When Beyoncé released her acclaimed album, Lemonade , in 2016 , she was not only responding, once again, to the prejudices that were held about her as an artist but also taking control of the narrative of the ups and downs of her marriage to Jay Z. With “If life gives you lemons, prepare lemonade” as a leitmotif , the singer moved with ease through different rhythms, but without forgetting what was the driving force behind her project: building something powerful from heartbreak.
As a consequence, Lemonade had its inevitable visual accompaniment, a film tailored to that great album in which Beyoncé went through all the stages of a relationship on the verge of breaking down. From grabbing a bat to destroy a car as a way of achieving catharsis to the reconciliation that comes at the end, with an arduous path traveled, the artist delivered a visually striking work that elevated the album and in which she spoke for herself, without intermediaries, without the need to expose oneself to press questions or resort to damage control. Thus, Lemonade recorded the rawest side of married life, a life in constant movement, a life as extraordinary as it was common. Her protagonist was planted in reality and she became closer to her audience. In the end, it is difficult not to empathize with someone who is not afraid to show her wounds, with someone who shows herself to be human in the face of attacks.
This Friday, Jennifer Lopez released her brand new album, This Is Me…Now and its visual addition, This Is Me…Now : A Love Story , a film directed by Dave Meyers that is already out available on Amazon Prime . As for its objective, it is not far from what Beyoncé did eight years ago: to enhance her recording work with a film that is the purest reflection of it, with an episodic structure in which her compositions shine, and in which can also take advantage of her magnetism as an actress. However, J.LO takes another path on a narrative level. Unlike her colleague, in her feature film - co-written by her with Matt Walton - the heartbreak in love is not approached with nuances but with an astonishing superficiality, as if it were a mere pretext so that the star can, once again, place herself in a place of superiority already seen in his Netflix documentary, Halftime .
This Is Me…Now is the way the artist found to “sell herself” as a lover of love, as a person who sacrificed other aspects of her life in pursuit of finding the purest relationship possible. Therefore, his film, which has musical scenes, sequences worthy of the popular romantic comedies that he has been starring in in recent decades, and dramatic moments that are dissonant with that visual exercise that wants to be kitsch and fails to do so, is neither neither more nor less than the portrait of an odyssey that concludes when Lopez returns to the arms of her true love: Ben Affleck . If this sounds cheesy, it's because the star is actually not afraid to embrace the saccharine, whoever likes it.
Three weddings and an epiphany: Lopez and the memory of her ex-partners
In a scene from her self-referential feature film, the star can be seen watching, in the solitude of her luxurious home, Our Happy Years , Sydney Pollack's romantic drama starring Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand . The “character” played by J.LO (a thinly disguised alter ego of herself) recites from memory the dialogues of that film focused on the difficulties of marital dynamics and appears distressed by constantly thinking, speaking and acting based on a couple. In line with this approach, Lopez exposes the details of her three marriages prior to her reunion with Affleck, from her short marriages with Ojani Noa and Cris Judd, to the longest one she had with the father of her children, the singer Marc Anthony. .
Within the revelations of her cinematographic event we find recreations of different therapy sessions (as a couple and alone) in which the singer reveals some of the reasons that led her to marry and divorce so quickly, such as the inability from her partners to support her in her career and her own blindness to recognize when something just isn't working. Lopez is not exactly direct in her “sticks” to her ex-husbands (the actors who play them do not look like them either, they are mere avatars with little prominence), but she does place herself in a place of vulnerability , so much so that she recognizes being victim of a pristine desire: to believe in love above all things.
When one of her therapy sessions ends, Lopez even tells her therapist (played by rapper Fat Joe , who best understood the register of a production that handles several tones with great difficulty) that she is not afraid of loneliness because she knew value yourself. Immediately afterwards, she goes out into the street and performs a musical number in homage to Singin' in the Rain that, far from reflecting female empowerment, is concatenated with the somewhat veiled appearance of Affleck , who also appears characterized as a conductor in the credits of the film. The contradiction becomes inescapable.
Although it is evident that This Is Me…Now is in dialogue with This Is Me…Then (her third album, released in 2002, precisely when she met the actor and director from whom she separated before getting married) and that it is a cyclical exercise with which Lopez returns to her true love, after the obstacles that there were along the way, the artist spends more time alluding to a possible reunion with her “soul mate” than recording the long-awaited moment of Affleck's re-entry into her life , one that It is set to music with songs from her new album that were left behind in 2000, with choreographies in which Lopez does shine with her body of dancers.
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