Seduction and failing at it

Among things in my head this morning are the movie I watched last night: Charlotte Sometimes, this book that my friend Jason was reading that I found conceptually interesting enough to pursue despite its plodding, repetitive style and assertion that we’re all manipulative bastards and should embrace that notion as an aspect of selfhood: The Art of Seduction, and another little Japanese novel that I read ages ago and then re-read when I found a copy at Bookman's in Tucson a couple of years ago: NP(by Banana Yoshimoto). So the movie is sort of underwritten in the way that is trying to make the audience do some of the work to answer all the questions it poses but winds up forcing us to fill in some gaping holes and leaves the characters feeling a little underdeveloped. It could be inexperience of the writer/director (Eric Byler) or the fact that he picked at least one (ok, fine, one really hot) soft-porn actor (Matt Westmore) who is really there b/c he's comfortable faking fucking on camera and not so much with the conversation. Still, he is pretty!
But moving past problems of general execution, each of the two women -- ostensibly sisters -- seem pretty easy to type by Robert Greene's (the author of the Seduction book) indicators. Charlotte/Darcy is a Siren and Lori is a Natural. So, ok, Sirens are overtly feminine, appear sexual even when they're not thinking about sex, are somehow both dangerous and vulnerable at the same time. For example, in one scene, all four characters are on the roof of the house and Charlotte chooses to sit straddling the top of the wall that delineates the edge of the roof. It's an unmistakably sexual posture, even though the conversation doesn't pertain, and Lori expresses some concern that Charlotte might fall off -- and there we see the constant underlying threat that Charlotte's "emotional issues" (of which we never learn completely) could drive her to such abandon that she could throw herself off the roof any minute now. It's a very Siren-y sort of moment. OK, so then, Naturals are seducers that attract us in by their undisguised, child-like enthusiasm. They are guileless and adorable and charm us with their ease of existence. Lori's outfits consist of several variations of a hot pink top and matching lipstick. Her bedroom is also painted hot pink. This is not exactly the dignified and enigmatic black that Charlotte wears. Lori wins over Michael, the target of both seductresses, by nuzzling up to him, attempting to sneak up on him, flirtatiously tickling him -- basically, being cute and playing silly games to get his attention.
Both women, however, eventually fall into Anti-Seducer patterns of self-involvement: Charlotte's inner conflicts between her need for detachment and the loneliness that results leave her unable to act upon her desire for Michael when he finally sees thru her various and assorted veneers (she'd been pretending to NOT be Lori's sister). Her insecurities about and discomfort with her ability to be loved as a real person (at one point she says, “Men don’t really want to be with me; they just think they do”) i.e., more than an image of a sexy women, someone who is merely gazed upon, goad her into refusing to have sex with him - well, that and the fact the he phrases his proposal in such a way ("I want to fuck you so hard you scream") that he calls into question how authentic her vulnerability really is. Instead she decides to have sex with Justin (the porn star) who is Lori's boyfriend b/c she knows he's just not smart enough to really see through her seductive ploys. In fact, she even confesses her loneliness to him-- as though she doesn't give him credit for picking up on it already (he hadn't).
Lori, on the other hand, drops her playful cuteness in favor of needy, tell-me-you-love-me sorts of ploys with Justin. He quickly tires of her need for external approbation and, obviously, starts sniffing after Charlotte, who, though complicated and messy, at least behaves like an adult. I find it interesting that the same things that make these women sexy -- and they are -- are the things that wind up making them annoying. Now, the fact the Lori and Michael end up together, I think, is really a major flaw in the movie. They don't belong together -- Lori attempts to adopt some of Charlotte's mystery but Michael remains the most perceptive, if brooding and unavailable, character in the movie. Won't he eventually see through her too? Won't her neediness wind up being left unsatisfied, un-reassured? Oh, the things screenwriters do to inflict resolution upon us, right?
So, anyway, what does this have to do with NP? NP is a story in which there's an awfully casual treatment of an incestuous relationship. The basic story is that a famous writer dies while in the middle of an affair with another mysterious Siren-y sort of woman and then the writer's son begins his own affair with the same woman -- though they all three are at least vaguely aware that this woman was the writer's illegitimate daughter from another relationship. So, is this a thing now? This trading of lovers around within a very tight gene pool? I mean, the presentation of the information in NP is very blasé. Almost like it's supposed to be humorous -- and we're certainly not meant to be shocked by it. Nor are there any serious consequences (that aren't self-inflicted) that visit the characters. And here, in Charlotte Sometimes, we expect the sisters to trade lovers. While there are no overt incestuous moments, the sisters' sexualities certainly play off each other. There is a scene in which the 4 characters play tennis, girls against boys, and clearly, the power of the two women as a unified sexy force overwhelms the two men. Yeah, the girls win. Is there, perhaps, a system of inadvertent sex-tinged relations that colors many family interactions? Hmmm.... this seems a dangerous and fascinating train of thought that I may have to think about further-- The House of Yes, obviously, comes to mind -- but even hopelessly commercial drivel like The Family Stone in which one woman leaves one brother for another while her sister hooks up with the original brother. Oh, is this biblical, perhaps? I mean, when your husband dies, marry his brother so as to not disseminate the family properties? Is that to great a leap?
Well, anyway, on a side note, Charlotte Sometimes is also interesting because of its most unselfconscious manner of presenting its own racial identity. 3 of the 4 characters are of indeterminate Asian decent (one Japanese, two Chinese actors) and the other, we are eventually told, has an Asian mother. Because their racial identity is visually apparent, the filmmaker, thankfully, did not feel the need to offer much exposition on the Asian-American experience but, as a result, the one moment that the topic enters their conversation is incredibly incisive and blade-like. Over a casual lunch in a restaurant, Charlotte asks Justin, "Which part of you is Asian?" and even as Lori chides her for her intrusive question, she asks "So, was it your mother, then, that taught you to use chopsticks?" And Justin's answer gives one of the most brilliant moments in the movie: he says, "I don't actually remember learning." It's as though he feels so comfortable in his racial identity -- as does the movie in general -- that he is able to cleanly and effectively put nosy, rabble-rousing Charlotte in her place by handily pointing out how irrelevant and challenging-only-for-the-sake-of-challenging her questions are. It's a really well-done, subtle moment in a movie that isn't, overall, very subtly acted. All-in-all, not a perfect movie by any stretch, but somehow one that seemed to resonate with some other stuff I'm thinking about right now.
So, has anyone else ever seen this movie? If my dad didn’t buy every weird DVD that comes out, I never would have heard of it.