Television

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

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

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