Come a feeling worth feeling

In a 1947 essay reprinted with the Criterion DVD of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (1946), which rushthatspeaks and I watched this afternoon, Cocteau wrote, "To fairyland as people usually see it, I would bring a kind of realism to banish the vague and misty nonsense now so completely outworn . . . My aim would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: 'And they had many children.'" Which is nicely subversive, but what really interests me is that I think he only half succeeded. The Beast is monstrous, sympathetic, and infinitely more attractive than Jean Marais' mirror-role of Belle's suitor Avenant, so that the audience is as taken aback as Belle to find her familiar Beast changed physically for a man she seems to describe as that jerkass friend of my brother's I thought was hot, but the film manages its happy ending nonetheless because it requires its characters to discuss the Beast's transformation, not just accept it as the natural reward of a fairy tale. It works because Belle is dismayed, needing to look past the prince's almost absurd handsomeness to find the feral, vulnerable kindred spirit she discovered under his first, snarling mask: "It's almost as if you miss my ugliness." It works because of how suddenly uncertain Marais' prince looks as he asks, "Are you disappointed that I look like your brother's friend?" Her answer is smilingly given, but telling: "I'll have to get used to it." And whether Cocteau meant to leave the possibility of happiness in that ambiguity or whether it slipped in despite his best efforts, it works for me because the film is full of appearances that can and cannot be trusted. Magic in this world is literally smoke and mirrors. The simplest tricks of cinema are the most uncanny: candles light themselves because they are snuffed out in reverse. (I'm wondering just now if Peter Greenaway took the runaround statue of The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) or the naked elementals of Prospero's Books (1991) from the human arms that hold the candelabra, the way every statue in this movie is living-actor alive. He certainly knew how to stage a film like a Dutch painting, as Cocteau designed the interiors of Belle's father's house.) The Beast's spell-broken beauty is no more a guide to his true self than his enchanted beastliness. And I have no idea if they'll have children at all.

Also, that scene where the Beast drinks out of Belle's cupped hands, his muzzle against her palm and his tongue, lapping, sounds as strong and rough as a cat's: that is ridiculously hot. I'm not sure I noticed when I saw the film in high school. I should re-read Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride."

Otherwise it was a very good evening: for dinner we made twice-cooked coriander tofu out of Andrea Nguyen's amazing Asian Tofu (2012), substituting ginger for galangal, amchur for tamarind, and serving the whole thing over egg noodles instead of rice, and onde onde with palm sugar and coconut out of her equally amazing Asian Dumplings (2009) without needing to substitute anything for the pandan extract, because I had found it in Rush's spice cupboard while double-checking the coriander. There was a terrific thunderstorm going on the whole time; we are fairly certain the house was struck by lightning, because just as we were starting with the deep-frying of the previously marinade-simmered tofu there was an almighty bang and every window in the house shook. It was louder than any strike I can remember hearing, including the time the telephone pole on the corner was vaporized during a snowstorm. My ears were still ringing slightly as we were kneading (with great skepticism, because glutinous rice flour turns into elementary-school oobleck when you add water, especially if you are flavoring it with pandan, which is the iconic shade of green) the dough for the dumplings. I guess lightning rods do something after all.

And gaudior came home without having disappeared in the storm and liked the food and talked to me about Bent, which I am thinking of seeing if I really want to cheer myself up. And it had mostly stopped raining by the time Rush gave me a ride home. And I should really be asleep by now.

So, yes. Success.