The Moon Under Water? Screen 1

This post comes to you inspired by this enjoyable epistle from the Failed Spinster, which provoked a humorous and most vocal response this morning.  


Being a classy professional with an arts degree I wouldn't deign to cross the threshold of a common multiplex to watch a mindless Hollywood offering, instead my viewing experience of choice is the indie cinema: with its classic movie posters, the aroma of espresso in the air, it is ever so slightly edgy- in a we show films with subtitles kinda way.  I am a cinema snob, and never again will I endure a film punctuated by adolescent texting and snogging, throwing what passes for popcorn around the auditorium, and listening to the mindless running commentary that pours forth from the imbecile sitting next to me.

Being a cinema snob, I watch movies in foreign languages, filmed in black and white and often with titles consisting of just one word.  I do this because I'm better than you.  I lounge around in the bar before the film drinking black coffee or overpriced European beer, poring over the Guardian culture section.  I seem absorbed in an article about whatever is currently filling the turbine hall at the Tate, but not so much that I can't glance around to check that I'm being seen.

At the snack counter I umm and ahhh between the fair trade popcorn, hand harvested by a new wave of beat poets in the Midwest, or the organic ice cream: made and marketed by a co-operative formed by the very cows themselves.  But that's nothing in comparison to the choice I had to make at the ticket booth.  Indie film #1: Silent movie from the '20s in a glorious new reprint (nothing at all like watching it at home on DVD), complete with pianist from the local arts college who will interpret it in a free jazz style.  Great.  Indie film #2: A plot-free sex romp in which an attractive girl will sleep with multiple older men and perhaps one woman.  The film will be in Spanish, Italian, or if you are unlucky, German; a motif in the final scene will represent the director's grand theory about the meaning of life.  The motif is likely to be a bull alone in a field.  This is the type of film that would be wholly unacceptable for someone like me to watch if it were in English, but as it's foreign: it's not a blue movie, it's art.

As it happens I opt for indie choice #3, the animated film that's probably aimed at kids, perhaps made by Pixar, but I can stretch it enough to say that it borrows heavily from the anime genre.  If that doesn't cut the mustard with my mates, I'll just say I enjoyed its postmodern pastiche of the cartoon genre; truth is I wanted to watch it when it premiered, but I just can't *bear* the kind of people who go to the multiplex.

So I settle down with my ice cream made by happy, unionised cows and my skinny macchiato doppio (marked with a caramel foam), all ready to mock the trailers.  In pops mum and two kids from the local independent school, you can tell by their deckchair blazers.  "Now, settle down you two," she implores, "this is a postmodern pastiche of the cartoon genre, I think you're really going get a lot from it."  I observe as she struggles with her scarf, trying not to spill her grande soy latte, when one of the kids pelts his brother with an object I don't recognise in the dark.  "Rupert," she yells, "don't throw olives at your brother!"  The younger boy begins to howl: "that one had a pimento in it, that really hurt!" and launches a return salvo of Japanese rice crackers.  

Yes, independent cinemas, an altogether classier viewing experience.