Fatale Abstraction

I have a confession to make. You already know I like crap cinema, but sometimes the depth of my depravity goes around the back 40 and laps itself. I'm talking about the doo-doo-mud-pie that is Lifetime Channel. Proudly, I can say that tonight I watched only my second Lifetime channel movie ever, but that estrogen-heavy network is batting 1000 so far. Pegging on the shrieking in horror/eye-rolling/speechless quotient is quite a feat, indeed.

The first Lifetime movie I caught was flipping channels in a California hotel a couple years ago. The timeless gem that had me in ecstasies was a film called Mary & Tim in which Candice Bergen's Mary is seduced by the young buff retarded son of her best friend after the best friend's funeral. I love CB - she's just fun to watch, and all the while I can sense the wheels turning behind her eyes, "good gawd, is this what my career has come to? I was in Gandhi, for heaven's sake!" Good shit. Phlegmmy says check it out!

Then tonight, doing beadwork, I turned on the idiot box and was lured to the Lifetime channel yet again by something entitled "The Princess and the Marine." Paydirt!

Let's get started.

Synopsis - True story about a US Marine (actor sported a fade that needed a bit of a touchup, frankly - see photo top left) who falls in love with Bahraini chick who turns out to be a Cherokee princess - scratch that - Bahraini royalty. Yee haw. The decidedly less photogenic couple on the right, incidentally, are the real-life inspiration for this film.

So, they're in LURVE, and sneaking around ensues, but he's a good guy and wants to do shit by the book and not disrespect her. yay! So, she's got these Bahraini FBI-ish guys in suits with doo-rags and earpiece mics that are following her around. I kept thinking, damn, this Bahraini woman looks kind of La'in. Sorta like a Puerto Rican playing the Mexican Selena. They go to the movies and sit on the same row, separated by friends and empty seats, and the film they go see is "First Knight." Ugh. Translation - that may not have been what the real couple saw at the theater, but First Knight was such a colossal turd that surely it was cheap to reference it in this film. Cheaper than, say, the infinitely superior Killer Klowns From Outer Space. But I digress.

(Confession #2, this is the point where I flipped channels to watch 2 eps of My Name Is Earl, Juliette Lewis ep was great, btw)

So, I flipped back to catch the All-American marine/princess wedding in Vegas and the slap-on-the-wrist ceremony for the out'o'line Marine. This film was released in 2001. I was kinda yawning into my beadtray and wouldn't have even mentioned this here, except it was all made spectacular by the film's post script.

Old doodad girl got US citizenship in 2001, and they divorced in 2004.

I'll let that soak in.

So, long after the movie was released, and on a network that is of- by- and for the movie equivalent of Harlequin romance novels, they bothered to go in and add the tragic fact that this glorious, innocent, wonderful and pure-hearted love ended in d-i-v-o-r-c-e??? Way to kill a bad-movie buzz, folks. I cackled.

Kinda brings to mind the bristling irony of Lady Diana schlepping down the aisle with 100 pounds of meringue to marry a guy who all the world would later hear on tape moaning how he longed to be Camilla's tampon.

Ain't love grand?

And you know it's all made up

How come your face has ceased to be you?

All your doubts and greatest fears
They will be confirmed at the preview
Celluloid has shaped the day
And put the cat amongst the coughers
One business lunch on drugs
Now you're waiting for the next big offer
The Movie of Your Life John Wesley Harding

ADDENDUM: I thought of this just a short while ago. Candice Bergen - who is simply marvelous - lost her husband Louis Malle in 1995, and Mary and Tim was made in 1996, and she was executive producer. Perhaps she did that film to keep herself busy after the loss of a beloved spouse, which is perfectly understandable. And shit, it IS entertaining.