the squid and the whale. if you don't want to know about the movie, then don't read this post. there's also a bit at the end, don't read that too.

if you've ever been touched by divorce, i recommend this movie, the squid and the whale. it's harrowing in parts but deftly done. and it has the added bonus of a baldwin, thrown in, along with laura linney, jeff daniels and the rest.

my parents divorced when i was about 14. there's a scene in the movie when the parents sit the kids down to tell them, and the anguish on the younger brother's face made me remember my own situation. my parents sat me and my brother down on the couch to tell us. i can recall my inner voice screaming, no, no, no. i knew it was coming, i knew what they were about to say. the younger brother in the movie also knew, and his face screws up with tears, even before they speak the words.

i remember looking out our loungeroom window to where my younger sister was doing cartwheels on the grass. i remember thinking she's so lucky, she doesn't know yet.

then a generation later, a lifetime later, princess and ali and me are sitting on my bed. we are telling her that we are going to get divorced. i still feel bad about it. but there was nothing else we could do. it was just too hard and we were just too miserable.

i used to tell people that my parents breaking up was the best thing for all of us. that i couldn't have gotten to know each of my parents as individuals had it not happened. that we would have all been mired in misery had they not split.

now i'm not so sure. i feel damaged by it and everything that followed. what if they could have pushed through that? would things have gotten better? would our family still be intact now?
would i have still gone and married such an Unsuitable Man?

my sister and i saw this film last night. then we went and had a coffee in a place with booths on chapel street.

we talked about my dad and her eyes were red-rimmed. she asked me what i think will happen with him in the future, whether we will all become estranged from him. it's been like a slow-motion event, this growing apart? how can you maintain a relationship, a bonded meaningful relationship, with your father when you don't see him that often, and his wife is not your mother?

too many questions. i like movies that make me think.

the other one we were possibly going to see was a french one with with monica and gerard, which looked like a variation on indecent proposal. in the preview it had monica on gerard's lap, as his wife, as he caressed her breast and asked another man, what is she worth, for you to compensate me for my pain, etc etc, in losing her. this other man is rich and presumably he will pay gerard for his wife, who seems to be a prostitute? and without having seen the movie, i think they are in cahoots to do the man out of his $4mill. but you get to see her breasts side on, as she is lying on her back. they absolutely defy gravity.