Amelie with Hana Michels

the best cost there's we gotta stop. We have to stop. I think that it's good that we got it out at the top because out of our system we don't know how to do it. This is the Battel Cast. We talk about the portrayal of women in movies. Let me talk about the portrayal of French people, and maybe specifically we all talk about Beauty and the Beast and today's starring al. We use the Betel test as a jumping off point to start a larger conversation about how

women are represented and treated and portrayed in cinema. The cinema take there's that really good flight of the Conquered song. And anyway, the reason we're talking about French people in France so much is that we're talking about the movie Amily. But before we get into it, let's introduce our guest, who has been very patiently waiting, so sorry. She is the co creator and co writer of Mom Presents. I think these guys are hot stuff. Hanna Michaels, Hey here,

thanks for having me. I was having fun listening to that. That's the name of the sign. Why does that come up in that? There's there must be someone I forget what happens that makes that song happen? Oh you know what, I bet it is? I bet in New Zealand they take French like we take Spanish like it's just obligatory. So then there's those phrases that you just know and nothing else, right, Yeah, that's why they keep saying BiblioTech

and disc atteche. Yeah. Well, anyway, so we're talking about Emily. Hannah, when did you first see this movie? What is your relationship to it? Tell us everything? What I realized when I watched it again is I don't actually hate Emily. I hate dudes who suggest I would like Amily. Okay, I agree with that I did enjoy rewatching this movie.

I was kind of because sometimes when we revisit movies that I've been attached to in my past, it's, I mean, as it is for us all we have to take a long, hard look at a movie we love and say, oh, no, like this is shaped who I am in a way that has had negative effects. I was ready for that to happen for Emily, and I was not as disappointed as I thought I would be. Yeah, yeah, same, same.

I My reaction to it the first time was really angry, and then looking back, it's just like, oh, this is my relationship with a dude who suggested that I watch it, Like this is right? So you were projecting some maybe negative feelings towards a specific man to the movie. I mean, Emily is like, I guess, an anxious pixie dream girl kind of. She's not like a yeah, she's not manic, but she's romanticized for social anxiety in a lot of ways. This movie does a lot of weird stuff with mental

illness where she's like, but okay, that was a choice. Yeah, A lot of choices are made. Yeah yeah, yeah. There's a lot of stalking in this movie. So a lot of stalking, a lot of orchestrating of like very like Rube old Berg, almost crazy things where you have to go to this place and then to follow these arrows to do this thing and then look through this thing

and did it. Was one of those things where there's a few scenes especially and where I'm getting way ahead, but like the you know, last third of this movie is I'm only basically setting up this really demented obstacle course to make some guy fell in love with her. And the twist is it works. But but if you score that movie a little bit differently, it's straight up a murder film because she's like at pay phones wearing sunglasses, and if there's like a little like no no no, no, no, no,

no no no, I was like, Oh, she's dangerous. She's a scary lady. Okay. I do agree that there is a specific kind of guy who will recommend this movie to you, And I don't know exactly what it is about them that bothers me, but I know that all the music from my least favorite student film of all time is ripped directly from Emily. Are you talking about love Boccardi Boston? Of course I'm talking about Love Boccardi Boston. It's online to all our listeners. You gotta watch Love

but already, Bosson. If you've dated me for over I would say three weeks you've seen lave Paccardi Bosson. If you haven't, it's available to you online. Uh, it's And Caitlin because we've been dating for what a year and a half now, Yeah, Caitlin has seen Lumbaccardi boss And I think what twice one and a half one and a half, Well, that can be resolved. But yeah, it's like it's it's in a shitty student film that like uses Emily's music in a very egregious, transparent, earnest way

that will make you just want to die. That's the other thing I realized. It's not the movie, it's the offshoots from Like, if there's no Emily, there's no Garden State. If there's no Emily, there's no Travelocity gnome Um. Yeah, yeah, that that tracks. It just created like a cultural moment where it's like there's a lot of cool romantic ship, but also there's a lot of romanticizing people who aren't people. They're just idea, is right. I first saw the movie

I Want to say I was in college. This movie also came out in two thousand and one, another two thousand one joint. I saw it in college. I had a friend recommended to me a woman as a matter of fact, so not there was no man who was saying, well, I watched this, like this movie, you should watch it, um I had is how they all talked. Yeah, when I went skiing, when did you? When I went to Late Runner with me? I saw it probably around like two thousand four five, a few years after it came out.

This is interesting because there's one of the few foreign films. Is the first foreign movie we've done on the podcast. It's one of the few foreign films that have crossed over into mainstream American cinema in a pretty big way, a big way. I meant to do more research on sort of film cinema history. I'll go into this a

little bit later. I didn't do enough research, but I'll just say what I know from the film classes I took in college, where I did get one of two degrees that I do have in film, the second one being a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston. I don't like to bring it up. I can't believe you made me bring it up, but I did do that. So I just it's out there now and now you know. But I'm interested in exploring French cinema a bit and why maybe this movie, unlike many other French films, was

able to sort of crossover into American mainstream cinema. Anyway. Yeah, I saw it in college. I remember liking it enough that I bought it on DVD and I was like, Oh, what a fun, whimsical movie. And then I don't think I watched it again, even though I did have it very accessible to me on DVD because also brag, I have a DVD player. Uh, there's no way around it. But I did. I like it, just went on the shelf,

and then I haven't watched it again until yesterday. So it shows you how much I cared about rewatching it. I came to this movie, and I'm curious that how many young women have this experience. I first became aware of this movie on basically Tumbler and Tumbler adjacent websites. I was like eight or nine when the movie came out, so I wasn't I wasn't aware of it of French cinema at that time. But fast forward a couple of years when I was in high school. I do remember

seeing it. It It would pop up a lot. There's a lot of screen caps I can remember clearly, specifically the one where she says that I'm nobody's little weasel. Saw that a million times on the primitive internet in my old life journal where I wrote poetry. That's probably where, yeah, like websites like that, because I'm like, this would have been a little bit before Tumbler was big, because Tumbler was really big when I was like in late high

school college. But stuff like that, where I had seen so much of this movie, I'm like, this looks cute. What's this? What's this? And then as finally I saw it on TV and was like, oh my god, like I really really really liked this movie in high school, kind of forgot about it, and then rewatched it, I would say, for the first time in at least five years today, and it I was pleasantly surprised that there's one specific plot point in this movie that I had

totally forgotten that I find very upsetting. But for the most part, I'm like, oh, this is misguided in a lot of ways, But given the fact that it's two thousand and one. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up for me. Yeah, it's cute. It's it's a lot more cute than I'm giving it credit for because of the dudes who are like, hey, your socially

anxious watch this. But yes, yes, but other than that, like, it's a cute film with some ideas about love that are not the greatest, but that's fine because we all didn't have those. How did you first come across That's part of why is I dated some dude in college and I was older than you guys when I saw it, which is probably another reason, um that I didn't as much if I know what you mean, but you like for the first time, right, I just want everyone to

know that I'm thirty one. My god. She's like Kyl's like compulsively spouting information. She's like, I went to college, this is my age. Please don't say her PIN number. I'm having a stroke anyway, that's what you do catchphrase. Um. I definitely think that if I had seen this movie in college for the first time, I probably still would

have liked it. I don't think I would have been as extremely attached to it as I was in high school, because it's so easy to plug yourself into Emily and be like, oh there is some sort of as well. As long as you make an incredibly complicated and scary plan to force someone to fall in love with you, you can still be a little bit shy, which at that time I was very responsive to that message. Sure, as a fourteen year old girl with the back bace, I was like, oh, hell yeah, we can pull this off. Yes,

he has a twenty three year old girl. I was like, No, that doesn't work. I've tried it. I'll do the recap of the story. We focus on a character named Amalie. She is a French gal living in France. Ever heard of it? Isn't she in Paris? I'm not sure, but I would guess so. French listeners, those who have not abandoned us, let us know where Emily takes place, if it's in Paris or not also missed opportunity. No one

draws her like one of their French girls. Anyway, I just had to shoehorn that Titanic reference in there, and I am not sorry. God Almighty Emily is about a

young woman. We meet her as a child so part of the story is that her dad doesn't hug her enough, so she and he's a doctor, so whenever he gives her a monthly check up, her heart beats so fast that the excitement of him touching her that it makes him think that she has a heart condition, and then it affects her entire rest of her life because which first of all means probably her dad's not a very good doctor, or he's like, maybe I should get a

second opinion, like it's nuts, so he is. So they're like, well, she has a heart condition, she can't go to school, so she's homeschooled then, and like doesn't ever get to be socialized out in the world really, so she's she ends up being this kind of like isolated adult who's

very shy. She's socially awkward. She doesn't necessarily feel complete as a person, and a three year old person would feel this way, yes, but the way that they resolve it for Emily is just like come on, right, because so she's also like sort of take a night class, Emily figure out. So this in his first to adulthood where she's still but she has a job. Now, she's out in the world. She's a waitress at a cafe,

but she's still kind of a loner. She doesn't relate well with other people, and she's also sort of prone to flights of fancies. She's a very whimsical Oh yeah, her thing is She's like, I don't like sex, but what I love is contaminating food with my hands. There's all these tie shots of Omily just dip in her paws into open bag, like that's someone's food. You can't do that. They're the sexual politics of this movie, and well,

we can get into this later as well. The sexual politics of this movie are very all over the place,

where it's for better or worse. It's usually pretty clear where a movie falls on sex, of like whether it's being demonized or whether it's being like very pro sex, but this movie is kind of all over the place where it's not it's not critical of Emily for not being interested in sex, but there is something about the way that sex is portrayed in this movie that does feel a little bit I don't think prudish is the word,

but something adjacent to that. Well, we can like dig into that, but yeah, the way that sex is treated in this movie is weird and also I think is something that I was very responsive to as a fourteen year old in the back brace of like I don't need to have sex. I can just you know, put my hand in some of food and come that way have orgasms from skipping rap, right, I mean, we we've got the We've got This is like one of the Hallmark like not like the other girls. Um yeah, sorry, continue.

So she's this, you know, kind of socially awkward, like you sort of said, maybe not manic, but but the HIXI dream girl in a sense. But don't worry, she's hot. She's very cute. The story starts with her finding a little box in her bathroom that a little boy had left forty years earlier. It is like a period piece to an extent, not a lot, not only a few years removed from when it came out. But there is this through line of the movie where it takes place

just as Princess Die passes away. You can't say die dies. That's just makes it seem like you're making a joke, which we would never Uh, it's not so Princess Night passes away during this movie, And that was another I was like, that was definitely a choice that I'm not quite sure why that was the choice, but interesting, well, it's a catalyst of her she finds out about this. She drops like the lid to her perfume or something

like that. It rolls across the floor and un wedges this like hiding spot basically where this little box was, and she's she digs it out and she's like, oh, it's this. This little boy left all of this little like toys and tokens and treasures behind. So she's like, I'm gonna find out who this belonged to. I'm going to return it to him, and if he's moved by it, I'm actually going to be a do gooder from now on.

So she sort of like takes on this project and she starts to figure out who this person might be, and in so doing, she runs into this man named Nino, who also is a bit of a manage tricks tricksie man. I would like half of the cast of this movie is just like, yeah, this is a vague, cartoony wow, Like I mean, it almost reads is a fairy tale. This movie, to me, does there's that guy with hollow bones.

I did forget about all hollow bones anyway, So she comes across this guy who's like rummaging around under this photo booth in a subway station, and they kind of make eyes at each other and they're like, Oh, this guy comes back later because as she starts like doing her do goodie, she comes in contact with him again in this scene where he's trying to return something to someone else, and then he loses a book and she picks up this book, so she's like, I have to

return this book to him, and it's full of all of these discarded photographs from the people have taken at these photo booths. So he has this like hobby I guess of like finding the he's thrown away ripped up photos, putting him in a like a photo album. And then he it makes him come. I don't know why he does, so we have to they're hand in the basket of food, the texture of the page. You're like, this book is

being come on all the time. Fine, right, So then she sort of orchestrates this whole thing to get the book back to him, but because she's so shy, she can't actually meet him in real life. Meanwhile, he like there's like hints that she's falling in love with him, even though she doesn't know who he is or they've never spoken. And then also he loves her back. You see her like throbbing heart the second she sees him.

It's like I love it first sight, which automatically when I was fourteen and I was like, but now I'm just like like I'm gonna launch myself through a pane of glass. Especially with that thing with her dad in her heart earlier, that's just kind of like, oh, yeah, I was like, that's a call back to your dad. Touched. That's not good. That didn't even register for me, but yeah,

that's not good. Her her relationship with and that is like another that's like something that is kind of I feel like dropped in the movie where at the beginning there's a lot of like I think if you saw the first ten minutes of this movie, you would think that this would be This movie would have a lot to do with Emily's relationship to her father, because you learned about Emily's father before you even learn about her.

You hear his whole life story. Then you hear a little bit about her mom, not as much because it's a movie. We can't be talking about women too much. Uh, And then you hit the plot point where it's like daddy never touched and again, the translation might be funky, we don't know, but there was like a line that was basically like like every six year old girl Emily wanted to be hugged by her daddy more than anything

in the world. And that is like such a strongly worded statement that you feel like it would come back more.

But the dad is kind of dropped in the movie event like where she sees him a lot, it's clear that he is socially weird and doesn't quite know how to connect with her when she's an adult as well, but it's it's not really like I was surprised that they put so much emphasis on that, and at the very beginning of the movie, and then he kind of disappears from the narrative and is replaced with a different older guy who's the artist, older guy m R. Which which kind of reminded me of Shape of Water was

kind of I don't know, that was a similar relationship of like, yeah, genue and artist who failing but has lots of exposition to say. But anyways, Yeah, also, she she has a dead mom, so she is like a Disney princess this is a fairy tale. Mom dies in a crazy way. I did laugh if I forgot that. I forgot that her mom died like that because someone is trying to commit suicide by jumping off a building and lands on her mom, killing her mom. I think she was successful in the suicide, but I don't think

she firs the suicidal fish. And now this it's there's a lot of suicide in the first like ten minutes of this movie, which again sort of we don't come back to it. It's weird. It's a weird tonal start. There's I mean, I think the film like I can't. I just said film, Well, no, thank you, I have retired. I just called it the film. But the visual consistency in this movie is pretty much across the board, like it's a very this whole movie was dipped in some

very ornate piss like it's a very yellowy movie. It's a very Cepia romantic looking movie. But totally the story

is weird. You think it could be a movie about parents? Yeah, because I mean there's this voiceover throughout the whole thing, and it's like focusing on a lot of different things that really don't have anything to do with the story, all these subplots get introduced, where so the main plot, which also doesn't even come up in the story until maybe forty or forty five minutes in, where she needs to return this photo album to this guy, so that

becomes the main plot where she's orchestrating ways to get them to meet up again so that she can return it, but she doesn't actually want to meet him because she like returns it from Afar. And then like she's also kind of chickening out because she's so shy that she can't meet this person. And then she also orchestrates this thing where she's gonna help him solve the mystery of who this one particular person is in the photo album, this bald guy who keeps popping up over and over

and it's like, who's this guy? And she helps him figures out. So while all this is happening, she's also helping some of her colleagues falling but helping people know. She's interfering with people's lives, and she's breaking her friend up with a scary criminal like that that's the thing that okay, but you know what keep going. She also like breaks and enters into this guy's house. Granted this guy is very mean, but like she's like making key copies so that she can go and his house and

funk with all of his ship and like I like that. Yeah, And then she's like encouraging her dad via this garden gnome to travel by like sending him she steals his gnome and then sends him photos in other countries. So she's yeah, she's basically just like trying to inspire people to be like better people. But actually the twist is she's not a complete person herself. Like she's fixing other people's messes, but her own life is still a mess.

And don't worry. There's a heavy handed painting metaphor into that. Maybe she's just here as some here are some things that we say at the painting. Maybe she's just different. She can't relate with other people. I just lost French. She has an absolute right to mess up her life. And then there's one point where All bird Bones is like enough, It's like we have to stop talking at this painting right now. There. Yeah, it's almost like an Emma Ish austiny, like she's interfering a lot and not

dealing with her own problems. Is what it becomes, but it takes a while for us to get there. For I sort of forgot. I'm like, I forget exactly how far into the movie she actually it takes her to get the box to the guy, and it was sooner than I thought. And then the objective of the movie switches again to general meddling, and then at the end it switches again to trapping me in a relationship with her.

So they're like, her objectives are always I mean, it's always sort of too fill the void is I guess the overarching thing. But yeah, like the specific objectives changes a couple of different times. There's not a ton of consistency. I will say that the scene I forgot that because it used to make me cry in high school. But it made me cry this sound too of when he actually gets the box back, and like like that that

gets me every time. With the scene with the marbles, well to launch us into the discussion, so the movie with finally she's able to have a face to face with this guy Nino, who she's been trying to connect with. She catches him in a net. She pulls him into her apartment and they start kissing, even though they've never really spoken to each other, and then the next scene is them like holding each other's naked bodies. So it all worked out. They got together because she traps him

in her Venus fly trap and their in love. This had a negative effect on how I my entire life. So that's the end of the story and every and they're happy now. They're so happy to launch us into the discussion all of her objectives starting from like finding whose box this belongs to helping her debt, like they're all either to help a man or to help a female friend of hers get at a man. Hard agree with that there. I at one point I wrote, Emily is a guys gal, and I think that that is

to an extent true. And it's not that she's ever hostile or mean to the women in her life. She isn't. But every character that we see her create a sustaining bond with in this movie is a man, and that you know, you can go to a character based She was raised by her dad basically, but she seems to connect easier with men. Where she hangs up with bird Bones, she becomes very attached to Nino Nino. Nino Nino keep saying exactly but like everyone we see her connect with

in a meaningful way is a man. Also Lucien. Lucien. Lucien was my fucking favorite. I so adorable. So he's the character who worked. He and this other guy or whatever, the guy that she puts foot cream in his toothcaste, right, Yeah, they worked. They worked together at a market it and this older guy is very very mean to Lucien and

insults him and brates him and all this stuff. So she Jame's rubbing up on your live so helps Lucien by like basically publicly humiliating his boss, who's just like really awful, who spirals into this like manic state and becomes it seems like borderline suicidal. In one scene, Yeah, I can tell you with certainty I have put foot cream on my teeth and I'm not I don't need help with that. He loses his ship. That's like he's

like someone's been in my home. And then he like can't put his shoes on anymore, and he's vibrating and he's calling the psychiatric Association, and it's just like, well, that only happens because she plugs that number into his phone. He doesn't deliberately call that number. Okay, she makes him think that she's basically gaslighting him because she's making him think that the most whimsical guest lighting really beautifully scored according to music to this. But that is how she

approaches a lot of these situations where she goes. So there's this guy, a regular at her cafe, who is there to see one of her colleagues, Gina, because they used to date. His character's name is Joseph, Joseph, and he's got his eye on Gina. Meanwhile, Georgette, she works at the tobacco counter. So Umily's like, what if I set these two up instead? So she goes to Joseph and she's like, can't you see how much Georgette is like doing all this stuff to get She's not She's

just got like nasal spray. And then she goes to Georgette and it is like, don't you see how much Joseph is like always sitting so close to you? And then they have sex in a public space in the bathroom that's very loud, knocks all the glasses over and the cadet sex and this movie is very loud. So yeah, she's basically like manipulating everybody but it's it's okay because she's helping them. That character Joseph is to me, and I vaguely remember that, I didn't remember the specifics of

exactly how that story unfold. That part really that really bugged me. Of like, he is actively stalking his ex girlfriend every day. No one ever thinks to call someone say hey, seems like this guy might be dangerous. He's literally Uni bomber, carrying around a tape recorder and staring at his ex girlfriend all day and people are kind of mean to Gina about it, and they're like, well, it just just tell him to go away. I'm like,

this is not on her. He's the one who has seemingly left his job full time stalk her, and every time she does anything, he's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Are you You're fucking him? Like there's you know, which I'm just like, oh, jeez, I've dated that guy. I mean, I've used to date a guy who would show up in my work for my whole shift and just be like just keeping an eye on you. And it's like, no, uh, we're married now,

Uh you know, he's stalking her. And then Emily goes over to him, and I'm like, oh, does she tell him to funk off? Like that would be cool? But she doesn't. She's like, oh, let me just hook you up with my friend, this very stable guy who's always harassing my coworker. Let me just hook him up with

my other coworker like that. I'm just like, then he starts harassing her too, like they have sex, but then they're like relationship goes sour, and then he's like doing the same thing over again, which I'm glad at least that Georgette gets the funk out of there, because I was so worried that that would be like, yeah, the take, because I forgot how that subplot ended. But it was like, oh, yeah,

she does. She does tell him to sunk off, and then there's that interesting and I thought this was an interesting um exchange between whoever that failed writer is who's always at the cafe, Miss Susanne, who is the like brassy bartender lady and Joseph. Georgette is like, I'm done, funck off, goodbye, I've got to go, you know, raw daga bottle of nasals, right or whatever. She does, But there's Suzanne. She says women need air and then Joseph says, you give women air, they blow you off, which is

like he's a feminist. But it was interesting to see, Like I feel like that was the point where the movie finally passed some decisive judgment on that character, because before it was like, Oh, this guy's like quirky and weird and we know he shouldn't be here, but maybe

he's just misguided and needs love. And it's like, no, this guy needs help, like he needs to not training orders filed against him to not be in this cafe, but the movie seemed like weirdly tolerant of his pres and so finally, by the end with that line, I was like, Okay, good, now we can write him off as like the movie thinks this guy sucks. I don't know why it took so long to reach that conclusion,

because it seems pretty obvious from moment one. But I don't think that that would have been obvious to me the first time I saw this movie, because that's like kind of just like an exaggerated cartooning version of like the Chase narrative, like just hang out, Yeah, just hang out, She's yours. This whole movie is a like on the

Chase narrative. There's a there's a scene with Nino in the porn shop where he works, where he's talking about how he loves Emilie because of the mystery, and there's supposed to be that big contrast with the porn shop, and it's just like, if you watch that as a team, you're like, Yeah, the mystery is fucking great, And if you watch that now, it's just like, no, fucking buy me a vibrator. It's right. His colleague is actively like putting price tags on her name. Her name is Eva,

and she is She basically only provides exposition. But I'm like, I wanted what does she do? Like, yeah, can we stop watching amily and watch whatever she's doing. She seems to be enjoying her life. There are a lot of female characters in this movie. There are, um the way they were treated is all over the board. But the characters that I found, and perhaps I've missed him, Emily, Emily's mom, Georgette Madeleine, the land neighbor lady, who I have some things to say, well, Gina, my dame, Suzanne,

the newsstand lady who does she have a name? I never caught it, Okay, maybe because French. We didn't catch it, but I couldn't find a name for her, but she she's in a bunch of different scenes, the video girl Eva. There's at one point a stripper named Samantha that Nino tries to talk to, but she's busy dancing in a box. It's the whole thing, and those are the ones that I There's one more that I call Philmine, who is the flight attendant who helps Yes Emily take pictures with

her dad's gnome in other parts of the world. Amazing, Yes, but she is basically like she's a tertiary character, hardly has anything to do with the story. Most of these female characters exist in relay shintoman or their primary objective or plot line has to do with getting a man, which sucks a lot. Emily's plotline is all over the place, but it eventually settles on getting a man. Georgette, she's basically coerced into having a man and then leaves them,

which is like okay. Gina, who I really liked to that and another character I felt was like under serviced. Gina doesn't do anything wrong this entire movie. She's very nice, she's very tolerant of Emily being a weirdo. But everyone is kind of always like Gina is loose, and I'm like, no, it's just because that guy Joseph's always saying are you

sleeping with him? Like she's not, she's and even if she has leave her alone, Oh yeah, Okay, Madeleine Madeleine the neighbor weird subplot, so she's I think one of the first scenes in this movie that passes the Bactele test is the scene between Emily. Spoiler alert it does test, but the scene between Emily and Madeleine the neighbor. She's always trying to figure out who this box belongs to, and Malone's like, Hi, I'm Madeleine. My husband died forty years ago and it ruined my life and I was

just like, whoa coming in hot. Yeah, she's still like devastated by it and it concerns all of her energy.

But that's literally all we know about her, and we don't see her for a while, or we see her for like two seconds or whatever, and then at the end we get like she she receives, you know, the letter from the letter from her husband saying like I love you and blah blah blah, and her the end beat to her character, she like makes out with a framed portrait of her dead husband, and I was like, like,

I don't know. That storyline confused me because didn't she already have letters from him, which we learned early on. She's like, yeah, but I don't think that they like said as explicitly like I love you. I thought that

was what I thought. It's all about his day or what. No, I see, Okay, yeah, it's it's supposed to be Emily providing closure, but what it ends up is Emily keeping the myth of this forty year dead guy alive for this poor woe fueling the fire, yeah, like extended, especially if fast forward like six months and Madeline finds out the letter was fake. Oh yeah, that's going to result

in some serious psychological consequences. So that was That was like one of the female characters that I felt was like most disservice and just felt like not even underwritten, but just like that was a choice that I don't know without but that was a choice because there are so many subplots that you think one of them might be, Oh, Emily's helping this person reconnect with a friend or Emily's helping she does kind of Again, do they not have night classes in France? Do they not have paint nine

in France? There's plenty of things you can do with your time that aren't actively sad lives of others in a very tweet way. With banks, yeah, and helping people and interfering with people's lives always as it relates to men. So like I feel like she if she did want to be this do good or who's helping people? Great, So maybe volunteer at a food bank. Maybe like go to an animal shelter and pet some dogs. Don't grab the nearest blind person and starts shouting at them, and

she didn't even know where he was going. She just leads him, like leave you here, and then he was like where I am blind? I do want to point out though, that speaking I mean animals, she does have a cat, and that cat most likely has eight nipples. This has been additor, subtracted, you know, only so full of whimsy that she might have just an extra nipple. She may have just amputated because she just made a

necklace of cat nipple and sold it on. Yeah, she you know, I'm only it's just like if someone breathed life into Etsy dot com. There she is. She is

et dot com. So I think he might be able to write off the fact that so much of her motivation and her decisions and actions are based around like romantic pursuits, either for herself or helping other people, because again, like this is sort of a fairy tale, so it's going to be this like, oh, a romantic narrative with all of these romantic subplots and stuff like that, but like, I don't know, there's just it's also it doesn't have to be exclusively that, because there's so many other characters

and so many other either like fully fledged subplots or just sort of like story beats that relate to whatever character. It could be her helping a fellow woman take her driver's license tests, Like why is it always like, oh, I have to help set you up with a man in or I have to do It's always just it's so focused on either helping men or helping women get men. And if you can conceive of a suicidal fish, you can probably come up with problems that are development. Yeah, exactly.

She has a great yardstick. She has a vivid imagination, Like you would think that she'd be able to like transcend just helping people find a boyfriend, right. Can we talk about how especially with this story where she is trying to get Nino and her to cross paths, but not really because she keeps chickening out, but all the measures that she goes through to orchestrate this is so she like gets him to come to this park thing.

She calls a pay phone. He gets on the phone and she's like, follow the blue arrows, and then he runs and follows the arrows. I swear to God score the scene differently, and it's fucking score crazy. It's like hate. She's gonna kill him. She's wearing sunglasses. She's gonna kill him. It's not good. Like it's just it's bad. Put that on top. So he follows the arrows and then he comes up to this man who is dressed as a

statue pointing at something. So she apparently paid a person like a street performer to wait there waits in this economy, I guess maybe there's a little bit postling boom. It was a child too, Like a child is less terrifying to you to talk to than this guy. Then she also pays a kid to be like hey, make sure

you look at what the guy's pointing at. So she pays someone to dress up as a statue and then point at some binoculars, and then she apparently also pays a kid to tell him where to look in case she's an idiot, which she is, so then he runs up and he looks through the binoculars, and then he sees her returning his book. Then she figures out who this mystery person is who keeps appearing in his photo album.

Turns out he's a repairman for these photo booths. So she also want rather than just like meeting Nino and saying like, hey, um, let's go for a drink, and then on their day they say, hey, you know that person that was like in all of your photos, that bald guy. I actually figured out who he was. Um,

it's just the repairman. Instead of doing that, which would have been so much easier, she orchestrates a whole other thing where she deliberately breaks a photo booth and then tells him where to go so that he can so that a lot I will say, I just made some connections to something that I recently did in my personal life that could be perhaps trades back to no, because

you already know and it's really embarrassing. Okay, But like all I had to say, if we are to look at Emily as a movie that is directed at primarily young women women, which I don't think it's unreasonable to say, I think that that's the probably assumed who the movie stuck with the most for sure, especially if it's like shy young women. This is not a responsible blueprint to

present young women with. Uh, in terms of just like you gotta do like it looks, you know, it's visually interesting, shout out to the accordions, but the yeah, like saying like, if you're a young woman who's uncomfortable approaching romantic partners, that you should instead of gaslight them half to death, destroying your own personal life in the process, and that will achieve you a free ride on a moped like that patently untrue, And and watching it unfold was it's

it's interesting because it is you know, that romantic subplot is not subtle, but the way it unfolds is so like there's so many red flags that we just blaze past them. And because we love Emily and we love Bangs uh, and so yeah, there are moments where I'm like, we should the movie, you should be passing a little bit of judgment on her right now, but it's ned's never gonna happen. And again, I think you can chalk this up to it being so whimsical and fairytale like

that you can't really take it that seriously. It's you know, I think you're supposed to just walk away from this being like, oh, what a fun fairytale like story. But for young women who are watching this, who might not make that connection because they're fourteen year old brains haven't fully developed. They're gonna be like, wow, look how oh my god love, and you're just supposed to like do all these grand gestures and then a boy will like me.

And one, it's extremely heteronormative. Every relationship in this movie is is always so extremely white movie. There's one okay, there's one point where a lesbian hits on Emily and she is terrified. Oh yeah yeah, And it's not even that like she's being friendly. It's not like I feel like, yeah, I feel like that. The way that that scene is like filmed and like continually cutting back to a horrified Audrey tend to like, yeah, because that is a pretty

innocuous interaction that could be interpreted as friendliness. But the way, yeah, the way it's filmed is like, yeah, she's a gay person in France and like, yeah, obviously idiot. Well then so like, but I feel like this movie depicts Paris the way that a lot of movies depict in New York City, and it's like, oh, only white people here, even though Paris is a very diverse city. Yes, so

it's craze. Like I just remember that scene in the beginning where the voiceover the narration is like Emily likes to amuse herself with silly questions like oh, I wonder how many people are having orgasms right now? And then it's like all these quick cuts of all the people couples having sex. Yeah, I love a lot of ages and body types, but all straight white couples, yes, And I was just like, wow, so much diversity and Emily. But the the use of narration in this movie quick,

because it's a lot of it bothers me. I think that a very simple choice that could have been made. Give us a female narrator. Why did the narrator of this movie who talk about lazy writing, but like, why why was it a man? Like, why is there a man talking over half of this movie that is a woman's story, because that makes it seem like it's coming from a male perspective, even though the main character of

the story is a woman. That really bothered me on this view because I forgot how much of it there is is And again it's like a weird thing that I'm like, did this At what point did this movie change hands in terms of who wrote it? Because the top half of this movie is so heavy in voiceover narration, especially like the first half hour where there's not even

a lot of dialogue. There's like a set up through the voiceover and then like two lines of dialogue to punctuate the scene, and then we're onto the next thing,

but then it sort of goes away. I don't think that's that unusual though, for any movie to have in the beginning of the movie, when they're all the exposition is basically happening, for there to be a lot of narration, and then for that too, I agree, I agree, But the thing that it was, I felt like it was too much, especially because a lot of the exposition were

given at the beginning of the movie. Doesn't really have a lot of bearing on the rest of the movie, like, yeah, the first time minutes about her dad's touching of her or the lack thereof which they really drill into you. And then but why you know, but yeah, really simple choice that could have been made. Give us a female narrator would have made more sense. Yeah, the first thirty minutes of this movie is kind of like a series of Okay Cupid profiles. It's just like you're just like,

what questions were you asking it? Okay does ask those questions? They never fu with okay Cupid. It was a big okay Cupid head. There is a question on okay Cupid that is is would you be okay with making dolphin noises for your partner? Which, like, IM get any more specifics? Yeah, I mean the person who wrote that question has a dolphin noise thing, and that's fine, but that's very specifically.

That's just way too specific. I would do it in public, but I wouldn't do it in a well, no one asked me, But no one's ever asked me that question. But if that were to come up, like I'll make a dolphin noise and if we're at a Walmart, Well back to a point I was trying to make it never got there a while ago. I'm sorry, it's quite all right. Oh my god, I probably distracted myself. Um,

you're all under arrest now, my god. But I was saying, like, you can chalk this up to this movie being a fairy tale, so like the depiction of romantic love isn't

going to be very realistic. But the fact that, like you see these two characters fall in love without even ever knowing each other's actually like very reminiscent of snow White our recent episode on that movie where snow White decides she likes Prince Charming even though their only interaction had been him scaring her and her running away and then singing right and then well like song I have but one song, and then but then he also mysteriously

loves her, even though again they've never interacted hot. So I just think it's irresponsible to keep making romantic stories that are reminiscent of these fairy tales that depict romantic love so horribly and like so unrealistically. It's like, why do we keep doing this? Granted this was seventeen years ago that this movie came out, but yeah, um, and ultimately.

I mean, something that does bug me about this movie is that after all this where On only does grow as a character outside of her romantic self, where she does like learn to connect with people in a way she hadn't before. She gets a little bit more confident in herself, she's a little bit less shy, she you know, has more like she does come into her own to

an extent. But then it just becomes like and because she did all that, she has a boyfriend now and making that seem like the end game of like working on yourself is like fuck, like right where the truth is the reward is you have to just keep doing that forever. You have to work on yourself, and then one day there's no more work to be done because

you've passed away. I think you can look at it like that, and you can also look at it like her pursuit of a man is what fixed her, Like she she didn't bother to do any of this stuff until she decided, oh, I have to try to meet this man, and that's what is making me a whole

complete person exactly exactly. And then she's trying to do that for other people to to various results, even though they did not ask for her and did not want to end it ends up fucking with them, like poor, Who knows when Georgette is going to be able to trust again. Honestly, I bet she's not on okay Cupid right now. She deleted her profile. She's already a hypochondry. Like he threw a very nervous person into a toxic situation,

knowingly not smart, not good. Uh. There's that exchange between Georgette and the news stand lady where the news stand lady says a woman without love whil it's like a flower without sun. I was like, oh god, I'm I feel ill feminist icon newstand lady. I just nodded so vigorously my head. That was just I don't And that was like like a number of topics in this movie. I'm like, where does the movie actually fall on that? It is unclear because for some characters it seems like,

oh fuck that. But then with Emily, you know, her improvement is love, and so dudes in Emily's life seemed to imply that at some point it will be quote unquote too late for her. Chill. She's twenty three. Yeah, Once they said, through some sort of expedition that she's twenty three. I was like, oh, where are we wearing? What's what's wrong? Bitch? On thirty one? There Caitlin's do catchphrase bit. I wanted to explore I hinted at this earlier, but why this movie might have been able to cross

over into American audiences whereas most foreign films don't. I was like trying to remember what I learned about French cinema, and I don't remember a lot, so apologies, and I

should have researched this more. What I do remember is the main difference between a lot of American cinema and a lot of foreign cinema in general, is that American cinema is like very structured and formulaic, whereas a lot of French and then just other cinema from other countries that are not the US, those narratives, I think tend to be not quite so structured and not quite so like rigidly formulaic. So I think one of the reasons

that this movie was able to cross over. And then it does resemble sort of like the love story fairy tales and like the whimsical romance that American audiences love. But again, I wish I had remembered more or read more about it. So if you are a condosseur of French cinema, feel free to tweet at us and let me know what I'm sucking up about it. But yeah, I just thought that was interesting that this is one of the few non English speaking movies that crossed over. Yeah,

and it was a big hit. It had a ten million dollar budget, grossed hundreds seven me four point two, big old hit. So it wasn't a hit when it came out. I think that perhaps uh and and I truly know very little about international cinema. I'm not even go in a hazard, I guess. But it was associated with a company called Mila Max that I'm sure was a feminist icon Mirramax femtassa on Harvey Weinstein and fantasy

on Bob Weinstein, you know, the whole bit. But I think that that association and that this was like peak Mirramax, like Chicago too. Thou two is about to come out, baby that ship, so uh so I think that there was probably some sort of push. But in terms of narrative, yeah, I mean American people respond to unrealistic love stories all the time, all the time, and also I think that there is like, uh Francophile thing that factors into like it's a it's a weird love hate relationship where people

my dad says Starbucks is French. But also I was obsessed with Emily when I was a teenager personally because France, because France. There's a there's a really great comedian in New York named Ruby mccollist who has this great bit about how obsessed teenage girls are with France because of the romance that it implies, and like you know, like the looping lid and the whole bit where I know girls who dropped out of Spanish class and took French

because of this movie. Yeah like this, I mean, I feel like French culture plus American teenage girls equals wet moisture. That's what it boils down. Aristotle is gonna Killby's upset. Can I just say that I wish that the insiding incident instead of Princess Dies Death. I wish it had been Emily seeing on the television a trailer for Titanic, because that was that's what made her drop the thing,

and that's how she found the box. I think Princess Dies Death was one of the first memories I ever like clearly remember my mom weeping, yeah when that happened, and my brother being there and a very tiny baby, and he was probably weeping too because he was a baby, not because he was a big fan of Princess. But I'm interested in and I have truly no context. I tried to do some research on what the motivation was

because this movie came out No. One. But it's set in like the two weeks, and they give you the dates, even like they repeating that they're repeating dates, and I am not sure, like the way they talk about Princess Die. There's one point where bird Bones gets piste off at Lucienne and goes Princess d Princess Deep, and I'm just like, why is he piste off about Princess Die? And like does it have to do with like the death of

an icon? The death of a beautiful woman? I feel like is referenced at one point where the news standlady says something about like, oh, isn't it so sad she was so beautiful and beautiful and then normally is like, oh, what it would have been okay if she was old and ugly? And then the new Standlady turns out it's not a feminist icon because she's like, yeah, yeah, look at mother Teresa, Like, is if like it? She looks because she was old, right, she old, and she looks

like there is what she's saying. Yeah, I say, Mother Teresa hot. Anyways, Yeah, that was That was something that I totally forgot was a part of the narrative. But it does. It comes up over and over. It is the inciting incident of the movie to an extent, and I couldn't exactly put my finger on why. I'd be

curious to know what the answer that is. Impair that with like this artificial like clock that some people are putting on Emily Like, yeah, it's I wonder if it's something to do with that, And I don't know where. It's like, oh, if you don't do something now with your life, you might die in a car crash when you're young. Yeah is that? Like I don't know. I just like what they do. But also it's like, well you better find a guy now when and that worked

out well for Princess Die. I don't know, it's it's kind of all over the place. Now I have to go home and watch a twelve hour documentary about Princess Die Again done before I'll do it again. She's an icon whatever great beanie baby loved the memorial Iconic Beanie Baby. If only all of our lives could be boiled down into one iconic beanie baby. I'm going to start designing my memorial beanie baby. Now. Mine would be Paddington to

the Beanie Baby bear perfect. I don't even know. Mine is just going to be a bean bag with a little sad face and sharpiet. They remember those stuffed animals that like, um, they're so big in the nineties. You you open them up and there's a bunch of little ones inside, So you're like performing a c section on these stuffed animals? Am I making this up? I swear to god? I remember, I don't remember expand the smell Crow.

What kind of animals was it? Like different dogs and like unicorns, and you'd open them up and they're a bunch of little ones inside. I said they were giving bird. I guess, I don't know. I can really into a couple of years ago, there were these these free app games that I found just because I was like trolling the app store, and they were like all these offbrand app games where you can give a C section to,

like the characters in Frozen. There's some of the wild I wonder if they're still online, because they were straight up you were giving like what appeared to be a pretty realistic C section where you would sedate Princess Elsa. She's extremely pregnant. It's crazy. You can give a C section to the snow man and a human white baby boy comes out no matter what you do. Every you give this no man a C section. He's pregnant with

a Caucasian man. It's the man the way we I'm sorry, that's my memorial stuffed animal, though for sure, I want my memorials to be an app where you could give me but it looks very realist. If it turns out this isn't not a memory and just something psychologically terrible about me, no, I believe you. I swear everyone. If anyone's still playing the Frozen C Section games at me on Twitter. I forget the name of it. I'm afraid of what will happen if I search Frozen C Section online,

so I'm not going to do that. But if you remember the name of the game, I'm pretty sure it was free I'm pretty sure that it was like one of those apps where you could tell they had like photoshopped a lot of like it looked too real. It looked too and the baby comes out, baby covered in goop. And then and then you gotta put a crown on it because it's royalty. Because I checked out as soon as you said frozen c section because that just sounds like the aisle at the grocery store, where like the

frozen seafood is. This is gonna derail my fucking day. I have I have things I have to do, and now I just started playing the frozen c section game again. All right, Well, let's get back on track and Emily, is there any final thoughts anyone has about the movie? As far as Emily as a character and her character development, I think it's better than a lot of movies we see because we at least have a very clear understanding

of what her personality is like. We know a lot of her corks, we know a lot of her backstory. We see her and her personality having an effect on this story and having an effect on the decisions she makes and how she approaches things. Um, A lot of movies don't bother to develop their female characters enough for we would see stuff like that. So I actually I think her character development is better than a lot of

movies we've seen. But because the bar is so low, that doesn't necessarily mean that the character development is superb, right, But I think and it's and maybe this is like it has to do with it not being cut and dry, kind of boring American movie, that it is like what we that we do see changes in Emily. We don't see her go from flawed to unflawed, which for a story about twenty three year old woman, makes sense. Like at the end, she's not gonna be like I've figured

it out, I'm good. So in that way, it's like, okay, cool. But but yeah, the way that the story, the place they leave us with self improvement equals boyfriend, eventually it just is like not good. Uh. We hinted that the movie does pass the backdult test. She does have a lot of conversations with the other female characters like Susan and Jit and Gina. The first the first time I noticed it passing was with her mom. Oh yes, because

she's teaching her some grammar lessons and stuff like that. Yes, a lot of the conversations are about men or men get mentioned in them. But because of our version of the test where just has to be a two line exchange between two women and a man is not mentioned, there are several of those. Tons of the conversations in this movie between women, Oh man will get mentioned, or the whole conversation is about a man. So it does not necessarily pass super handily if you're comparing conversations about

men to not. It was more isolated incident than I would have thought. Yes, especially the movie with so many women in it. At one point that Gina and Georgiette leaning to have a conversation and Joseph speaks into his tape recorder blatant female conspiracy, that was just like the perfect en cap is right, Joseph. I mean, the Joseph plotline for me is by far the worst part of this movie. Yeah. God, I just hate especially when movies

are directed at teenage girls. I just feel like uber sensitive to like, oh, you're just telling them all the wrong things here, and it takes too long for the movie. The past judgment on it bugs me. Yeah, I think also the reason one of the reasons the movie doesn't pass the test better is that we already touched on this, but like she has female acquaintances and colleagues, but no

real female friendships that we see. All of her kind of close friendships are either with the guy with brittle bones, her pal Lucien at the market, her dad, Like all of the more meaningful relationships she has are all with men. So she's a guy gal. She's a guys gale. So when she is talking to women, it's usually because she's tricking them into thinking a random creep at the coffee shop that they work at likes her. So that's frustrating. So Emily holds up better than I would have thought.

I definitely think she could have benefited from a female friend. I don't know exactly why we had to kill her mom other than that's a funny, like the jokey way that they kill her off. But it's like, Okay, that's such huge consequences on the story that it's like that can't just be like a random decision that's made and it never really comes up again. Yeah, that doesn't pay, Like that's never referenced after it just it just becomes like, well, that's why there's no mom, and that's and her dad

is probably more introverted than he was before. Um shall we rank, let's rank. Let's right. Um, we've got our nipple scales your to five nipples. Based on its portrayal of women, I'm gonna land somewhere around a two or two and a half. Because it's a fairy tale. I think that you could use that to excuse a lot of the things that happen and a lot of the choices that are made, such as the super unrealistic portrayal

of romantic relationships. But I'm tired of using that as an excuse because it turns out fairy tales don't treat women well, and fairy tales do not like prepare you for a healthy life. Right. Remember that Disney Princess roast we did where we realized both of our characters are just horrible things happen to them, and they have no

We have no personality to build up. There's nothing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Because well because you were so and I was Cinderella, and we were both at an extreme disadvantage we had we had the oldest movies, so we had no personality. No, we looked great though, Oh of course, that's what's important. I'm sorry, it's it's all these fairy tales I took in as a trial, right, So there's that. But she does have she has agency, although she goes to very

extreme lengths to get what she wants. We didn't touch on this that much, but I do want to just acknowledge that I feel like mental illness is treated in a very weird way in this movie, to the to the point where I don't I wouldn't even know how to approach that discussion because it's not spoken about at all.

But there's some like indications we see of it that are sort of either dismissed as quirky or I don't know there it was just like a very uncanny it didn't I think that's why I had such a bad reaction to it. Actually, know that you're saying that, like people are simultaneously fetishizing and chastising Emily's mental illness. Yea, And fucking dudes who would suggest you watch Emily will probably do that like to you. Yeah, Yeah, that's I think that's exactly why it's not really Emily that I

have a problem with. It's same way like a manic pixie dream girl character. Fine, but that reflects on so much exactly. Yeah, the people who are like drawn to

and exploit Like, yeah, it's not. That's why it becomes the responsibility of filmmakers and storytellers that if you do want to tell a story about a character like that, you have to frame them in a way that like, then you don't have these fucking idiots who are watching this being like, oh I think you would look watching because you like, is there responsibility to like responsibly frame characters and frame mental illness and things like that so

that the viewer gets the right message right. And it is like when I got when a guy does say, oh you'd love Emily, they're making a specific comment about how they view you, and it is not actually very complimented. So as someone who has received a similar like oh you probably would love that, I was like, um, fuck off,

my favorite movie is Doubt You Can. So, yeah, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna go with a two nipple rating because even though she her character development is decent, all of her motivations and all of her friendships and pretty much her entire world is centered around male characters, and she is like interest it in self improvement or maybe it's not even sure if she is or not. That's what ends up happening, but it's hard to say

if that's an actual goal of hers. But that happens because a man helps her get there, and then the reward of her like fixing herself a little bit, is a man. So I think not watching it through the Bechtel cast lens, I think the movie does hold up for a movie that came out in two thousand one better than we expected, but when we are looking at it through this lens, it's not great. So that's why it's a two nipples from me. I'm going to give

my nipples. One goes to the cat, whose name we never find out, so if she bigs to the cat, it cannot pass the Bechtel test uh. And then the other nipple, I'm gonna give it to Gina, Emily's colleague in the cafe, because I think she was robbed a bit by the narrative. More could have happened with her she had. There's potential for that to be a better situation,

better character, better storyline, what have you. I guess I'll go to as well, but we always go at the same But it's but two does sound right for this, which is always on the same page, which is so in love, which is the reward we got for working on our side. But yeah, I I'd give it to as well because it's like with Emily, we do like you're saying, she does make progress as a person. That is nice to see. The progress is a result of her own choices. For the most party, she does have

a lot of agency. I just think that this movie is kind of harmful in that it can be used as a blueprint. First, I'm not so healthy interpersonal behaviors for young people. As a young person who did like ape this behavior, Yeah, I don't like it. I don't like the way that it treats mental illness. I don't like the way it treats Gina. I'm going to give one of my nippies to Lucien because I really love him, and I'm going to give my other nippy to Prison's

die friends in Paradise. Two nipples great, I'm gonna bisect a nipple right in half and give it two and a half nipples. Yeah, I'm giving a one nipple too. I think Gina to she she deserves better. She does. People are endorsing her being stalked, which is just someone in the comedy community not fun to watch. And then there's that and then Eva cool definitely giving her a nipple, and half nipple goes to Emily. Well, there you go, Gang,

we did it. We did France, the backt Cost Conquerors France. Hannah, thank you so much for being here, Thank you for having me. Where can people follow you online? What would you like to plug? I would like to plug a book I wrote with Alex Fere who loves Emily X. But it's called mom Presents. I think these guys are hot stuff and it's like kind of a cross between um like a Christmas letter from a mom to her daughter and Maxim magazine, or like a playgirl. It's so funny.

It was really fun to write. The reason we wrote is because we were walking from a target and we saw a guy who was just buying tissues and energy drinks, and so we write about this guy and then it just became a series of profiles of weird dudes. And you can follow me on Twitter at Hannah Michael's which is spelled h A n A m I c h E l S. I'm on Google Herble. But good luck. Well, we'll help people find you. Don't we'll help people find you, and then they can show up at the cafe every

single day with their tape or corner. Hey. Hey. You can follow the Batchel Cast on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can go to our website back toelcast dot com. You can tweet at us, you can email us. You can buy our mer ur. You can subscribe to our Patreon, which is five dollars a month and it gets you two extra bonus episodes that no one else can get unless you're a matron.

And you can ignore the harmful messages that movies like Emily send out that you're just going to fall in love with someone who you've never actually met or spoken with, but because you're both a little whimsical, you're actually destined to be together. Instead, I say you should become a woman in STEMP by downloading the c section out and you're basically assert and you're halfway there. Uh well, thanks for being here, Hannah. I have a few surgery instinct's

o'clock and tonight, but thanks for listening. Gang