Stepford Inn

The One I Love

Crit

Oh! It all makes sense! Director Charlie McDowell is actually Charles Malcolm McDowell, his middle name provided by his father. His mother is Mary Steenbergen, who provides the telephone voice of a character's mother, which of course makes his stepfather Ted Danson, who plays the couples therapist who refers Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) to the sprawling love nest where all the weird shit happens.

To wit: each encounters a Doppelgänger of the other, at first unknowingly, and then with different agendas. I would be hard-pressed to explain the precise metaphysics at work here, but it is certain that only one person from each pair of doubles can leave. It's not an unsatisfying film, but it's one of those you wish the likes of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry had been involved in.

But on another topic: if this is my last post, it is because something has eaten my brain. It started nibbling about 1:30 this afternoon, and it continued to nosh during the movie. Actually, that doesn't seem the right metaphor, though it's difficult for me to describe what is happening. Maybe the best metaphor is that the TV feed of my consciousness is getting occasional blips from a program unrelated to the one I'm tuned to, though that's not quite it, either, because I'm never conscious of the blip except in retrospect, though then it is indeed as faint as a pirate TV signal. And it seems that the blips happen only when I'm concentrating on something else, so not for the past hour or so, during which time I've been obsessing on it. No, I did not knowingly ingest a psychoactive drug; I'd be having a lot more fun with this if I had. As it is, it has a perversely enjoyable element, and it is by no means terrifying (though check back with me later for an update on that).