photographer shot their images in: large. When Hayes misinterprets the meaning of pottery throwing, Solène gives him the kind of gentle education men with mum proclivities love. And in perhaps the most erotically charged storage facility scene in cinema history, Solène describes the meaning behind what appears to be an artist’s calendar, in such a way that I still don’t know if she’s taking the piss. From a woman with more than one book on Rembrandt, it’s difficult to tell.
Clearly this film tells you all you need to know about those with artistic sensibilities, it certainly gave me an education. Even in a fantasy world where a 40 year old mother is plucked from a crowd by a handsome, young yet emotionally mature celebrity and they fall in love, the writers drew the line at Solène’s career being built on her elbow grease alone. We trace the dots of this single mother, living in her quirky home on the questionable earnings of a sparsely stocked gallery, to find that her ex-husband was, indeed, loaded. A lucrative divorce is a necessary step toward an arts career and I, like Solène, intend to make good on these terms.
In the business, we use the expression ‘masterpiece’ when a craftsperson makes a piece of outstanding artistry (you’ll know this word if you watch the film). The Idea of You is a masterpiece. Not because of its supposed subversive messaging on the sex lives of middle-aged women, or its probing of age-gap relationships when the genders are reversed. And not because the plot’s about as easy to follow as ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ or because Nicholas Galitzine is really hot (though this helps).
There’s this moment in the film, where Hayes asks Solène what she feels when looking at her favourite painting and she responds, “Everything.” So moved by the jelly bean squiggle tree branch (above), she’s rendered practically mute. This moment is so falsely profound, that I can’t help but fucking love it. That’s the masterpiece for me. The delicious caricature of a middle-aged, art history major turned gallerist with books on Rembrandt, a voracious sexual appetite and ‘everything’ I’d like to emulate.
LORDY LORDY LOOK WHO’S FORTY! By sheer coincidence, and not because I’m organised at all, this is the fortieth issue of Dis Content. Cute! Now where are you Nicholas Galitzine…
Thank you Grace for editing, thank YOU for reading my absolute shite. If you like it, you may let me know, you may let others know. We’re all friends here.
C U NEXT TUESDAY xxxxx Maggie Jeannnnn xxxxx
I hooted and hollered my way through this.
Dammit now I must interrupt the Bridgerton flow to watch this movie.