The Feminine Complex: Glorious Diva
Posted by Claire Flynn Boyle on 04.22.2003
Where Alanis and alcoholism intersect in a wrestling ring
Welcome to the Feminine Complex, the column that says the rainbow that you played I chased before, but now I know I just can’t chase it anymore…
Ah, Josie and the Pussycats. If only that cartoon had a wrestling based episode. Not to worry.
Since my last two music columns have been utterly horrendous and unreadable (which is why no one read them! Ha!), this is a mea culpa to the site. The only joy that I’ve had on the Internet recently was going into a “Fat Admirers” chat room and proving scientifically they SO don’t prefer 500lb chicks. I digress. There’s a fair chance this video review will be just as bad, but I’ll feel better! And it’ll kill time between the moment my love wakes up and the moment my 4 year old cousin rings back to my suite in Paris just to say “Oh and ANOTHER thing about Avril….”
After last time outs “A New Hope” review, this times tape is the really rather fabulous “Glorious Diva”, another art/university film, this time from right here in Australia. The protagonist is Diva, a nondescript blonde girl with a head for maths. Even before any credits, her first proclamation to camera is to launch into a Rainmanesque series of figures and mathematical mutterings that could send a NASA scientist scurrying out of the room looking for a book or two. These proclamations could be utter rubbish for all I know, but hey, I never claimed to be a maths whiz. Actually, I’m not a whiz at anything, except making a mean daiquiri. Marie has a beret on and one of the novels of Proust in her hot little hands. To ram the point about her intellectualism home, she continually smiles at a Radiohead poster as if it contains the answers of the universe. Now if she was looking at a poster of TATU, I could understand. Now (PLOT POINT ALERT!) after telling us all these mathematical figures, she holds a copy of the “You Oughta Know” single by Alanis directly at the camera, and the single spins and spins, catches fire, and then we have our arty opening credits sequence, this time diamonds turning into words. Blah. I need something that will give me a stroke from strobe lights to raise this above DUD.
That was at least a brief nod to the “REVIEW A WRESTLING TAPE BIMBO” crowd…
Our main villain is a man named Carl, an older man who at first glance seems to be the kind of homemaker always featured in Aussie sitcoms and dramas. When we first meet Carl, there seems to be nothing wrong with him. He’s mowing the lawn and looking pretty harmless as he waves to his neighbours, but as soon as he goes inside, it’s a different story, as you can tell by the 32000 Jim Beam (who must have got a HECK of a sponsorship plug out of this movie, as you will see) bottles that literally flood his house. He can’t open the door for them. He can’t get up the stairs for them. He can’t move for the bottles! We get it! It’s a metaphor of course but good god. It doesn’t help that not only does Carl have a drinking problem, but an acting problem, because as soon as he slumps fatigue ridden on the coach, he speaks in a squeaky voice that sounds like Mickey Mouse sucked a helium balloon. And best of all, he has a classic Dennis The Menace black and red hooped jumper on and a handlebar moustache. It’s too bad they didn’t give him a bag with “SWAG” on it. He says something about alcohol that could be the price of fishcakes or how many stars he would give an Albert match (another nod) for all I can tell. Then he cries, and his tears (or one of them) drop on the floor, wash along the floor, and end up outside, hurtling down a storm drain. I’m tempted to muse on what it all means, but the screen goes black as his tears hurtle down a sewer.
Now at this point, you might wonder what all this means, how it ties into wrestling, why a sad old man is the film villain and what the Alanis obsession is. Well…it turns out our hero Diva works at a bottle shop. On the way there she walks past the same storm drain the tears flowed down and begins humming that Alanis song about “you’ve already won me over”…Head Over Feet…that’s the one. She gets to the bottle shop to find no one there and that she has to open up. HOWEVER (plot point) she’s left her keys at home so she breaks in to the shop…and still there is no one here, but instead of locking the door behind her she leaves it wide open, puts on Alanis and (PLOT POINT) begins dancing around like a moron, which allows Carl to sneak in, whack her with a branch (?) and thus begin his criminal mastermind streak. Now, none of this makes real sense, but hang on…a talking cat wanders in, looks around and says “I’m outta here”…NOW does it make sense? Er….
When Diva wakes up, she’s tied up in tape, the shop is surrounded by cops and, presumably, top Cat…Alanis is still playing and Carl is hoeing into some quality top shelf spirits (obviously Jim Beam, the major sponsor of this video). Now to recap, a tear stained alcoholic has broken into your bottle shop after you’ve not done the check and entry procedure properly, hit you with a branch and tied you up with tape. You might be scared. You might not suddenly start quoting maths again! Yes, Diva begins rambling on about Maths while Carl squeaks “SHUT UP!” and no other line for five excruciating minutes UNTIL he collapses crying again. There then follows one of those wonderful scenes that happen in every cop siege where the guy with the megaphone is deeply incompetent and the guy who is the underling knows exactly what’s going on. Constable Clark (the igwtm, or incompetent guy with the megaphone) even interrupts yelling to admire a female cops shoes (?). Meanwhile, Diva is still crapping on about maths, and then in one of those great twists only art house films can truly deliver, she suddenly declares “DO YOU SMELL WHAT THE DIVA IS COOKING!”…like, what was with all the maths at the start? Where did that come from? That would be like me suddenly changing this entire video treatise and going “Armbar and atomic drop from Saturn get two, but this match sucks!” I should do that some time. I rock at wrestling videos where I get to give stars! No, I don’t. So after squeaking “You like the Rock? Wow, you like Wrestling” Carl goes catatonic with joy. If this entire twist doesn’t seem bizarre enough, quoting the Rock suddenly causes Carl the crazy alcoholic with the handlebar moustache to drop his mysteriously white bottle of Jim Beam OH SO VERY SLOWLY in an art house film kind of way, and it bounces back up, goes over the bar, curls around the cash register and THEN smashes. Pah, let’s see that so called Matrix come up with a special effect as rocking as that.
The moral is that even Alanis crazed maths obsessed rambling idiots with stupid names and branch wielding criminal alcoholic nutcases can find common ground if you look hard enough. And that would be quite a sweet moral to end on, if the film ended there. But oh no, this is art house student film land! And so, after Carl unties Diva with the precision that suggests he’s untied women before, the dynamic duo begin to bond to the tune of “Don’t Panic” by Coldplay (???) they DANCE THE WALTZ??? What is going on? We live in a beautiful world…waltz, waltz…at this point the pub/bottle shop becomes an ice rink? Deep breaths Claire, you aren’t tripping…yes, it took just one quote from the Rock for a girl who got whacked with a branch to bond with a crazed alcoholic. Now you’d think that would be it…they bonded…albeit in an odd way…film over?
OH NO. You see when the waltzing stops, Alanis comes back on. THEN the talking cat from before wanders back in, with a police hat on (!!!) and I suddenly begin to feel like a drink. The cat then begins to negotiate an end to the siege…seeing as how these two bonded over a Rock quote, they should have a wrestling match? Now that’s a strange thing…they bonded over alcohol surely? Shouldn’t they have a shots competition? Sounds like more fun! Anyway, in no time at all Diva is standing around in a slinky little pink vinyl leotard with GLORIOUS in spangly letters, and the crazed and frankly hairy Carl is standing around in a pair of white underpants. Frankly, his back needs a trim. He looks like Ed Asner in the Wrestler. And as if it wasn’t odd enough for a film that shaped briefly to tackle the effects of alcoholism on innocent maths obsessed dancing Alanis fans, only to lapse into some kind of bizarre wrestling movie with ice skating and a talking fluffy cat, the wrestling match is refereed by Alanis herself…well….the kind of piss poor lookalike that only happens when your friends convince you that you REALLY look like someone when you really don’t. The only reason I know it’s meant to be Alanis is because she looks around and declares “isn’t it Ironic…”
So…to the match…
Diva v. Carl. Stips for this match, as dictated by the cat (not The Cat) are that if Carl wins, Diva goes out with him, and if Diva wins, Carl gives up drinking and cleans himself up. Who’s writing these stips – RUSSO? Anyway, after all that build up, Carl happily let’s himself get pinned in a provocative way, and that’s the whole match at 4 seconds. DUD. Who wrote this SHIT? After all that build up, this obsession with putting Diva over at the expense of the company will KILL THEM. This just emphasised that Carl isn’t a star, and now he’s turned face and given he’s lost his gimmick as the nasty drunk, he’s never going to make it in this business and just drift back to midcard hell. It comes down to the fact that Diva isn’t willing to make a new generation of stars, or even SELL for them, and the ratings will dip and dip until she does.
Ahem.
No really, that’s what happens. Carl happily let’s himself get pinned and goes off to prison for the love of a good woman, as the cat, Alanis and Diva wave him off. And if you were wondering what the obsession with maths was, Diva declares on final equation: chances of love when Carl gets out of prison, “100%”. And just to add ½ * to the proceedings, the closing credits feature that magic strobe lighting that causes fits, just what’s needed to bring the kids back to crappy surrealist Aussie art films. Ah, but there’s an after the credits funny where the cops who have ringed the pub are now engaged in a brawl over who gets to use the megaphone. Aren’t cops funny. If only the BossMan was on the case…
I have many, many questions about this short film, the most obvious one is what the Alanis lookalike had to do with anything, as if perhaps there was some kind of secret code of including her, and not, say, Jo Breezer in the film. Is alcoholism a Jagged Little Pill? Is this film like rain on your wedding day? Secondly, it’s pretty hard to support a hero who’s such an absolute dimwit. I mean, they spend a lot of time at the start establishing she’s an intellectual, and then she basically leaves the door open for any criminal to come in and whack her with a branch, then sluts herself out like some blonde stereotype. Darn, after all my stereotype breaking work. Oh well. And Carl is a numb nut as well, given that he can make off with the cash, but no, he sits around saying shut up like Alan Ball, and then it just takes one Rock quote to cough up guv and be hauled bang to rights. I mean, I have no idea what this film is trying to teach us. Wrestling can close the special bond between idiot savants and alcoholics? Love conquers branch based attacks and robberies? And why a talking cat? What was that about?
When you find yourself yearning for the simple plot lines of “3 Ninja’s: High Noon at Mega Mountain”, it’s time to pack up the tent.
