I agree with you that we shouldn’t restrict reading this film as all about gaze in Mulvey’s sense. When I suggested the film could be seen as an updated and improved Mulvey thesis, I was thinking partially of how it troubles that reading. As Kevin said, to stick with that kind of reading ultimately gives us a tired unfolding of gendered logic. Tilda Swinton as El sounds amazing to me!

I think the difference between your reading and mine, Ryland, is us trying to work out exactly what you said about shifting to film reading that asks about style as philosophy or film as philosophy. I’d agree that, for example, the amazing sound design of this film bespeaks attention to how a film, say, thinks itself a guide to our movement through it (the cues of that glass bottle and El and Ella’s footsteps on cobblestones, just to name a couple). But I say you can’t ignore how important the action, their movement, is to all this: Ella tries to loose El by weaving in and around the city; how the camera cuts and shows this makes that analogy with the guided movement of film viewing. El’s pursuit of Ella just strengthens his conviction that she is Sylvia.

In other words: To be En el ciudad de Sylvia is to be in a film that takes us on a circumambulation after the frustration of a static vantage point. El doesn’t recover from this but perhaps we can. Ryland, cue your point about how El’s character is designed to leave room for our bypassing him. What do you guys think of this as a reading? I’d like to know, Ryland, how you think thought fits in here, and Kevin, whether this assuages your weariness.

Oh and Kevin, the Calvino novel: I was thinking of how – if you remember – Readerguy (the ‘you’ character) pursues Ludmilla through misrecognitions both of her person (her sister Lotaria and her mutations are Ludmilla’s dopplegangers) and of her objects of desire in terms of reading. Ludmilla offers accounts of what she wants to read, but whenever Reader (”you”) solicit confirmation thereof, she provides a different account. Reader never incarnates Ludmilla as fixed object and so never secures/resolves what it is he desires. Not to mention, this is another story where characters are named only with anonymous pronouns and differentiated only with number or gender.

That’s the big question. Because the two leads were definitely cast to mirror one another with their unreal good looks (dark hair, vulnerable and hurt eyes). The thing I’d like to suggest is that maybe El isn’t “borderline sociopathic” — maybe that’s just our own projection onto his character. Because, as silly as his following her may be, he’s still pretty harmless. Jen said she thinks this is a movie about action, not thought, but I’m still thinking it’s about thought because he’s not really doing much, even when he confronts her (finally). That whole dialogue is punctuated by him thinking out loud, “What a disaster,” and apologizing, not more objectifying/idealizing. They’re even shot side by side in that train with their opposite arms up to suggest they are, indeed, mirrors of one another. Perhaps her generosity is meant to reflect our generosity (or edify us in how to be generous) to such a situation. Now, if El looked like, say, Steve Buscemi or Willem Defoe (who aren’t terrible looking but aren’t great looking like Xavier Lafitte here), I think the scene would play different. Anyways, I ended my comment on Jen’s reply with this:

I will have to see the film again to trace all this out but that’s the kind of reading I’d like to work towards; that is, away from Mulvey’s Vertigo reading and nearer to, hmn, VF Perkins or Stephen Mulhall (or any of those Brits who contributed to this book (dig that progressive, so to speak, ratio of male-to-female writers there within), which Mulvey actually contributed to as well) and their understanding of style as philosophy. Or, more simply, towards a more generous and less reactionary (oddly politically correct?) posture in relation to the film. We should learn from El’s “mistakes” of mis-recognition and proscription/projection, right?

Clearly I don’t have any “answers” yet but this has been a nice little exchange. Thanks for participating. I would love to hear what other people have to say — especially if we can live up to the potential of the ’sphere and prove (the affable, talented) Kent Jones wrong by developing a continued conversation about this. You know, just like at Girish’s comments sections.