Sinister Subtitles

So. Jackie and her mom Joyce (or “Foyce”, her secret-agent-Mom-computer-geek code name) invited me to catch a movie and some dinner with them.

It was Saturday afternoon and I was snuggled up with my best bud (laptop) and we were in for a frivolous afternoon of “Let’s try and find more widgets for the blog!” I was dressed in my Saturday afternoon finery: shorts that I bought at Cuffy’s (Cape Cod) without trying them on…they’re about 4 sizes too big…with a drawstring at the waist…and are made out of the same material they use for big fluffy towels at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Connor likes to dry his hands on them. (These are literally the only pair of shorts I own.)

Add to that a tank top that announces CAPE COD, Massachusetts. Clinton Kelly is a huge fan of these shirts: “T-shirts imprinted with city names should only be worn by those too brain-damaged to realize where they currently are.” Oooooh, SNAP! (Honestly, I think Clinton was in a foul mood when he wrote this particular critique…he’d just returned from filming in Vegas and I’m thinking he was majorly sleep-deprived…as he’s usually such a laid-back, mild-mannered critic of the fashionably-challenged.)

To complete my ensemble, I had on one pink and one white flippie (you know…FLIPPIES…flops, thongs…whatever). Why different colors, you ask? Because for some stupid reason, I can never find the mate for any of my shoes in that big box in my closet...why is this so difficult, I do not know. I take them off together…they should be near each other…wouldn't you think? Nowadays…if I’m staying in, I just can’t be bothered.

Now that you have a proper “mental snapshot” of my attire/attitude/environment, you can imagine that I had quite the debate as to whether I wanted to give all that up for dinner and a movie.

So, okay…it took me about 5 seconds to call Jackie and say “YEAH! Name the place and time, BAY-BEE!”

Jackie’s version of a “movie” is evidently a far cry from mine. See, she’d arranged for us to see an “Independent Film”…which is Jackie-code for a foreign film…in another language…with subtitles. The film was entitled “Blood Art” and the film’s description read:

"Blood Art" follows detective Giacomo Curreli as he investigates the murder of elderly Signora Marcucci in Sardinia. Is the perpetrator the moody artist who lives upstairs, the strung-out niece of the signora's housekeeper...or are more sinister forces at work?

Oh, boy! I get to spend the next two hours watching a moody artist and a strung-out niece get investigated for the murder of one elderly Signora Marcucci! I wonder why it was important for us to know ahead of time that she was “elderly”…? Was this actually a skillfully-veiled clue as to the identity of the killer? Possibly the “Medic Alert” people of the infamous “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” fame….maybe she refused to pay her bill:

And so, with the dimming of the lights, we were off to Italy. We met the moody artist (who spent the lion’s share of the movie without a shirt on…not that I’m complaining, mind you…just thought you should know, for your own edification.) Anyway, there was a guy-lead-detective, with some Italian name…and a girl detective…who kept calling him “Superintendant”, which may or may not have been an Italian code-name for “guy I’d really like to have hmm-hmm with, but since he says he’s happily married…(although we never do actually see his wife and supposed two-point-five children; we can only assume they existed in some parallel-Italian-universe…) I’ll just spend the entire length of this award-winning film batting my eyes at him and making sure he knows in every scene possible that I’m NOT wearing a bra.”

I noticed there were these l-o-n-g spews of Italian dialogue…”Carbana etulio garbonza beans piscuito alonga marto martini flamboosa bilingua carpottio tay infusio morticia”…which would translate on the bottom of the screen to “Let’s talk.” It left me more than a little suspicious that we might not be getting our full money’s worth out of this dialogue...

Maybe they’re assuming that we “stupid foreigners” can’t read any faster….and perhaps they are correct. I DO know that I was rooting around in my purse at one point and I missed several vital-to-the-integral-plot lines of dialogue…I’d temporarily forgotten that the only way to follow the story was to READ for TWO HOURS. So, I had a choice to make.

I could:
A) keep quiet and hope that by reading extra fast and never blinking for the next 90 minutes that I’d miraculously surmise the information I’d missed, or
B) I could try and whisper to the “J’s” around me for a clue.

I went with Plan “B”.

K: (In loud stage-whisper)“Pssssst! Jackie! What just happened? I was tryin’ to find a mint…and now I don’t know….who is that guy?”

Jackie: “What?”

Joyce: “Calducci did it.”

K: “What? Did they say that?”

Jackie: “Did they say what?”

K: “What did Calducci do? What did I miss? I was getting a MINT.”

Joyce: “No, thanks.”

Jackie: “Okay.”

(This is the point where I realize that they both think I’ve offered them a mint…so, I lose more written-translated-dialogue whilst I root around ((again)) for more mints…)

K: (Whispers)“Who was that other guy?”

Joyce: “Which guy? The Italian guy?” (Smiles)

K: (Snickers) “The guy standing on the basketball court…who is he and what did he say?”

Jackie: “Where’s my mint?”

K: “This movie is stupid.”

Jackie: “What?”

K: “I said ‘Here’s your mint’…”

The music swelled…whilst we watched some form of goose-herd flying off into the sky…then, there was the pre-requisite car chase…followed by the shot of the guy-Superintendant-detective standing on the beach…while the cameraman walked 360 degrees around the guy with the camera zoomed in so close I could see a little bitty bit of earwax in his ears…whilst the guy looked soulfully out at the surf…while probably thinking in his head “I wonder what’s for lunch today? And did I remember to turn off the iron? Hmmmmm…..”

In the end, the movie was….predictable. Especially since Joyce had accurately predicted who’d done it. They “collared the perp” and the girl detective got in one meaningful smooch before the guy detective said he had to go find his imaginary wife and kids. (I think he just wasn’t that into her.)

The dinner after was FABULOUS.

The restaurant had Cloudy Bay!

I believe the food was delicious, but I can’t be sure.

Did I mention that they had Cloudy Bay?!?