This little exchange from The History Boys came to my mind after watching this film…
Timms: I don’t always understand poetry!
Hector: You don’t always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it… whenever.
There are films and bits of films that you don’t really get when you first watch them. But then, at all sorts of random times, something sparks them back to your memory and you find that you not only understand the film better but also yourself or your situation. They become part of the apparatus, the vocabulary by which we understand ourselves and our lives. That’s been my experience, anyway.
I think All The Real Girls is meant to be watched as poetry. It’s an attempt at a realistic depiction of the rise and fall of a relationship between people and all their baggage. It’s a film about things between people. There’s not really a nice neat story arc – it’s more a series of vignettes of the different phases of the relationship. Some are more successful than others and there were bits that I just didn’t really get but there are some beautiful scenes that tackle the real highs and lows and complications and intricacies of two people trying to understand each other and themselves within and through a real (non-Hollywood) relationship.
Like poetry, this is a film that I can imagine watching in a years’ time and it resonating differently. It’s nice to watch a film and know that you haven’t heard everything it has to say first time round.
In summary, a grower!
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