FILM.
CHRISTINE
1987 | DIRECTED BY ALAN CLARKE
Fun to watch with visual friends, lots of noticing: the can-opened coke, polygonal paper towel roll, analog microwave, pointy sink knobs, plush upholstery, bulky hearths… 1980s interior design.
Outside there’s Clarke’s signature Steadicam tracking, but for as wide and dynamic as the shots are in Rita, Sue, and Bob, Too, here they’re tight and dreary around Christine as she makes her rounds from one schoolkid dope fiend to the next.
I get the feeling Clarke likes to feed you material you don’t know what to do with. Like the incongruous poet’s corner Keats and Coleridge Way that Christine keeps rounding on her route. Or Christine herself, a dough-faced schoolgirl heroine dealer who looks like she just escaped from Whoville.
We were debating whether Christine’s demeanor implies depression or numbness or contentment — her flat, ambiguous, even contradictory affect makes her deportment a Rorschach test for the viewer.
For instance in the last scene I swear I saw 1/100th of a smile twitch out of the side of her mouth during the the marmalade toast TV segment but my friends didn’t see it.
Eerie little document.