recluse

Same territory as TV Glow, a few years further on, and I think I liked it more. Gillian Anderson plays Billy big, with velvet, fur and a Southern draw. She’s great. Hannah Einbinder underplays Kris against her, which is right as two Billys would have been too much. Alex G is back for a third Schoenbrun score, which I’ve been listening to and enjoying for the past few weeks. One of the cues is called ‘Slasher Climax’, which is, well… let’s just say the central theme of this film took me longer to work out than I’d care to admit.

The sort of high-concept swing nobody risks any more (which is of course a small tragedy). What struck me most was this: do this exact film with football and it’d be insufferable, yet with baseball it’s earnest and earned. The mundanities of another country’s sport arrive here as something close to myth. We don’t have that for football. Partly the game’s class baggage, partly a national suspicion of taking it too seriously, of being caught intellectualising a thing that’s meant to be felt. Costner stands in a cornfield talking to ghosts and it plays straight. Try the equivalent featuring a centre-half on a wet Tuesday in the Championship and you’re looking at something vastly different.