Tales From This Side

What a terrible power is bestowed upon he who can, and does, smash a smile that is untethered by the foolish concerns of a stringent society. It is a power derived from the self-righteous inspiration of self-discipline, so sharp in contrast to the airy smile whose only discipline is desire. The jealousy of such an undisciplined freedom is that which drives the hard word and the judgmental gaze. Cruel ironies rise from the attacker's seething surface when he realizes that the very thing that his self-imposed rigidity had hoped to cultivate was that which was, instead, banished from his presence. There's a sunny bench in front of a convenience store that holds a girl in a light dress, barely covering her legs, that is, yet, heavier than the spirit it contains. Just heavy enough to keep her from floating off on the breeze in a laugh. The bounce with which she moves reveals her ethereal composition and the resulting, airy frame is so free of sharp angles that nothing undesired...

I have friends who have friends who watch movies, and sometimes those movies land in my P.O. Box. Me And You And Everyone We Know is one of these. The movie as a whole, encompassing the different, intertwining plot lines that make it up, endeavors to remedy the psychological and physical isolation that is pervasive for all of the characters. It is a purely sentimental movie, however, failing to address the modern, social causes of this isolation, even if it does expose them in the art museum which showcases representations of human interaction in the "digital age." The beauty of the art show is that it mirrors the relationships that exist throughout the majority of the film that are, in fact, merely representations of real interactions. Two people strolling down a sidewalk, for instance, create a scene that is, via their conversation, symbolic of the phases of a real relationship that may, or may not, come to pass. The happy ending, of course, is that it does come toget...