the sunday morning coffee table

A while ago, I listened to a sunday scaries podcast episode where they described their ideal sunday coffee table — a place where they have everything they need to lie on the sofa and hibernate for a whole day, and every week since I’ve thought about mine.

FILMS

A woman feels an unparalleled sense of desire with the new intern in her hugely successful company and they begin an affair. This film could’ve been much more fun if it didn’t take itself as seriously. It felt like Rejin really wanted to give us a Clear Feminist Message when she didn’t need to. The film is inherently feminist, it didn’t need the girlboss discourse added in. However, I did have a fun time watching this and the metaphor of desire was interesting enough to pull it through.

A woman decides to go into a natural disaster area after her husband comes back entirely changed from going inside himself. Finally got to this film - I wanted to have read VanderMeer’s original Southern Reach trilogy before diving into Garland’s take on it. I liked it, and appreciate how difficult it was to take on the mythology of three books into one film, but I did miss the feeling of mystery and eeriness that VanderMeer achieves so greatly in his way of storytelling.

The story of a theatre programme within Sing Sing high security prison in New York. This film left me in puddles of tears. It both depicts the importance of art and embodies it. Colman Domingo’s performance is a gift (so is everyone’s, to be honest). It made me reflect on and reaffirm my love for film. I adored it.

An aspiring actress gets broken up with while she is ill and in her heartbreak meets a strangely charming monster that lives in her closet. The narrative devices in this made me so happy, a love story that is simultaneously charming and a metaphor about falling back in love with ourselves. An incredibly impressive feature debut from Caroline Lindy.

A family’s happy life is disrupted during Brazil’s military dictatorship. I went into this film not knowing a lot about the story and I think that is probably the best way to watch it (hence my very sparse one-sentence description). I was floored by this film, Salles manages to create an extremely intimate portrayal of family life while tackling the hugeness of political context. Every performance is beautiful, Fernanda Torres is a powerhouse.

I also watched The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, The Wild Robot, Flow and more for an Academy Award guide, but it’s coming your way next week so I didn’t want to ramble on too long on here!

BOOKS

Linking into Annihilation, I finished VanderMeer’s original Southern Reach trilogy (still have the newer fourth book to read). Acceptance follows quite a different narrative style to the other ones, jumping through different times and narrators. I know a few people are thrown off by this, but it made sense to me as an original ending to the world of Area X as the best way to give us the most answers without fully unveiling the mystery.

I read this for Jessie Lethaby’s book club this month in conversation with Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (one of my all-time favourite books) and it was incredibly interesting. The Invention of Morel is one of the first Latin American sci-fi books, and its short length really worked for me. I do think Piranesi is perhaps a better developed way to show a lot of the concepts presented by Bioy Casares, but I appreciate the questions being posed in Morel at the time they were being asked. An impressively nuanced reflection on the mechanics of art, reproduction, and the selfishness of seeking immortality. Interestingly, Lost has a lot of its basis on this book, so if you’re a Lost fan - this one’s for you.

ARTICLES

A love note to the process of creating - whether that’s art or the way you dress. I’ve been seeing a lot around this lately, partly due to projects around me and partly because I think, with the rise of AI and trend-led art, it has become a more present conversation. From tweets about people running into others dressed in the exact same hyper-specific TikTok outfit to films like The Brutalist discussing the difference between process and destination, I think it’s more important than ever to understand why process is what makes us human.

I spent a lot of Trump’s inauguration day baffled by women I know to be anti-Trump sharing pictures of Melania Trump as a paragon of a) fashion and b) resistance. Some with disclaimers on the fashion part, knowing it’s “not good but she dresses well”. While I understand the interest in analysing the first lady’s fashion choices as actively political, let’s not be naive about what we’re doing when we elevate someone to fashion icon. This article put words into the discomfort I felt in the day and how dangerous casual conservatism has become.

Even though she’s been portrayed as this quiet, almost lifeless doll— easy for liberals to project their “she hates her husband, she’s just like us!” image onto and for conservatives to depict her as the optimal, quiet but loyal wife— it can’t be ignored that she is complicit4 in the election of and the narrative behind a man who wants to strip rights from those who need them most.

A lesson into the history and makings of Hamas, what it has represented to Western and Israeli politics and how from occupation comes a resistance that may not play into our morality or righteousness, but becomes almost inevitable.

ALBUMS

Like every other woman after watching A Complete Unknown, I fell into a hole of listening to Joan Baez’s old albums. Diamonds & Rust has become my companion while working this week.

PODCAST

A very quick listen that reminds us what the citizen opposition to Trump and Trump-like figures must look like. It’s no longer “don’t normalise his discourse”, it’s “don’t believe his discourse”. And if this week has left anything clear to me, is we need to resist Trumpian politics more than we ever have.