Junk Journal With Good Enough Zentangle

For those interested, here is my media consumption over the last week. 

 

Both All Fours and Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry are about a 48 year old woman thoroughly embracing and exploring her sexuality. While both stories feature some pretty explicit sex and both are, at least in my opinion, worth watching, the stories are quite different.

All Fours, as described by the publisher:

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.

 

In the Irish Times Blackbird, Blackbird, BlackBerry is summarized:

Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) is a 48-year-old woman living alone in a village in Georgia. Having lost her mother to ovarian cancer, Etero dutifully tended to her father and brother while they were alive. Much to the snide amusement of her frilly local contemporaries, Etero has never wanted a husband, preferring blackberry-picking, cake and solitude. “If marriage and dicks brought happiness, many women would be happy,” she tells a frisky customer in her store.

One fateful morning, distracted by the bright-beaked thrush of the title, she loses her footing and falls into a ravine. This near-death experience provides an unexpected romantic catalyst. She practically pounces on a delivery driver named Murman (Temiko Chichinadze), who is simultaneously smitten and surprised. “I didn’t think you liked me,” he says.

“Forty-eight years of virginity” then gives way to puppy love, albeit between post-teens. It’s an unexpected turn for a fiercely independent woman. Strange medical symptoms, including hot flushes, compound Etero’s inner conflict. Her neighbours shrug off these ailments as perimenopausal effects. Etero, however, becomes fearful that she will succumb to the condition that killed her mother.

Let me say that the two best streaming services, at least in the United States, are the Criterion Channel and Mubi. If you live in the US and you are interested in trying one or both out, then contact me via DM and I have a month of free service I can send you.