Eliana Willis

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    How ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ Sees Power in Two Women in Love

    Céline Sciamma wants you to see that equality is sexy.In her drama “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” we watch as two women in 18th-century France fall in love. The film, getting a wider American release beginning on Valentine’s Day, has been ecstatically reviewed, won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated last month for 10 César awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars.Blissfully absent from the movie are the usual characters queer audiences have come to expect in stories about our lives, like the character who can’t handle being gay, the character who was basically straight anyway, or the character who winds up dead. It’s made us a very generous audience, so unused to seeing ourselves onscreen that we’ll put up with all kinds of nonsense dialogue and dead girlfriends.But what really sets this movie apart is that by looking for equality between its characters, it leaves a trail of delicately subverted expectations. Part of how it does this is by embracing the unique dynamics that are possible when the two people in love are both women.The story begins with an artist named Marianne (Noémie Merlant) being thrown around a tiny boat on her way to an island off the Brittany coast, where she’s been hired to paint an aristocrat, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Héloïse’s suitor, who is from Milan, wants to see her portrait before he marries her, but she is decidedly not interested and has refused to pose. So Marianne is asked to deceive Héloïse, accompanying her on walks to the beach and then painting her from memory in secret.When Héloïse’s mother leaves the island for a few days, she, Marianne and a servant named Sophie get to live in a different world for awhile. The three play cards, read and debate the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. There is space for Marianne and Héloïse to be alone. And for almost the entire movie, there are no men in the frame.Héloïse and Marianne are rendered as two people fiercely drawn to each other. They are also an intellectual match, and though Héloïse never touches a canvas, they become partners in making art, not only the portrait, but also a painting of a woman getting an abortion. That picture is Héloïse’s late-night idea: she’s the one who sets it up, gets Marianne and Sophie out of bed and says, “We’re going to paint.”Sciamma, who wrote and directed the movie, told me: “There’s all this surprise that lies within equality, that’s the new tension. You don’t know what’s going to happen if it’s not about the social hierarchy, gender domination or intellection domination.”Even today, the default power dynamic between two women can be different than it is in straight relationships. However progressive the man or strong the woman, we still live in a world with expectations about who pursues whom, who makes more money, who takes care of the kids. In queer relationships, those assumptions don’t have an obvious place to land.Ellen Lamont, author of the book “The Mating Game: How Gender Still Shapes How We Date,” studied dating practices in San Francisco among straight and L.G.B.T.Q. people. There, in one of the most liberal cities in the country, even highly educated heterosexual women often occupied traditional dating roles: men should be the one to ask for the date and make the follow-up call, she was told, and they should definitely be the ones to propose.Gender roles, of course, are not a monolith, and expectation can be influenced by race, culture and class. There are also plenty of elements — money, age or personality, to name a few — that can result in lopsided power dynamics within queer couples. Nonetheless, the lack of centuries of road maps can be freeing.“There’s definitely room for equality, room for invention,” Sciamma said. “That’s why our stories are erased, because they’re dangerous.”Sciamma wrote the “Portrait” script with Haenel in mind. (The actress was in Sciamma’s first feature, “Water Lilies,” and the two were later in a relationship.) When it came time to cast her lover, Sciamma said she wanted a physical contrast to Haenel — a brunette to her blonde — but she also wanted the “cinematic equality” of casting women who were the same height and age.“I put the two of them in the frame,” Sciamma said of the actresses during the callback process, “and that’s when I said this thing about equality. I said the word out loud for the first time to somebody else, and myself. To acknowledge this secret within the film as something official that we were going to pursue.”When Marianne and Héloïse kiss for the first time, they’re on a beach, their faces wrapped in scarves to protect from the wind, and each pulls the scarf away from her own mouth. It is both the perfect physicality for their egalitarian relationship, and, Sciamma said, a reaction to a cultural debate in France about whether consent takes the passion out of sex. “That’s an image of mutual consent,” she said. “And it’s hot!”Other creators have also toyed with the egalitarian possibilities of lesbian relationships, though perhaps not in such forthright ways. Take HBO’s “Gentleman Jack,” which began airing last year. Inspired by the diaries of a 19th-century English landowner named Anne Lister, the first season followed her and a wealthy woman named Ann Walker as they fall in love and, essentially, get married. Lister, with a top hat and waistcoat above her skirts, presents as very masculine, striding around Halifax managing her family’s estate. Walker, in poofy pink dresses and lace, reads, at least at first, as her opposite.But there are surprises here, too: It is poofy pink Walker who invites Lister to spend the night, says they should kiss and suggests that Lister propose. They don’t stick to the road map either.In the 2015 drama “Carol,” set in the 1950s, Cate Blanchett’s character, Carol, is older and wealthier than her lover, Therese, played by Rooney Mara. Still, their relationship is much more equal than the not-at-all-partnerships they have with men in their lives. Carol’s husband tries to control her using access to their daughter as leverage, and Therese’s boyfriend enjoys the idea of her while seeming inconvenienced by her actual interests and thoughts.Even if their affair is dangerous, “Carol,” unlike so many movies about gay people, depicts it without a lot of angst.“It’s not a narrative about two women meeting and then, ‘Oh what’s happening to us?’ Cate Blanchett is a pickup artist,” Sciamma said. “She sees her, she wants her.”The same is true of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” The women don’t seem surprised by their desires.Sciamma said that when she was showing the script around, she was told that the lesbian relationship should be a source of conflict; even Valeria Golino, who played Héloïse’s mother, suggested that. Sciamma still gets push back, she said, for not showing more of the “taboo of lesbianism.” But she designed this film to be cheap (it cost 4 million euros, she said, or about $4.3 million) so she wouldn’t have to compromise. And she didn’t. Golino, Sciamma said, has since changed her mind.“There’s always this narrative around homosexuality and lesbianism, that it should be guilty,” she said. “Why are we always being told this narrative? I don’t remember having this ‘What’s happening to us?’ moment. I was always aware of what was happening.”And perhaps it’s that, most of all, that makes this movie so exciting for queer audiences: Here we have a movie that is splendid — full stop. But it’s not just about us, it actually gets us.“Each time people say, ‘It’s love, it could be two men, or a man and a woman,’ I’m glad they feel that way, that they could fit into this imaginaire and into this politics of love,” Sciamma said. “But it’s ours. And they’re welcome.” More

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    Renewing the World (or the Theater, at Least)

    BERLIN — When a new play from one of Germany’s leading avant-garde theatermakers sells out a 2,000-seat venue, you know the world’s gone topsy-turvy. Imagine Robert Wilson debuting a show to a full house at Radio City Music Hall!Yet, since October, a huge revue theater in the heart of Berlin, the Friedrichstadt-Palast, has been selling out every night it presents a new work from the acclaimed writer-director René Pollesch. (In 2021, Pollesch will become the artistic director of the high-minded Berlin Volksbühne.) At the cavernous Friedrichstadt-Palast, the show shares the schedule with “Vivid,” an over-the-top, Vegas-style extravaganza that is about as far in tone from serious theater as you can get. This irony clearly hasn’t been lost on Pollesch, whose play seems to refute “Vivid’s” sleek, razzle-dazzle aesthetic at every turn, starting with its mouthful of a title.“Believing in the Possibility of the World’s Complete Renewal” (“Glauben an die Möglichkeit der völligen Erneuerung der Welt”) is a minimalist chamber drama set loose on one of the world’s largest stages. Don’t expect death-defying acrobatics or rousing musical numbers. It’s a mordantly funny monologue about isolation and alienation that fuses personal reminiscences with critiques of capitalism. As its star, Fabian Hinrichs, pontificates about loneliness, 27 dancers from the “Vivid” cast follow him around the stage like dutiful children, imitating Hinrichs’s gestures and poses and occasionally breaking into a choreographed number.Wandering the auditorium and stage in a gold bodysuit, the sad, funny figure of Hinrichs, who is billed as co-director, intones his laconic and disjointed soliloquy with consummate theatricality (and often without a microphone). Is this melancholy poetry or tragically chic drivel? Pollesch seems to want it both ways.In addition to the dance troupe, “Believing in the Possibility” also recycles staging elements from “Vivid,” including a gliding futuristic bridge and trippy laser lights. Such allusions seem intended to send up that vacuous blockbuster, whose non-songs and bizarre sets are periodically enlivened by muscular acrobatics and outlandish costumes. (Think second- or third-rate Cirque du Soleil.) At the same time, there’s a note of poignancy to Pollesch’s text and Hinrichs’s delivery: Against the odds, they make you believe in the sincerity of this undertaking.Local critics have gone gaga for “Believing in the Possibility,” and much of the enthusiasm probably is owed to Pollesch’s cult status here. But despite Hinrichs’s blistering performance and Pollesch’s unmistakable prose, the show feels slight, dwarfed less by the Friedrichstadt-Palast’s massive stage than by the all the hype. Inviting a serious avant-garde director to work at such a huge commercial venue is both an act of folly and a publicity stunt, and I wonder how much the show’s success has had to do with its breathless marketing, which promises the event of the century. The show’s initial run has been limited to a dozen performances, but the Friedrichstadt-Palast’s website teases that more may be coming in 2021. Few could have foreseen that Pollesch would ever play the Friedrichstadt-Palast; but I suspect the Friedrichstadt-Palast is also playing him.“Believing in the Possibility of the World’s Complete Renewal” could also serve as the slogan for Stefan Pucher’s production of “King Lear” at the Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich. In this new translation by Thomas Melle, Lear’s ungrateful daughters are radical feminists calling for the dismantling of the patriarchy by any means necessary. Surprisingly, it works.The production shifts the emphasis away from Lear’s madness and focuses on the king’s refusal to stand aside after ceding power to the next, female generation. While he clings to his privileges, his heirs set about dismantling those traditional power structures.Regan and Goneril are usually portrayed as scheming, bloodthirsty villains, but here they are guided by noble ideas. Understanding them as feminist crusaders neither cheapens their struggle nor excuses their wickedness. Melle does not go for moral relativism, and he does not exonerate the daughters for their villainy. Despite Melle’s deep cuts — including to the dramatis personae — the plot is left pretty intact. But there are some unexpected changes, including a much-younger-than-usual Lear (played with abrasive bluster by Thomas Schmauser) and a clever gender-switch for Gloucester (the commanding Wiebke Puls), who chastises the king’s rogue daughters at her peril. Another standout is the charming and chameleonlike Samouil Stoyanov, who does double duty as Kent and the Fool.The unnatural cruelty of children to their parents registers with forceful immediacy in this visually vibrant production. Set loose on Nina Peller’s pop-glam set (a single-story, rotating house topped by a billboard announcing “The End”), nine exciting actors from the Kammerspiele’s permanent company bring the story to contemporary life, fabulously attired in Annabelle Witt’s eclectic costumes.Increasingly, “Lear” feels like the play of the moment on Germany’s stages. While the world seems to go to hell in a handbasket, directors from Hamburg to Stuttgart have turned to Shakespeare’s bleakest tragedy to comment on the broken times in which we live. The Kammerspiele’s absorbing production proves that an old chestnut can be refreshed with clever and sensitive modification.Another contemporary take on a classic currently at the Kammerspiele is far less successful. In “Die Räuberinnen” (“The Robbers”), an all-female deconstruction of Friedrich Schiller’s 1781 play, the director Leonie Böhm reduces the five-act melodrama to a plotless 80 minutes. Schiller’s memorable characters represent Enlightenment values, but Böhm refuses to treat them as avatars of abstract ideals. Instead, they address the audience in confessional monologues that can be painfully personal, or funny, or both.Throughout the brisk performance, the focus remains on the protagonists’ psychological profiles. The direct addresses, developed by Böhm together with her actresses, are lively, and the acting is engaging, but the production meanders despite the energetic performances. These include Julia Riedler’s ultracool Karl, the play’s hero, who leads a band of honorable robbers in the Bohemian forest, and Gro Swantje Kohlhof, who as Karl’s rival, Spiegelberg, ad-libs a lengthy and increasingly manic speech while standing on a seat in the middle of the audience.A massive cumulous cloud dominates the production. Eventually, a storm arrives, dousing the stage in rain for the last 20 minutes. The actresses peel off their clothes and slide around sopping wet wearing next to nothing. Does the rain come to wash away the male-dominated canon of Western culture? There is something both exhilarating and weary about this zany finale. As gleefully anarchic as it is, it feels sloppy and vague. When it comes to renewing the world onstage, more precision and focus is required. Creating a utopia, even a theatrical one, is serious business.Glauben an die Möglichkeit der völligen Erneuerung der Welt. Directed by René Pollesch. Friedrichstadt-Palast, Berlin. Through March 5.König Lear. Directed by Stefan Pucher. Münchner Kammerspiele. Through March 17.Die Räuberinnen. Directed by Leonie Böhm. Münchner Kammerspiele. Through March 31. More

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    Review: In ‘Leopoldstadt,’ Tom Stoppard Reckons With His Jewish Roots

    LONDON — Do you remember? Don’t you remember? Can’t you remember? Why can’t you remember?Variations on those unsettling words — both explicit and unspoken — echo through the wrenching final scene of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which opened Wednesday night at Wyndham’s Theater in London. They are addressed to a mid-20th century visitor to Vienna, a youngish, defensively British man of slipping poise who appears to have forgotten most of his early childhood.But you could also argue that these questions have been posed, in a sustained murmur, from the very beginning of this richly embroidered portrait of Jewish life in Vienna in the early 20th century. They are questions aimed directly at us, the audience and, by extension, at a wider world conveniently prone to historical amnesia.That would include, above all, the man who wrote this play.A tone of instructional reproach is hardly a quality associated with Stoppard, whose six-decade career embraces a host of exuberantly cerebral plays, from “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (1967) to the time-traveling “Arcadia” (1993). But “Leopoldstadt,” which has been polished to a burnished sheen by the director Patrick Marber, holds a singular position in its author’s canon.For starters, Stoppard, 82, has said this will probably be his last play. And, more than anything he has written (including his rueful “The Real Thing”), “Leopoldstadt” feels like an act of personal reckoning for its creator — with who he is and what he comes from. It’s not difficult to see “Leopoldstadt” as one man’s passionate declaration of identity as a Jew.Judaism never figured conspicuously in Stoppard’s earlier work. For much of his life, he never thought of himself as Jewish. Born Tomas Straussler in a small town in Czechoslovakia in 1937, he grew up largely in Britain, taking the name of Stoppard from the Englishman his mother married after his father’s death.As Stoppard writes in program notes for the play, his mother rarely spoke of her own history. It was only when a previously unknown Czech relative made contact with him in the 1990s that he learned about his mother’s family, many of whom had died during the Holocaust.The image of a hand-printed family tree is prominent in “Leopoldstadt,” among the black-and-white projections and photographs that hover evanescently between scenes. For the record, it is not Stoppard’s family that is portrayed in the play, but a prosperous fictional Austrian clan in Vienna.When the play begins, the family is assembled at the comfortably upholstered apartment occupied by the matriarchal Grandma Emilia Merz (Caroline Gruber) and her son, Hermann (Adrian Scarborough), who runs the family textile business. It is Christmas Day, 1899.Yes, that holiday is being celebrated in this Jewish household, a commingling of traditions that finds droll expression when a child mistakenly tops the towering Christmas tree with a Star of David. For Hermann — whose wife, Gretl (Faye Castelow), is Catholic — cultural assimilation is a fait accompli as Austria moves into a new century.Or is it? The group assembled before us may represent a sort of cosmopolitan melting pot, in which conversation touches on the latest play by Schnitzler, the painting of Klimt (for whom Gretl is posing), higher mathematics and the theories of Freud. (This is a Stoppard play.)But as Hermann speaks of his hopes for future social and professional advancement, you sense insecurity pricking at his complacency (an uneasiness that is subtly and expertly conveyed by Scarborough, in the show’s most fully realized portrait).That disquiet assumes dramatic form before the first act ends, when a romantic triangle — or quadrangle, depending on how you look at it (again, this is a Stoppard play) — forces anti-Semitic sentiment into the open. In the second act, with scenes set during the Depression that followed World War I and in 1938, on the eve of Austria’s incorporation into the Third Reich, that sentiment festers into full-blown, terrifying form.Thus we watch the once-resplendent Merz household become increasingly shabby and bare, as what once felt like a familial fortress is transformed into a defenseless sanctuary. (Richard Hudson’s artfully evolving set is lighted in a sepia haze by the masterly Neil Austin, and images of the entire clan, posed as if for posterity, become a heartbreaking motif.) We are introduced to new generations of Merzes (in changing-times costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel), whose political allegiances and cultural tastes vary widely.But being Jewish is no longer a choice for them, not in the age of National Socialism. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of European history will know what to expect when the family freezes at the sound of someone pounding on the door.That does not make watching what follows any easier. In the final scene, in 1955, a man we had earlier met as a boy returns to the now abandoned apartment. Played by Luke Thallon, he is a successful writer of comic literature and, as far as he knows, a proper Englishman. It seems safe to say that he is a surrogate for Stoppard.More than any previous Stoppard play — including the sprawling “Coast of Utopia” trilogy, a 9-hour dive into the Russian Revolution — “Leopoldstadt” is a group portrait, and one of uncommon density. (You will probably feel the need to consult the family tree in the program.) The 40-strong cast is, to a person, very good, and they embody their characters with spiky defining detail.That they threaten to get lost in the play’s panoramic sweep is partly the point here. But it is also hard to avoid the impression that they exist as illustrative figures in an admonitory history lesson. There’s no denying that lesson’s emotional power, nor its frightening relevance in 2020, when anti-Semitic acts and language seem increasingly on the rise.That means that although “Leopoldstadt” is set in the past, it is Stoppard’s most topical play. It is also his most conventional drama by far.A writer who reliably bent time into pretzels in earlier works, Stoppard hews to a fully linear structure here. And while “Leopoldstadt” is replete, to the bursting point, with historical fact and political theory, it is mostly devoid of the intellectual jeux d’esprit that have been its creator’s signature. This may be the Stoppard play for people who don’t normally cotton to Stoppard.It is as if the playwright felt that what he had to say here was too urgent to be filtered through his usual cerebral playfulness. The unreliability of memory, an abiding Stoppardian concern, is briefly flirted with in the final scene.But ultimately, memory isn’t the capricious, fragmenting prism of classic Stoppard. Here, recollection is a laser, a tool to be focused on a past teeming with harsh and essential lessons for the present.It seems fitting that, for once in a Stoppard work, words aren’t what leave the most lasting impression. It is instead the vision of people frozen as if for a photograph, beckoning with poignantly immediate life from a distant time before they dissolve into anonymous darkness. “Leopoldstadt” demands, with gravity and eloquence, that we never let those visions disappear.LeopoldstadtAt Wyndham’s Theater, London; leopoldstadtplay.com. More

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    ‘House Plant’ Review: A Bizarro Breakup and What Comes After

    In retrospect, Max might have stood a better chance had he washed the occasional dish. But on the morning of the day that his world comes undone, he finds nothing in the kitchen to hold his cereal.“All the bowls are dirty,” he tells his girlfriend, June. “Can we share?”“Sure,” she says, companionably, and they both eat out of hers.Before you know it, she’s broken up with him, albeit not in anger. It’s more like a sudden, insistent fit of wistfulness, a yearning to become a different version of herself after almost seven years with him.And in the fever-dream world of Sarah Einspanier’s “House Plant,” June (Emma Ramos) leaps — whoosh! — right into that new life, ditching a meal-kit delivery business in New York to be a TV actress in Los Angeles.The baffled Max (Ugo Chukwu) is left to recover with June’s pushy pal Chloe (Molly Bernard), who decides, against his protestations, that she’s moving in, effective immediately. So what if he never liked her.The heightened, bizarro tone of this comedy and its head-spinning speed of events so strongly recall the style of Will Arbery’s “Plano” that an algorithm would match up their audiences: If you enjoyed that play, you’ll surely get a kick out of this one, directed by Jaki Bradley as part of the Next Door at NYTW series.You’ll like it quite a lot for the first third, anyway. Then it begins to sag, though the occasional sudden shifts into a hospital-drama world (whose amped-up disconnection from reality recalls Paula Vogel’s “The Baltimore Waltz”) jolt things amusingly.Einspanier, whose “Lunch Bunch” clocked in at a slender 60 minutes at Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival last year, goes a half-hour longer here, and it seems like more than that.That’s despite a cast whose caliber makes you feel lucky to see them — particularly the reliably stellar Chukwu, whom I would watch in anything, and Bernard, who possesses the remarkable ability to wink without, seemingly, moving a single other muscle in her face. (Clubbed Thumb and the Play Company are bringing “Lunch Bunch” back in March, and once again Chukwu will be in it.)Max, a composer trying to break into the hold-music market, and Chloe, a video artist whose well-defended heart is in danger of being breached by a musician named Agnes (Deepali Gupta), are as vivid as the creamy citrus green of Meredith Ries’s set.With its leafy title flora sitting mutely throughout in a too-small pot, “House Plant” is about drama and domesticity, stasis and growth, online posturing and real-world pain. It’s about the building of emotional walls and their necessary demolition.Written in what Einspanier labels as three movements, it is also an experiment with sound, including voice-overs (spoken by Gupta, who composed the show’s music) and effects. (The sound design is by John Gasper.)“Do You Have Any Idea How Boring Life Would Be Without Underscoring,” Chloe says to June early on. It’s a statement, not a question, and the script’s emphatic capitalization is exactly how Bernard speaks it.Even with underscoring, though, tedium can descend on a play that’s too diffuse.There are just two moments of undisguised feeling in “House Plant,” and they come almost as bookends — quick, quiet and anchoring. This frenzied play could use more of them.House PlantThrough Feb. 22 at the Fourth Street Theater, 83 East 4th Street, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    in Television

    Lauren Graham’s Week: Background Binges and Books, Books, Books

    Lately, Lauren Graham has been living a song-and-dance routine — belting out Katy Perry anthems and shimmying atop a bar in “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” the musical new NBC series.But when she’s not acting she’s most likely writing, hunched over a computer in pajamas and existing on takeout during “these awful, wonderful kind of crunch times,” she said. A sort-of-sequel to her 2013 novel, “Someday, Someday, Maybe,” is due out next year.Graham wrapped the show in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the end of January before heading home to Los Angeles and her partner, the actor Peter Krause, with Mochi, her rescue puppy. Starting with a cast dinner on Jan. 27 and ending with Sunday puzzles on Feb. 2, she tracked her cultural diary for us. These are her edited notes. KATHRYN SHATTUCKMonday“I liked you better when you didn’t have a dog,” my friend and director Jon Turteltaub says. It’s the last week of production on “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” and a bunch of us are at dinner at Joe Fortes in Vancouver. I’m trying to excuse myself before dessert has arrived, which may seem antisocial, but I think is justified, because what’s a smarter idea than getting a new puppy while in a foreign country during the last week of filming a musical TV show? It’s been over five years since I had a dog, and even longer since I’ve raised a puppy, so I’m doing my research. My last dog was a German shepherd rescue, and this one seems to have some shepherd in her as well, so I’ve returned to the books by the monks of New Skete, “The Art of Raising a Puppy” and “Let Dogs Be Dogs.” The monks specialize in shepherds and their training advice is somehow practical, groovy and spiritual all at once.TuesdayI’m working with the writer Jennifer E. Smith on an adaptation of her most recent YA novel, “Field Notes on Love.” Jen was the editor of all three of my books at Random House and became a close friend and now a collaborator. There’s a TV in every room in my Vancouver corporate housing, so I’m allowing myself the soothing sounds of “Grand Designs” in the background. There’s a pleasing amount of British television available here, while at home I get my fix through the apps Acorn and BritBox. I like the abundance of low-stakes dramas, Christmas programming and game shows the Brits have to offer. There’s one game show called “The Chase” that’s a trivia competition with pretty challenging questions, and another called “Tipping Point” that’s just a giant version of those coin pusher arcade games that’s unbelievably slow and not that challenging. I love both. And don’t get me started on the baking shows …WednesdaySpeaking of baking, I love cookbooks just as reading material, not even when I’m using them for their intended purpose. There’s a sort of relish I make that I found in the “Momofuku” cookbook that’s basically diced ginger and chopped green onion and a little sherry vinegar and soy sauce, and we put it on everything. I use the“Donabe” cookbook by Naoko Takei Moore a lot too. Donabes are clay pots from Iga, Japan, and they’re great for cooking sushi rice and soups, and there are ones for grilling and steaming too. There’s a store called Toiro that carries them, and their website is full of great recipes and unique kitchen tools and Japanese ingredients. My mom was a missionary kid who grew up in Japan, which is one reason I have such an affinity for the country and its food. Chrissy Teigen’s cookbooks are also a fun read, and the last time I made her mac and cheese the boys in my house devoured it in about 10 seconds.ThursdayMy cast mate Skylar Astin and I go to SoulCycle and then to a sushi restaurant called Minami, where they make a type of sushi called oshizushi, which I’d never seen until I came here. It’s an Osaka-based style of nigiri that’s pressed in a mold and then seared on top. “It’s like cake,” Jane Levy once said. We’ve all eaten gallons of it while in town.Tomorrow is our last day on set, and Skylar wants a recommendation for something to watch while he packs. I recommend Netflix’s “The Circle,” which I background-binged when I was on a deadline and had run out of “Grand Designs” episodes. Background binge is different than actual binge in that you can leave the house to go to the store or whatever for anywhere from 1 to 17 hours, and when you get home, you’re still pretty much up to speed. This year I think my favorite non-background binge shows in addition to “Cheer” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” was Netflix’s “Unbelievable.” It was directed so beautifully, and the cast including Toni Collette and Kaitlyn Dever was incredible. I met Merritt Wever at the Golden Globes this year and I gripped her hand while gushing at her for way too long.Being on a musical TV show has reminded me of some of the musical theater that inspired me when I was starting out performing in the chorus of various summer stock productions. I recently made a playlist for my friends’ daughter who was newly interested that included some of the classics: it had selections from Barbra Streisand’s “Funny Girl,” Patti LuPone’s “Anything Goes,” Bernadette Peters in “Sunday in the Park With George,” Ethel Merman in “Gypsy,” and a few modern selections too: Ben Platt in “Dear Evan Hansen,” Sutton Foster in “Violet.” I try to see everything when I’m in New York. The last show I saw was “Jagged Little Pill,” which had a great cast, especially Kathryn Gallagher. I’ve been working with her dad, Peter, on “Zoey,” and when I went backstage at the Broadhurst, Kathryn showed me a wall of playbills from previous productions there that included her dad in a production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in the ’80s. Amazing! I just finished a fascinating book about the evolution of Broadway and its theaters called “Razzle Dazzle” by Michael Riedel. Like so much of New York history, real estate was everything.SaturdayAfter a late night at work and a surprisingly smooth puppy’s first flight, I’m finally back in Los Angeles, and the digital signs on all the city buses are flashing “RIP KOBE,” a gesture that speaks to his importance to this community, and one which also feels devastatingly sad. While driving in L.A. I’d be lost without our NPR station, KCRW. I stream it on their app when I’m away from home for the news and general NPR content, and their D.J.s are the only reason I’ve listened to any music made after Joni Mitchell’s last album.At home, I scroll through the DVR to see what I’ve missed while I’ve been away. It’s full of “Jeopardy!” and “S.N.L.” and “Project Runway.” When I was a kid, “S.N.L.” was the one show I was allowed to stay up late to watch, and I’ve been devoted ever since. I loved “Live From New York,” a collection of interviews with cast and crew over the years by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller.I’m usually reading a few books at the same time. I just finished “Catch and Kill” by Ronan Farrow, which was riveting. I devoured “Nothing to See Here” by Kevin Wilson. I’m also loving “Grown Ups” by Marian Keyes, and “All Adults Here” by Emma Straub, which will be out in May. “The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides was also suspenseful and fun. I don’t like scary movies, but I do love reading a thriller: anything with a woman or a girl who’s in a window or on a train or gone or with a dragon tattoo, love them all.SundayI love crossword puzzles and word and spelling games of any kind, but so does Peter, so we have an agreement: I get the crossword in the Sunday New York Times, but he gets the one in The Week. He gets the Spelling Bee in The Times and I get the Sudoku in The Week. We listen to music or “This American Life” and pass the papers back and forth and get away from the phones for a few hours. I hate feeling lost without my phone and keep trying to trick myself into using it less. I bought a BlackBerry. I’m on an Indiegogo waiting list for a keyboard thing called a Traveler that has no internet but only connects to a cloud. Being easily distracted is the reason I’m not on Instagram. I once went on YouTube to look up a video of Kelly Bishop from the original cast of “A Chorus Line” and when I looked up I had turned 80. Peter blames some of it on being a Pisces. “One fish goes this way, the other fish goes that way,” he’ll say when I leave the refrigerator door open for the millionth time.Today our dog went to her first puppy school class and she basically hid in a corner while the other puppies jumped all over one another like they were at a fun party. I choose to think this is a sign that she is deep and introspective and wise beyond her years. More

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    ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ … and to Fans Hungry for More

    When “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” debuted on Netflix in 2018, it seemed like just the latest title in its “Summer of Love” promotion. There was “Set It Up,” “Sierra Burgess Is a Loser” and “The Kissing Booth.” But “To All the Boys” quickly proved to be a phenomenon.The main character, a Korean-American high schooler named Lara Jean (played by Lana Condor), won over audiences who saw themselves mirrored in her life and mixed heritage. There was a surge of thirst for the internet’s newest crush, Noah Centineo (playing Lara Jean’s love interest, Peter Kavinsky). Sales for Yakult, a Korean yogurt drink, increased after being featured in several scenes, and by Halloween, Twitter was overloaded with images of costumes inspired by Lara Jean.“To All the Boys” became one of Netflix’s “most viewed original films ever,” with many fans watching it repeatedly, according to Variety. If the streaming service, which selectively releases audience numbers, is to be believed, more than 80 million subscribers caught the rom-com. The company also cited Instagram data to show the film’s impact: Condor’s follower count jumped from about 100,000 to 5.5 million, while Centineo’s increased from 800,000 to 13.4 million.“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” clearly seemed to tap into an unmet demand. Now, the team behind the first film are hoping its sequel, “P.S. I Still Love You,” will too when it premieres on Feb. 12.Based on Jenny Han’s best-selling 2014 debut YA novel of the same name, the first movie followed Lara Jean as she is forced to confront her emotions when private love letters she penned are sent to her past crushes — and to her current one, her sister’s ex-boyfriend Josh (Israel Broussard). While navigating the mayhem that ensues and trying to make Josh jealous, she ends up in a fake relationship with Peter, a popular but kindhearted jock. It’s not long before the fake relationship leads both to develop real feelings.Casting the Vietnamese-born newcomer Condor as the endearing Lara Jean opposite Centineo (of “Charlie’s Angels” and “The Perfect Date”) resulted in palpable chemistry that certainly helped fuel the success of “To All the Boys.”Condor said in an interview that she thought the excitement around the original stemmed from its wholesome, uplifting love story: “You kind of feel better after you watch it. You feel joy, and I think there’s something to be said about, right now, today, you kind of have to actively seek joy.” Centineo similarly saw the film as comfort food. “Chicken soup for the soul, baby. That’s what we want.”But the film’s popularity was also driven by more tangible factors. For one, there had been a noticeable lack of successful film rom-coms for years. Movies like “10 Things I Hate About You,” “She’s All That” and “Drive Me Crazy” were staples of the late 1990s and the early 2000s, but that was the last time the teen rom-com was really prevalent on the big screen; “To All the Boys” was a rom-com for a new generation.And it injected new life into the genre with its diverse cast of characters. Condor’s casting was seen as a win for Asian-American audiences, who had seen several Asian characters morph into white ones in recent screen adaptations. (See the controversies surrounding “Doctor Strange” and “Ghost in the Shell.”)LeiLani Nishime, a professor of communications at the University of Washington, said Asian-Americans usually show up only “in certain kinds of genres” like sci-fi or family dramas “but things like detective films or rom-coms, you didn’t see a whole lot of Asian-Americans.”The movie was a (partial) answer to the underrepresentation of such characters. Han said, “We’ve seen a certain type of rom-com many times, and I have never seen an Asian-American girl as the lead of a rom-com. So I think being able to experience the first brush of first love through her eyes, it felt really new and sparkly.”“To All the Boys” was also released the same week as “Crazy Rich Asians,” and the combination of both films propelled a surge of interest in Asian-American romances onscreen. These two rom-coms of course couldn’t solve the lack of representation, but they did prove that Asian-American audiences wanted to see more of themselves onscreen.In“P.S. I Still Love You,” once again adapted from Han’s romance novel series, the budding relationship between Lara Jean and Peter continues. But the onscreen antics are further complicated when another one of Lara Jean’s past crushes (and letter recipients), John Ambrose — played by Jordan Fisher — re-enters her life. With John, Lara Jean’s first love, in the picture, she has another dream guy to consider. John, unlike the suave, popular Peter, is both bookish and charming. What transpires is a love triangle that will probably spur an online battle of internet crushes.“The truth of the matter is, when you have someone like Jordan Fisher up against anyone else, his competition should be afraid, very afraid,” Centineo said, “because he is charismatic, he is extremely intelligent, extremely articulate and more than anything, he’s just a kind human being and soul. And he knows how to cook.”While Centineo said he knew that some viewers wouldn’t be thrilled with a rival love interest, he added that it made for a more compelling narrative. “When dealing with a franchise, especially one that was as successful as the first film, you really want to follow up with something that isn’t just exactly what the audience would want,” he said. But the romantic chaos will give fans endearing moments from Lara Jean that include stress baking and a “Cinderella” scene where everything comes to a head while she’s clad in a ball gown.The sequel is filled with the same chemistry between Condor and Centineo that once sparked rumors they were dating. Despite that speculation, the two actors say they had just formed a tight bond. (Condor has been with her boyfriend, Anthony De La Torre, for more than four years).“Acting with Noah is very, very easy, so, it doesn’t take a lot for me to love his heart and his mind,” Condor said, adding, “If people believe that we’re together or they want us to be, I think that means we did our job as actors.”Centineo also noted that when they met they “were both in very similar places in our lives and we bonded on the pain that we were both experiencing.”“P.S. I Still Love You” is about more than just romance, though. Just as one of the screenwriters, Sofia Alvarez, didn’t want the first film to be “about a girl who was in love with her sister’s boyfriend,” the second film follows Lara Jean as she explores what it “means to be vulnerable once you’re actually in that relationship and dealing with the other person as opposed to just thinking about being in a relationship with them.” Ultimately, Condor said, that will lead to more challenges for viewers. “The audience is going to be more frustrated at Lara Jean than they will be at the boys,” she said.“P.S. I Still Love You” is part of a larger Netflix plan. Both Condor and Centineo said they wrapped filming on the final entry in the trilogy in August. While details about the third installment were limited, one of the producers, Matt Kaplan, said that the film centers on “Lara Jean and Peter dealing with what life is like when you have to start to make more adult choices, like going off to college and figuring out how to navigate bigger, more adult conversations about relationships.”But the team behind the franchise thinks it will reverberate beyond the initial releases. Alongside films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Always Be My Maybe,” Condor said she hoped the “To All the Boys” movies would inspire more rom-coms to take Asian-American representation into consideration. “I think Asian-American actors have really kind of harnessed their power and they are trying to step into the space with confidence,” she said. “I am so proud to even be a little part of a movement that I hope is not just a movement, but is a very long forever process.”And the producer Kaplan envisions the “To All the Boys” films becoming part of the rom-com canon, Kaplan said: “I hope that the franchise will resonate in a way that lasts for generations, and that kids can look back at these movies and Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky can kind of be known in history as one of these really charming romantic comedy couples.” More

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    ‘The L Word’ Was a Trailblazer. Can a Reboot Keep Up With the Culture?

    The scene opens on a palatial lobby of the Biltmore hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Two women, Dani Núñez and Sophie Suarez, gape at the elaborately carved ceiling, 24-karat fixtures and lavish chandeliers. Recently engaged, they are touring potential wedding venues with their families. Dani’s father, a wealthy businessman, had suggested this one. At one point, Sophie’s mom wonders aloud, nervously, if she should have dressed up for the appointment. But no matter: The mood is festive, giddy. As they are led into a sprawling ballroom, Sophie’s abuela looks around skeptically and asks: “Where does the food go? Because we need a few tables to put everything we’re bringing.” The hotel event planner, blond hair pulled back into a pristine twist, informs her that the hotel doesn’t allow outside food, her voice barely concealing her disdain.Later, at home, Sophie explodes. “I don’t want to feel uncomfortable at my own wedding,” she says tearfully. “I want to laugh, I want to yell, I want to eat the food that my family cooked.” Dani seems to understand, until she opens her mouth. “I’m sure that they’ll make exceptions,” she tells her wife to be. Sophie is livid. “Did you see how they looked at me and my family?” Dani is a light-skinned, moneyed Chilean-Iranian woman; Sophie is Dominican-American and Afro-Latina. Their argument demonstrates that even though both women are Latinx, they have completely different experiences of power, privilege and class.VideoShowtimeCreditThe scene appeared about halfway through the first season of Showtime’s “The L Word: Generation Q,” the highly anticipated sequel to the original series, which ran on the same network from 2004 to 2009. Exhuming old cultural totems is risky: Overdo the nostalgia, and it becomes cloying; ignore the show’s legacy, and core fans might rebuke it. Fortunately, this reboot found a happy medium — and many juicy moments, like a fling with a minister, a hot threesome and a charming cameo by the soccer star Megan Rapinoe. But that sober, fully clothed and vulnerable exchange between Sophie and Dani is the one that stayed with me.When the original “L Word” aired back in 2004, it was a seismic event for many lesbians. At the time, TV shows featuring gay characters — “Queer as Folk,” and the lesser known “Noah’s Arc,” about black gay men in Los Angeles — tended to center on cisgender men and the issues relevant to their communities, whether it was casual sex and H.I.V. status or substance abuse. Sexual interactions between women usually showed up only as side plots, scandals or spectacles, usually for the benefit of men. Remember Kevin Bacon looking on from the bushes as Neve Campbell and Denise Richards made out in the pool in the 1998 erotic thriller “Wild Things”? Or when Britney and Madonna kissed at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards? You barely got to see it — the camera was too busy cutting away to Britney’s ex, Justin Timberlake, for his reaction.“The L Word” got closer to depicting the real social milieu of women who love women. It helped that lesbians were at the helm — Ilene Chaiken, the show’s creator, along with writers like Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche, who made “Go Fish,” a low-budget, grungy movie about queer women in Chicago in the 1990s — and they satisfyingly captured cultural touchstones of lesbian life at the time. (The cast attends Dinah Shore, a golf tournament that doubles as a cruising ground for women, and there were cameos by the singers Toshi Reagon and Tegan and Sara.) They also got the knottiness of queerness right: the way that exes can become best friends, that former lovers can show up as co-parents. The lines are messy, chaotic and overlapping, and that’s the point.The show birthed lasting archetypes in the characters of Shane McCutcheon, a shaggy Lothario, and Bette Porter, a high-powered, fiery woman with irresistible sex appeal. For some queer women in the 1990s and aughts, the show was their first glimpse of lesbianism onscreen and the incandescence of living in a world beyond the purview and validation of men. I can still remember the electricity I felt watching the show’s central character, Jenny, fall for a seductive Italian woman named Marina. I looked over at my boyfriend at the time and thought, Welp, there goes that.The original show received valid criticisms for largely casting straight actors over the show’s six seasons. This not only denied gay actors roles but also denied viewers the opportunity to fully project themselves into the story. Aside from Jennifer Beals, who plays a lesbian with unfettered gusto, there’s a palpable difference between watching women fully lean into their desire and watching them mime it. The show was a close relative of “Melrose Place,” full of wealthy, mostly white women treating money and race like nonissues. Those decisions undermined the show’s triumphant agenda, and it required a mild level of dissociation to imagine yourself alongside them, sipping cappuccinos in the Planet, their local hangout. The show’s most painful error was in its treatment of noncis characters, particularly Max, a trans man who was frequently misgendered and treated with a cold curiosity.Last year, when Showtime first announced it would be rebooting “The L Word” series, it initially seemed like yet another example of a beloved old piece of intellectual property being upcycled into a shinier version of itself. Most cultural reboots are engineered to deliver an instant dopamine hit — the comfort of familiarity. Rarely is the intention to make reparations or even amends. But “The L Word” had a cultural debt to repay through its resurrection, and it knows it.The new “L Word” takes place 10 years after the old one left off, i.e. basically now. The characters are entering into new phases of their lives, grappling with aging bodies, divorce and child-rearing. The once-irritating character Alice Pieszecki, played by the sparkly Leisha Hailey, has matured into a level-headed talk-show host and co-parent, managing a household and her girlfriend’s ex-wife. Bette Porter is still a hotheaded mess, having affairs with married women and verbally decimating her enemies. Much as it did 20 years ago, the show models for me hopeful possibilities, like women well in their 40s having adventurous sex. The new cast includes several trans actors who simply appear on the show. Their transness isn’t excessively politicized — it just exists.Not everything about the 2020 version works. More of the actors identify as queer, but the show still has some representational blind spots (no major nonbinary characters; no darker-skinned black women). Somehow it also has become glossier than its predecessor: Each of the original characters seems to have added a couple of zeros to her net worth. But for the most part, the show is cannily self-aware. It knows representation is hard-earned. The moment with Dani and Sophie suggests that television has gone beyond just putting gay women onscreen to make out and arrived someplace more raw and textured.By the end of the season, it’s not looking good for Dani and Sophie. Their relationship is starting to buckle under their miscommunications. They disconnect. Loneliness seeps in; each woman seeks comfort from others. That’s real life, and it makes for excellent TV.Jenna Wortham is a staff writer for the magazine and a host of the podcast “Still Processing.” She last wrote about the director Dee Rees. More

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    What’s on TV Wednesday: ‘The Farewell’ and ‘Big Cat Country’

    What’s StreamingTHE FAREWELL (2019) Stream on Amazon; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. While it may not have garnered any Academy Award nominations, this comedic drama from Lulu Wang netted a Golden Globe for its star, Awkwafina, and was among the highest-grossing indie movies of 2019. Based on an experience from Wang’s own life (or, as the film puts it, “based on an actual lie”), “The Farewell” casts Awkwafina as Billi, a young, creative New Yorker who learns that her overseas grandmother (played by Zhao Shuzhen) has a terminal illness. Billi travels with her parents to the northern Chinese city of Changchun, where her grandmother lives, but not before reluctantly agreeing to terms set by the rest of the family: Nobody is permitted to tell the matriarch about her illness. What follows is a bittersweet story that plumbs family relationships and cultural differences. The film “has a loose, anecdotal structure and a tone that balances candor and tact,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. “Much of the charm and power of this story — about events leading up to a wedding that’s also a fake funeral of sorts — come from the palpable sense that it genuinely happened to someone.”TOY STORY 4 (2019) Stream on Disney Plus; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. On Sunday, “Toy Story 4” became the second movie in the series to win an Academy Award for best animated feature. (“Toy Story 3” won in 2010; the first two were released before the category existed.) Like its predecessors, “Toy Story 4” assembles Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and their plastic cronies for an adventure — this time one that involves a road trip and a spork with a death wish (Forky, voiced by Tony Hale). “The animation is striking, the jokes amusing and the story sweet,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times, “though this being Pixar, the tale is also melancholic enough that the whole thing feels deeper than it is.” She deemed the movie “great-ish.”What’s on TVBIG CAT COUNTRY 8 p.m. on Smithsonian Channel. This new nature series centers on two prides of lions along the Luangwa River in Zambia, dramatically narrating their hunts and power struggles. (An example: “A herd of buffalo is coming to drink. The herbivores don’t see the lions … Until it’s too late.”) In other words: “Cats” this is not.WATCHMEN (2009) 6:30 p.m. on IFC. Those who watched HBO’s recent, radically reimagined TV riff on Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” graphic novel can see a very different take on the material in this film adaptation, which was directed by Zack Snyder. With a cast that includes Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino, this version adheres more closely to the graphic novel than HBO’s version — but wasn’t nearly as well received by critics. More