See Jane scramble. She's a mother, girlfriend, mistress, gal pal, owner of a thriving patisserie, and therapy patient. Not that you'd pick up oversubscribed vibes if you swung by for a glass of chardonnay. Her octopus-armed life unfolds in a universe of serenity, where barely a square inch of floor is ungraced with sisal, nary a window untreated with glazed linen. In the comfort of her rambling, terra-cotta-shingled ranch, Jane bathes in a claw-foot tub and dines atop gray-veined Carrara marble. You root for her to find love. You hanker for one of her homemade chocolate croissants. But mostly, you wish you were holding a gift-registry scanner.
If only you could get inside. Jane actually lives in the fictional space of It's Complicated, the film starring Meryl Streep and directed by Nancy Meyers. Meyers's movies (Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday) have earned her a cult following among the design-porn set; the Hamptons beach house from 2003's Something's Gotta Give was a sensation—it even inspired a headboard collection for Williams-Sonoma Home. But It's Complicated sashays into theaters at a very different time. Before Home Depot closed its tony Expo Design Center, before "HGTV" became a slur for compulsive nest-feathering, Meyers's Hamptons set was termed "aspirational." Now a quarter of mortgaged American homes are underwater, and movie montages about cashmere sheets are an irksome reminder of how we can't afford them. Gone are the glossy titans House & Garden, Vogue Living, Domino, Metropolitan Home, Southern Accents, and Cottage Living, all boarded up alongside the housing market. In fact, It's Complicated appears in December's Traditional Home, where a "real" home might once have been.
What might have annoyed us as tone-deaf luxury, however, has turned into an asset, and not just for Meyers. A Single Man is like so many of director-designer Tom Ford's glossy ad campaigns: it may be one page deep, but you almost don't notice amid all the brooding, the sexual tension, and the va-va-voom '60s ambience. Nine's fizzy Fellini redux is Chanel No. 5, all-Marilyn musk, and Harlow ostrich feathers. Are these great movies? Hardly. You could argue that their over-the-top tableaux distract the heck out of you (as opposed to serving narrative purpose, in the way MadMen's visual experience fills in meaning in the absence of a chatty script). But it almost doesn't matter. Escapism is all too enticing right now, and no one takes you out of your own head like Hollywood—witness the $10 billion record-breaking box office for 2009. For proof you can really take to the bank, look (yes, look) at Avatar. Even its most ardent fans dismiss the plot and writing—the bad guys are on the hunt for a rare ore called unobtainium. Inventive! Yet this is a world built on flowing, diaphanous, almost tactile beauty. Director James Cameron takes even the most ordinary hunk of blue rock (the über-literal unobtainium) and spotlights it à la Ming porcelain. The near-destruction of the world never looked so good. When there's less magic and Ming in our own lives, marveling at fantasy is not altogether unpleasant. Just remember to strap on your goggles—and power down your brain.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
