Netflix has been presenting some older movies. I was surfing their lists when I found out about Hideous Kinky, a movie with Kate Winslet that I'd never heard before. I was curious, of course.
The first oddness is the discrepancy between the movie's poster and its synopsis: according to the last, the film is told from the point of view of the younger daughter of a British hippie living in Morocco. The poster, through, pictures the girls on the back, in smaller figures contrasting to the close on Winstlet (that had just a huge success with Titanic, so the focus on her face is understandable). The movie follows this confusion about who is main point of view there. Even it there were many, it isn't clear. So we keep bouncing from one perspective to other, without knowing exactly what is being said there. But that was not the worst for me in this movie.
The two young girls are amazing - the young actresses are outstanding, and we fell in love immediately. Lucy is the youngest, and carries that lightness that her older sister, Bea, cannot afford anymore while being dragged by their mother in her pursuit of espiritual learning with the sufis. And Spirituality, it is important to emphasize, that is very distorted, as usually happen when it is seeked for exterior reasons, I think. The girls are not able to understand their mother pursuits, and are more baffled with why they have to be far from home, without money, living in an eminence of constant danger.
One of the characters tells the mother that a kid is a gift, but one that we must protect from any danger - contrary to what she thought that mother was doing.
With regards to the different contexts and degrees of risk, that's is childhood for everybody: being dragged along parents that are usually unsure of what they're doing. In a solid household, one of my nieces, when she was 5, realized that even the most careful attention from her relatives wouldn't prevent any accident or unforeseen events. Her small cousin had hit his head on the coffee table, and his mother rushed to the hospital with him right way - nothing serious, but we were worried. Then, she looked at me with her seriously guarded eyes and said: really, no one is capable to totally protect us. And that's right. We try and make everything that is possible to prevent any danger to our kids, but is terrorizing how powerless we are actually.
Lily and Bea face difficulties because of her mother's choices. I was so anguished, it was horrible. But even so I was not able to judge Winslet's character. She is trying, the way she knows, and learning through the more difficult way how to take care of ther kids. We can see clearly that Bea, the older kid, won't be a hippie, though, and will probably carry with her all the insecurities of her young age. We know the drill:a control freak that try to prevent any unforeseen event to happens, which is impossible. This way, she'll live all her life by impossible standards, until the day that she, fortunately, will be able to leave it behind, following her own dreams and desires.
You see, this movie was not easy to see. And I'm still reeling from it.
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| Hideous Kinky. Directed by Gillies McKinnon. With: Kate Winslet, Bella Rizza, Carrie Mullan. Writers: Billy McKinnon from the novel by Esther Freud. UK/France, 1998, 98 min., Dolby SR, Color (Netflix). |
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