Something fun and complicated is going on with the super-phony Rio backdrops and the super-stagey we’re spies acting like lovers but we’re really lovers who can’t act like lovers. Add a little Cary Grant to that and . . .

Also, Ingrid Bergman rocks. She looks so tall in this movie. As if the sets aren’t really scaled to her. Or maybe its the men who aren’t scaled to her.

Bette Davis channels Simone de Beauvoir. Or is the other way around?

Not as trashy as it looks, not as misogynistic as the undergrads say. But it is something like Coen brothers and Curb Your Enthusiasm . . .

plot and action aren’t clear, so the movie relies on the dialog to give too much information. dialog and gestures are on and off anachronistic . . . made me want to read a decent biography, or see the new bbc elizabeth . . . but didn’t hold my attention. i wound up reading a history textbook alongside . . . not a good sign.

Why does Truffaut say such mean-spirited things about Delannoy? This is so similiar to SP and not much better. Liked the landscapes and the relationship of the woman, the teacher and the boy. Renoir . . .

Although I was frustrated with the activist to artist narrative of Scorcese, I felt the same story here too. But here it was better told.

When I saw it on cable a few years ago, I thought it was great. But I think I only watched the last 1/2 hour. When I watched the whole thing I was less interested.

Where the first took the anti-national quality essential to piracy and extended that sort of lovely, liberating lawlessness to race, ethnicity, gender and history the second really closed down the possibilties for pirating quite a bit, with some tired old (or tired new) stereotypes and cliches. The only real lawlessness was a physical lawlessness that appeared to be, (one might flatter the creators) inspired by Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon.

Good for dieters and anyone who likes vegetables.

Now, why would anyone make The Squid and the Whale when this movie already exists?