THE DUKE ON
HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT
HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT
Obsession. What the hell might it all boil down to, anyway?
An over-priced aftershave, yes. A fella throwing stones at a lady’s
window a few years ago for to recite lyrics at five o’clock in the
morning, yes. Nights spent lost in the tiny bump on a muse’s thigh,
owing to a tumble a many moons past, yes. Eyes alive with terror
and also giddy lust every time a lass walks past and takes the time
for to smile in the right direction, yes.
Obsession. The Duke knows a thing or two about it all, is the truth
of the facts of the case.
Seventy-nine sonnets a night for the object of one’s sticky
notions, yes. Entire narratives, an epic saga spread cross forty-
two volumes, a sci-fi opus concerning a colony of elves living in
Connor Oberst’s fringe, yes. A re-write of Paradise Lost concerning
the intricacies of Pete Doherty’s delightful hat, yes.
Obsession. A ballad about a tennis ball signed by Her sweet hand.
(And what of Self-Obsession? A burning desire for to catalogue in
great detail every beat of one’s blood-pump, irregular or
otherwise, every hand that gets said blood-pump high on notions of
beating along to a song she might wanna hear. Every thought thunk
in anger or jest, documented, and the lines blurred. Was he
hurtin’, was he jokin’, does it matter?
No, self-obsession has nothing to do with this article, which,
rather, lends its paragraphs to the obsession one might hold for an
external entity; i.e., a lass with a savage smile, or with long
black hair save for a couple strands of burning red, or for the
recorded works of Babyshambles and so on and so forth.)
Fuck my eyes, though, there ain’t no need to worry about a damn
thing that ain’t got anything to do with the following;
What you need to realise, see, is that this all relates to a French
picture by the name of He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, or, indeed, À
la folie... pas du tout, in which Laetitia Colombani explores the
notion of Obsession with the assistance of Audrey Tautou and her
fantastic smile, eyes and so on.
Stood outside a DVD emporium not so long ago, Sir Fleming, head of
Mondo Guerrilla Marketing, he approaches The Duke, the infectious
grin of the damned on his face, a DVD clutched in trembling hand.
“Take this”, he demands. “Marvellous!”
What it turns out to be is nothing less than the aforementioned
motion picture concerning Audrey and her Obsessions.
I dare say Sir Fleming wouldn’t have it any other way, I dare say
he’d go tartan with incomprehension if I left out the following
information;
Recently, Sir Fleming has become ensnared by Audrey’s smile, eyes,
hair and such. Suddenly no amount of Audrey can ever be enough.
Suddenly DVD’s are ordered from the most remote tribal colonies
scattered cross the globe, all in the hope of catching Audrey in a
hitherto undiscovered floral dress.
It turns out his deep affection for Audrey is comparable to my own
boundless worship with regards Kirsten. Just as The Duke will weep
in light of the beauty pouring from out Deeply or Lover’s Prayer or
Spider-Man 2, so Sir Fleming will presumably sit awe-struck as
Dirty Pretty Things or Amelie caresses his skull-blobs.
And true, who could fail to be ensnared by the delights of Amelie,
a motion flick which caused The Duke and plenty lesser critics to
mouth accolades along the lines of “A picture I dare say a fella
could bathe in for a decade and come out smelling only of the
desire to bathe anew!”
But Sir Fleming’s appreciation goes far beyond such common
triviality.
(Note – Perhaps Sir Fleming’s feelings towards Audrey, or The
Duke's with regards Kirsten, might be equated with the types of
obsession catalogued at the outset?)
(Note – No. Obsessions are something to be, for the most part,
approached with caution. The Duke’s selfless admiration of Kirsten,
of Her dimples, Her hands, Her smile and the like, this is
something akin to the admiration Michelangelo may have felt for
God's finger when he was painting the roof of yonder chapel.)
So a trade was made, and upon receipt of GG Allin – Savage South
1992, Sir Fleming parts momentarily with He Loves Me, He Loves Me
Not.
Now;
Sir Fleming knows full well that even though, in The Duke’s eyes,
Mona Lisa Smile is possibly the most beautiful motion picture about
Kirsten is a pupil at a strict boarding school to ever have been
etched in celluloid, I would never expect him to see it in such a
light.
Similarly, however agreeable I find Audrey, there is every chance
in the world I would baulk myself in two where I to be presented
with a good number of her works.
So when this motion-flick comes to reside for a time beside the DVD
Player, I have every reason to assume that it is the cinematic
merit, as opposed to simply the presence of Audrey in the feature,
that has led to such developments.
“Oh by fuck’s whiskers!” says a rent-boy’s been sitting on my sofa
for the past two hours, “Get to the point, for the love of god. Was
it any bastard good?”
I nod, say about “Hmm. Very.” He doesn’t hear, though, engrossed as
he is in the act of gluing thousands of playing cards together in
the likeness of a long-forgotten deity blessed with a thirst for
fathomless depravity.
(“Who is it?”, is what The Duke enquires. “Fucked if I know”, comes
the response, “but I bet He’d be awake for a month if He caught
sight of my thighs”)
The critical truth of the matter is that yeah, pretty much He Loves
Me, He Loves Me Not is wonderful.
A fella finds himself constrained, however, by the fairly devious
plot mechanics utilised therein, finds that every attempt to
provide some sort of synopsis, however fleeting, is rendered futile
on account of the fucking thing is eaten alive by spoiler moths the
second my hands touch key.
Myself and the fella dressed up like Harry Potter, with one hand
holding the book about The Half-Bred Princess or whatever and the
other thrusting a 9mm ‘gainst The Skull De Duke, we both tend to
shy from any writing pertaining to a work of Popular Culture that,
consciously or not, fucks the viewing / reading / listening
experience asunder on account of carelessly flinging plot details
left and right.
Oooh, it was a sled, oooh, he was his mum, oooh, the robot was
really a plant.
Potter won’t let me even consider telling you about the twists He
Loves Me, He Loves Me Not employs throughout. Every time I go to
say a damn thing about “*******mania” he pushes that steel that bit
harder gainst my flesh, gets to muttering about “Spoilers,
motherfucker, you spill an ounce I’ll spill your skull cross this
keyboard.”
But at some point a man has to throw his hands in the air like not
only does he care, but also, he cares enough to challenge the
fucker with the lightening scar and the hand-cannon. What I say is
something along the lines of I must offer at least a couple
sentences to the plot, for God’s sakes, and also, if you get one
inch closer, Potter, I’m gonna pot a couple knuckles upside your
kidney.
Potter sees sense. He says “I see sense.”
And so what occurs is that The Duke carefully, choosing every word
via a selection process involving factories in Kuwait and an opium
plantation in Sydney Harbour, says something along the lines of;
“What He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is all about, is that Audrey
plays an art student by the name of Angélique, a lass destined for
no end of critical adulation, on account of her paintings are
spectacular. Most of these paintings involve representations of
Loïc, a cardiologist who has apparently been engaging Audrey in a
bout of the old extra-marital filthing. Married, and worse, soon to
be a father, Loïc nonetheless appears to be infatuated with our
brown-eyed heroine.
Except no-one seems to be terribly sure that things are all as
wonderful as Angélique might like to believe. How come Loïc shows
next to no interest in her? How come he still smiles and kisses his
wife with the kinda genuine adoration not many folks could
successfully fake? (Although, granted, actor Samuel Le Bihan has
obviously mastered the art)
Is he being a nasty ol’ shit, leading our Audrey on, or is Audrey
all fucked-up in the mentals, obsessing over a fella who can hardly
be blamed for her love / lust / soakingness?”
Potter nods approvingly. “That’ll do, pig.”
So you can see, I dare say, how He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not might
invite any amount of musings concerning the nature of Obsession, of
Unrequitement. It exaggerates the horrors of it all, twists the
plot in all sortsa gasp-arousing directions, with the effect being
that Audrey’s situation comes to close to instilling the kinda deep-
rooted unease that the abundance of either obsession or
unrequitement in the day-to-day unceasingly flings at a fella’s
form.
It’s like in Buffy Season Two when she’s in love with Angel, but
holy shit, what happens when it comes to a head is that the
motherfucking fate of humanity is endangered. We get caught up in
it all not necessarily because we’re scared in the slightest by a
buncha shitty CGI and some reasonably diverting face-morph
tomfoolery, but because the emotional weight of it all rings true.
I know, Buffy, is what The Duke got to shouting. When relationships
fell to garbled fuck in high school, it was the fucking end of all
humanity. I ain’t never done fucked a fella turned out to be a
vampire beast blighted by some curse or other from down the ages,
but I did pine for a girl for much of fourth and fifth year, and
then next thing I know, at the very point when, Hollywood
Narratives would suggest, lips would lock to a swelling score,
possibly a Beatles hit re-recorded by Busta Rhymes, I got drunk and
fell over a table.
Next thing a fella knows it’s Unknown Pleasures on repeat. “I’m not
afraid anymore…” etc etc.
Next thing anyone would dare notice is that probably the sky is
twisting purple, apocalyptic contortions every which way.
So whilst, for sure, plenty of what Audrey gets up to in He Loves
Me, He Loves Me Not is reasonably alien to a fella, (like speaking
fluent French, for example), the emotional touchstones are all
struck with painful regularity.
The fella she loves just kissed someone else. I have no need to
relate a damn thing about sitting on a bus whilst the object of The
Duke’s then-affections swallowed the tongue of a reprobate drunk on
all manner of satanic brew right the hell behind me.
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not uses extraordinary colors to paint a
depressingly recognizable emotional tableaux.
“That’s nice, that right there, about the paint.”
The subject of The Duke’s Obsession as of July 2005, she’s reading
over my shoulder. “And too true”, she adds. “Everyone knows what
that burning feels like, when you wake up choking on your own
resentment for someone you never met, just because you know they’re
kissing your muse.”
I shrug, is all. Yeah, I have boundless hate for a gallery of
faceless fuckers could fill Venice thrice over.
“What was the flick like?”, she asks.
“Yeah, it was pretty good. Quirky. Bleak, but charming.”
“Nice.”
Thanks folks.
Fling The Duke An Email or Sign The Mondo Guestbook
An over-priced aftershave, yes. A fella throwing stones at a lady’s
window a few years ago for to recite lyrics at five o’clock in the
morning, yes. Nights spent lost in the tiny bump on a muse’s thigh,
owing to a tumble a many moons past, yes. Eyes alive with terror
and also giddy lust every time a lass walks past and takes the time
for to smile in the right direction, yes.
Obsession. The Duke knows a thing or two about it all, is the truth
of the facts of the case.
Seventy-nine sonnets a night for the object of one’s sticky
notions, yes. Entire narratives, an epic saga spread cross forty-
two volumes, a sci-fi opus concerning a colony of elves living in
Connor Oberst’s fringe, yes. A re-write of Paradise Lost concerning
the intricacies of Pete Doherty’s delightful hat, yes.
Obsession. A ballad about a tennis ball signed by Her sweet hand.
(And what of Self-Obsession? A burning desire for to catalogue in
great detail every beat of one’s blood-pump, irregular or
otherwise, every hand that gets said blood-pump high on notions of
beating along to a song she might wanna hear. Every thought thunk
in anger or jest, documented, and the lines blurred. Was he
hurtin’, was he jokin’, does it matter?
No, self-obsession has nothing to do with this article, which,
rather, lends its paragraphs to the obsession one might hold for an
external entity; i.e., a lass with a savage smile, or with long
black hair save for a couple strands of burning red, or for the
recorded works of Babyshambles and so on and so forth.)
Fuck my eyes, though, there ain’t no need to worry about a damn
thing that ain’t got anything to do with the following;
What you need to realise, see, is that this all relates to a French
picture by the name of He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, or, indeed, À
la folie... pas du tout, in which Laetitia Colombani explores the
notion of Obsession with the assistance of Audrey Tautou and her
fantastic smile, eyes and so on.
Stood outside a DVD emporium not so long ago, Sir Fleming, head of
Mondo Guerrilla Marketing, he approaches The Duke, the infectious
grin of the damned on his face, a DVD clutched in trembling hand.
“Take this”, he demands. “Marvellous!”
What it turns out to be is nothing less than the aforementioned
motion picture concerning Audrey and her Obsessions.
I dare say Sir Fleming wouldn’t have it any other way, I dare say
he’d go tartan with incomprehension if I left out the following
information;
Recently, Sir Fleming has become ensnared by Audrey’s smile, eyes,
hair and such. Suddenly no amount of Audrey can ever be enough.
Suddenly DVD’s are ordered from the most remote tribal colonies
scattered cross the globe, all in the hope of catching Audrey in a
hitherto undiscovered floral dress.
It turns out his deep affection for Audrey is comparable to my own
boundless worship with regards Kirsten. Just as The Duke will weep
in light of the beauty pouring from out Deeply or Lover’s Prayer or
Spider-Man 2, so Sir Fleming will presumably sit awe-struck as
Dirty Pretty Things or Amelie caresses his skull-blobs.
And true, who could fail to be ensnared by the delights of Amelie,
a motion flick which caused The Duke and plenty lesser critics to
mouth accolades along the lines of “A picture I dare say a fella
could bathe in for a decade and come out smelling only of the
desire to bathe anew!”
But Sir Fleming’s appreciation goes far beyond such common
triviality.
(Note – Perhaps Sir Fleming’s feelings towards Audrey, or The
Duke's with regards Kirsten, might be equated with the types of
obsession catalogued at the outset?)
(Note – No. Obsessions are something to be, for the most part,
approached with caution. The Duke’s selfless admiration of Kirsten,
of Her dimples, Her hands, Her smile and the like, this is
something akin to the admiration Michelangelo may have felt for
God's finger when he was painting the roof of yonder chapel.)
So a trade was made, and upon receipt of GG Allin – Savage South
1992, Sir Fleming parts momentarily with He Loves Me, He Loves Me
Not.
Now;
Sir Fleming knows full well that even though, in The Duke’s eyes,
Mona Lisa Smile is possibly the most beautiful motion picture about
Kirsten is a pupil at a strict boarding school to ever have been
etched in celluloid, I would never expect him to see it in such a
light.
Similarly, however agreeable I find Audrey, there is every chance
in the world I would baulk myself in two where I to be presented
with a good number of her works.
So when this motion-flick comes to reside for a time beside the DVD
Player, I have every reason to assume that it is the cinematic
merit, as opposed to simply the presence of Audrey in the feature,
that has led to such developments.
“Oh by fuck’s whiskers!” says a rent-boy’s been sitting on my sofa
for the past two hours, “Get to the point, for the love of god. Was
it any bastard good?”
I nod, say about “Hmm. Very.” He doesn’t hear, though, engrossed as
he is in the act of gluing thousands of playing cards together in
the likeness of a long-forgotten deity blessed with a thirst for
fathomless depravity.
(“Who is it?”, is what The Duke enquires. “Fucked if I know”, comes
the response, “but I bet He’d be awake for a month if He caught
sight of my thighs”)
The critical truth of the matter is that yeah, pretty much He Loves
Me, He Loves Me Not is wonderful.
A fella finds himself constrained, however, by the fairly devious
plot mechanics utilised therein, finds that every attempt to
provide some sort of synopsis, however fleeting, is rendered futile
on account of the fucking thing is eaten alive by spoiler moths the
second my hands touch key.
Myself and the fella dressed up like Harry Potter, with one hand
holding the book about The Half-Bred Princess or whatever and the
other thrusting a 9mm ‘gainst The Skull De Duke, we both tend to
shy from any writing pertaining to a work of Popular Culture that,
consciously or not, fucks the viewing / reading / listening
experience asunder on account of carelessly flinging plot details
left and right.
Oooh, it was a sled, oooh, he was his mum, oooh, the robot was
really a plant.
Potter won’t let me even consider telling you about the twists He
Loves Me, He Loves Me Not employs throughout. Every time I go to
say a damn thing about “*******mania” he pushes that steel that bit
harder gainst my flesh, gets to muttering about “Spoilers,
motherfucker, you spill an ounce I’ll spill your skull cross this
keyboard.”
But at some point a man has to throw his hands in the air like not
only does he care, but also, he cares enough to challenge the
fucker with the lightening scar and the hand-cannon. What I say is
something along the lines of I must offer at least a couple
sentences to the plot, for God’s sakes, and also, if you get one
inch closer, Potter, I’m gonna pot a couple knuckles upside your
kidney.
Potter sees sense. He says “I see sense.”
And so what occurs is that The Duke carefully, choosing every word
via a selection process involving factories in Kuwait and an opium
plantation in Sydney Harbour, says something along the lines of;
“What He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is all about, is that Audrey
plays an art student by the name of Angélique, a lass destined for
no end of critical adulation, on account of her paintings are
spectacular. Most of these paintings involve representations of
Loïc, a cardiologist who has apparently been engaging Audrey in a
bout of the old extra-marital filthing. Married, and worse, soon to
be a father, Loïc nonetheless appears to be infatuated with our
brown-eyed heroine.
Except no-one seems to be terribly sure that things are all as
wonderful as Angélique might like to believe. How come Loïc shows
next to no interest in her? How come he still smiles and kisses his
wife with the kinda genuine adoration not many folks could
successfully fake? (Although, granted, actor Samuel Le Bihan has
obviously mastered the art)
Is he being a nasty ol’ shit, leading our Audrey on, or is Audrey
all fucked-up in the mentals, obsessing over a fella who can hardly
be blamed for her love / lust / soakingness?”
Potter nods approvingly. “That’ll do, pig.”
So you can see, I dare say, how He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not might
invite any amount of musings concerning the nature of Obsession, of
Unrequitement. It exaggerates the horrors of it all, twists the
plot in all sortsa gasp-arousing directions, with the effect being
that Audrey’s situation comes to close to instilling the kinda deep-
rooted unease that the abundance of either obsession or
unrequitement in the day-to-day unceasingly flings at a fella’s
form.
It’s like in Buffy Season Two when she’s in love with Angel, but
holy shit, what happens when it comes to a head is that the
motherfucking fate of humanity is endangered. We get caught up in
it all not necessarily because we’re scared in the slightest by a
buncha shitty CGI and some reasonably diverting face-morph
tomfoolery, but because the emotional weight of it all rings true.
I know, Buffy, is what The Duke got to shouting. When relationships
fell to garbled fuck in high school, it was the fucking end of all
humanity. I ain’t never done fucked a fella turned out to be a
vampire beast blighted by some curse or other from down the ages,
but I did pine for a girl for much of fourth and fifth year, and
then next thing I know, at the very point when, Hollywood
Narratives would suggest, lips would lock to a swelling score,
possibly a Beatles hit re-recorded by Busta Rhymes, I got drunk and
fell over a table.
Next thing a fella knows it’s Unknown Pleasures on repeat. “I’m not
afraid anymore…” etc etc.
Next thing anyone would dare notice is that probably the sky is
twisting purple, apocalyptic contortions every which way.
So whilst, for sure, plenty of what Audrey gets up to in He Loves
Me, He Loves Me Not is reasonably alien to a fella, (like speaking
fluent French, for example), the emotional touchstones are all
struck with painful regularity.
The fella she loves just kissed someone else. I have no need to
relate a damn thing about sitting on a bus whilst the object of The
Duke’s then-affections swallowed the tongue of a reprobate drunk on
all manner of satanic brew right the hell behind me.
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not uses extraordinary colors to paint a
depressingly recognizable emotional tableaux.
“That’s nice, that right there, about the paint.”
The subject of The Duke’s Obsession as of July 2005, she’s reading
over my shoulder. “And too true”, she adds. “Everyone knows what
that burning feels like, when you wake up choking on your own
resentment for someone you never met, just because you know they’re
kissing your muse.”
I shrug, is all. Yeah, I have boundless hate for a gallery of
faceless fuckers could fill Venice thrice over.
“What was the flick like?”, she asks.
“Yeah, it was pretty good. Quirky. Bleak, but charming.”
“Nice.”
Thanks folks.
Fling The Duke An Email or Sign The Mondo Guestbook
