#such a moving and empathetic character study of a really traumatized and self hating and heavily closeted man and his gradual healing

[seriousturd]

Whenever I feel stressed I doodle Nick in this genre

[appledcheeks-blog]

                                                        ❝      once, there was a PRINCESS.      ❞                          (     was the princess... you ?      )

hello !! i’m holly, and i’ll be playing savannah white aka snow !! have some info about her.

tw: death, poisoning, implied child abuse, mild ptsd

[ pinterest ] [ playlist ]

BIOGRAPHY:

⚘ life begins for savannah white rather peacefully. she has vivid memories of baking with her mother and dancing on her father’s toes. she remembers standing the middle of the lounge room and singing when they had guests, and even when they didn’t. she remembers being read to and learning to play the piano and buying flowers and shouting ballads with both of her parents. as child, the world is big and exciting to her. she’s a little nervous, but her gentle spirit and kind heart makes it a little easier to navigate. she don’t need rose coloured glasses for the world to look so wonderful, so beautiful, so magical. it just is. she has everything a little girl could ever dream of.

⚘ life ends quite abruptly for savannah -- or, rather, her mother’s life does when she passes away. it takes her a while to process it. it takes her so long, in fact, that her father remarries in hopes of finding her a new woman to look up to. he has her best interests at heart, of course, hoping to find her a new mother, but savannah would have been happy with the maid or her nanny. savannah would have been content with watching julie andrews in the sound of music and calling her a mother, really. what she did not need was a stepmother so awful -- but unfortunately, an awful stepmother was exactly what she got.

⚘ it doesn’t take long for things to start shifting around the house. the woman is beautiful, but unkind. she is cold. savannah doesn’t understand how to get through to her -- she is encouraged to sing less, play music less, be quiet more. no matter what she does, there is something wrong. her father either does not notice or hopes that this woman is raising his daughter to be sophisticated and proper, but either way, savannah never gets to ask, because after about two years, the then-ten year old’s father dies in his sleep.

⚘ her mother is long-gone, her father poisoned, the maid blamed and arrested. savannah has never been so truly alone. she has nobody to confide in, to cry with, to hold her when she needs it. her stepmother, crueller than ever, seems to not care or not understand why she is so emotional. confining herself in her room is safe, but it is lonely. there is no music at all, now. no baking. only chores for the dear, sad little thing.

⚘ slowly, music returns to her. she listens to it to cope, she dances whilst she cleans, sings whilst she cooks. it makes her think so much of her parents that she can’t help but do it -- it is her last connection to them, after all. she makes sure to do it when her stepmother isn’t home, or at least to do it quietly. slowly but surely, music comes back into her life in bigger ways. her high school does musicals, which costs nothing but her time and effort, and if she makes sure her chores are done in a timely manner, she decides -- for herself -- to participate. it is good to be out of the house and away from her stepmother.

⚘ music is really where she flourishes. she isn’t a bad little actress, either, but it’s not as if she’s not used to pretending. pretending things are fine, that she’s okay, that her stepmother isn’t cruel and unkind. she still flinches, even to this day, if somebody yells or moves too sharply or too quickly. a therapist might call this, in combination with her recurring nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder. she wouldn’t know, of course, because she’s happy to keep her head down and move away from everything that’s happened to her on her own.

⚘ savannah is thrilled to be at corona because she doesn’t have to be at home. in fact, the day after she was accepted, the girl left, not interested in staying in that house any longer than she needed to be. the bad press stresses her out, sure, but anything is better than her stepmother. 

HEADCANONS:

POSITIVE: considerate, genuine, gentle, optimistic, empathetic, tactful, polite

NEGATIVE: childish, naive, jumpy, sensitive, submissive, awkward, fantasy-prone 

studying music but has a real soft spot for musical theatre. during high school and college, savannah has played wendla ( spring awakening ), penny ( hairspray ), olive ( 25th annual putnam county spelling bee ), and rosemary ( how to succeed in business without really trying ). her first role and favourite to date was olive, but in playing Wendla, she had her first kiss

other dream roles incl. gertrude ( seussical ), liesl ( the sound of music ), brenda ( catch me if you can ), and audrey ( little shop of horrors )

she’s a huge romantic but aside from her stage kisses, she’s never been kissed irl. It’s really wild to her bc she keeps getting cast as romantic leads but cannot for the life of her talk to any cute boy in a vaguely romantic context

loves to bake !!! obviously. big fan of pies but follows up with cookies in second. any kind of sweet biscuit, really. stress baker. bakes treats as gifts, bakes for her study groups/rehearsals, anything. just loves it.

also obviously super loves animals. as a child, had bunnies and birds as pets.

hates coffee. it's too bitter and strong and tastes awful and so she'll make it for her friends if she wants it but she's a hot chocolate or tea kind of gal.

bad with horror movies, loves jane austen. favourite scents are apple, rose, sugar, vanilla, orange blossom, and clean sheets. always seen with a red lip, mascara and a touch of highlighter. has a large collection of lip balms, all vanilla or cherry scented.

would love to have a big sprawling garden one day, wherever she lives. would love a big family, would love a small family. just wants a family. like, a real one that isn't awful to her.

first celebrity crush was the scarecrow in the wizard of oz, also sky in mamma mia.

can sign !! also, allergic to fructose ( major symptom: chronic fatigue, but also nausea, abdominal pain, and inability to absorb iron ) and anaemic. can play piano, guitar, and a little bit of violin.

character insp. aka characters she relates to: sansa stark ( game of thrones ), hero ( much ado about nothing ), dorothy ( wizard of oz ), ti moune ( once on this island ), and rose tyler ( doctor who )

WANTED CONNECTIONS

musical friends / ex-cast mates: people who savannah’s done shows with !! could be high school or college shows, it doesn’t bother me !! ( OPEN 1 / 3: MABEL PINES, ARIEL TRITON )

neighbours: a couple of people who live on either side of her. maybe they can hear her singing in the mornings, maybe she keeps getting their mail. just really simple domestic stuff. ( OPEN 0 / 2 )

other musicians: savannah is a singer, but she can also play piano, acoustic guitar, and a little bit of violin !! i would love some musicians for her to jam with. could be classmates or otherwise. ( OPEN / ANY )

childhood friends: self-explanatory. likely other ‘royal’ characters but really i’m open to anything and everything !! can have met anywhere between like age 3 and age 16 -- savannah is currently 21. ( OPEN 0 / 3 )

refuge: somebody who’s house she used to go to when her stepmother was being awful. they wouldn’t have known 100% what was happening, they did have a good idea of how bad she was. ( OPEN 0 / 1 )

unlikely friends: relatively self-explanatory. this could be somebody who is a real troublemaker or is super reserved, i don’t mind !! ( CLOSED: ZUKO OZAI )

protective friend: this is just the unlikely friend wc turned up to 11. this is somebody who looks after her when she’s on that naive bullshit, and she looks after them when they need it. ( CLOSED: VANELLOPE VON SCHWEETZ )

princess pals: literally what it says on the can. i would lowkey love the other princesses being a squad. ( OPEN / ANY )

[mrmichaelchadler]

TIFF 2018: Maya, Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, Skin

Film festivals aren’t for everyone. Even if you’re attending one purely as a film lover (and not as a journalist, who often has to write multiple pieces a day on little food and sleep after seeing several movies), running a marathon between addiction dramas, hopeless love stories and dark character studies can take a strange toll on a person. The longer the affair lasts, the lonelier it all feels, percolating a strange sense of identity crisis in one’s mind. Eventually, the experiences of on-screen personas densely seep into one’s own empathetic core, creating personal questions without answers.

It is when such visceral uncertainties started coming into sharper focus at the midpoint of the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival (which I attended on the heels of the 45th Telluride Film Festival) that I saw three films on consecutive days, featuring characters grappling with profound doubts around their identity. Whether or not you relate to their crisis (sometimes, self-inflicted and other times, downright infuriating) is beside the point—the experience of watching people tiptoe around whom they are or supposed to be when you are ready to shed off your own (festival) skin and start a clean page as a changed person, is staggeringly trippy.

The gentlest of these films is French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Maya,” which follows a war journalist as he gets released after four months of captivity in Syria. Soulfully played by her repeat collaborator Roman Kolinka, Gabriel first spends his days in Paris, reuniting with his ex-girlfriend, father and friend circles, always wearing his deeply melancholic discomfort on his sleeve. Loosely inspired by her own grandfather, who was a charismatic war correspondent—her films always have some small element of personal history—Hansen-Løve paints Gabriel with compassionate touches, generously honoring his reserved observance, while side-stepping the common beats you’d expect from someone in his situation. Gabriel shows no interest in being stuck in the same place, engaging in long psychotherapy sessions or sweaty sleepless nights after his traumatic time in a warzone. Instead, he chooses to be on the move.

And that is not a surprise, at least for anyone who followed Hansen-Løve’s previous characters, like “Eden”’s ambitious, dream-chasing DJ Paul Vallée or Nathalie, the recently divorced idealist of “Things to Come”. Obliquely following their resilient lead, the late-twenties/early-thirties Gabriel heads to his childhood home in Goa in order to both escape and find himself in the process. There, he meets Maya (impressive newcomer Aarshi Banerjee), the young daughter of Gabriel’s Godfather, who runs an eco-friendly touristic hotel. The two become friends straightaway—not unlike Richard Linlater’s “Before” series’ Jesse and Celine, their friendship deepens during lazy sun-dappled afternoons spent by the sea and through philosophical conversations that flourish around life. Always an expert builder of tension (which includes sexual tension), Hansen-Løve softly leads the viewer into the palpable chemistry forming between the duo and sensually captures their eventual union, landing on a intensely earned first kiss. Neither promising a happily-ever-after nor signaling an overblown romantic doom, she builds these two characters searching for something more from the ground up, as they cross paths in their respective journeys. “Maya” isn’t the filmmaker’s best work—the English dialogue, sometimes awkwardly delivered by self-conscious characters not working within their native tongue—feels a bit wooden. Still, this tenderly shot film with an intriguing soundtrack (with repeat excerpts of Schubert’s Serenade) claims a worthy spot in her catalog.

Then came the most complicated film around a search for identity; Justin Kelly’s based-on-a-true-story “Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy”. Starring a mind-bogglingly fitting Kristen Stewart in the role of Savannah Knoop, who spent 6 years in the fake shoes of the renowned yet completely fabricated author JT LeRoy, Kelly’s feature is based on Knoop’s memoir and grapples with individuality, sexuality, sexism and to some degree, even ageism in both entertainment and the literary world. The fake author named JT LeRoy was invented by Knoop’s sister-in-law Laura Albert (Laura Dern, who makes playing multiple characters look so easy), a writer living a double life. Having pretended to be the successful, mysterious JT on the phone to journalists for years, she reaches a point where she needs a collaborating avatar. Her prayers get answered when she meets her beau Geoffrey’s sister Savannah; a quiet, awkward and shyly charismatic bi-sexual woman less than thrilled with the idea. In no time at all though, Laura lures her into playing JT, talking up the power of role-play and the realness it can possess. At an aimless spot with her own life, Savannah reluctantly accepts her incident proposal. Enter clumsy wigs, grungy clothes and an Asia Argento-like film diva (Diane Kruger), adamant to bring one of LeRoy’s books to screen.

Identities within identities, the true tale of a fraud and society’s willingness to buy entertainment at face value already make “Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy” a rich and rewarding watch; but when the individual trajectories of Savannah and Laura clash in competitive and destructive ways, the film deepens even further. Laura instinctually knows her real identity could only have gotten her so far in her field. Whereas Savannah temporarily settles in for the fake image she hides beneath, perhaps feeling freer and more powerful in her skin than she’s ever felt. Kelly’s script dives a little too head-on to the events—the focus naturally remains on Savannah, yet the story feels in desperate need of further development of Laura in the first act. Similarly, Savannah’s boyfriend Sean (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) feels like an after-thought and the end reveal produces less than thrilling results. Still, Kelly’s film is largely entertaining, set in a world where everyone is playing someone else, even when they seem like their own (branded) selves.

Among the hardest watches of the entire festival and the literal rendering of being uncomfortable in one’s skin is Israeli director Guy Nattiv’s first US-set film “Skin,” starring the incredibly versatile actor Jamie Bell and “Patti Cake$” star Danielle McDonald. Bell plays Bryon Widner, a real-life white supremacist who, in 2006, decided to leave the racist collective he’d been a part of his entire life. Consequently, through the help of One People’s Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center, he also made a pledge to remove his racist face and body tattoos through excruciatingly painful procedures over the course of several months. (The process has become the subject of a TV documentary called “Erasing Hate”.) In the role of Bryon, Bell draws a believable portrait of a despicable human being, finally facing his own evil and standing up to his clan, ran by Fred (Bill Camp) and Shareen (Vera Farmiga). Yet he doesn’t become really vocal about his growing doubts until a new young boy enters the ranks (only to be fed and have a place to sleep) and Widner meets and falls in love with Julie Larsen (McDonald), a single mother of three kids.

Widner’s journey often gets interrupted by the stylized scenes of tattoo removing, with title cards explaining to us exactly how many procedures he’s already gone through and what the current one entrails, accompanied by sensationalist tracks. While these images are frightening and look realistically painful, they aren’t effective in gathering our empathy for Widner, as his journey towards a change of heart gets sold short by the film—we find ourselves craving to know more. The murdering of his well-behaved Rottweiler in the hands of his former family similarly feels ill calculated in pulling the audience on Widner’s side. (Dog people: this tragedy is signposted clearly, yet be warned.) Though “Skin” is still anchored by layered performances, especially by Bell, who manages to bring forward Widner’s late-awakening compellingly even when a flat script doesn’t help him much. While “American History X” and this year’s Sundance-winning (and still distribution-less) drama “Burden” do a better job of capturing a journey of self-reconciliation, “Skin” leaves a lasting impression with the peeling off a shameful past and assuming of a constructive identity invested towards a hopeful future.

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