Winter Edition: Pleasurable Encounters
Pleasurable Recommendations by Yours, Truly
We’re back with Pleasurable Encounters — a way to share recent Pleasures I’ve experienced, and a recommendation guide of sorts for Pleasure-seeking. I hope some of these Pleasures provide inspiration for you to go out and gather some of your own Pleasure, and guide you towards a closer encounter with personal joy. I hope to make these recommendations part of paid subscriptions in the future, so please do subscribe and upgrade as to not miss out.
These Encounters range the gamut Ω —from experienced Pleasure, to select objects that provide tangible Pleasure, to brushes with the the austere and the ostentatious. Some weeks may lean more practical i.e. things you can commodify and replicate, other weeks more personal, i.e. a peek into my diary, a moment shared. Let me know your thoughts, your Pleasures and more below.
Wintery Pleasurable Encounters
Hello, dear earthlings. When I check my weather app on my phone as of late, the forecast tells me to expect a “wintry mix.” I have, indeed, been ingesting a heavy diet of culture — that of the “wintry mix” variety. Cozy films with hearty depth of field; hefty stews of the moorish origin; books with icy interiors, or exteriors; warm environs that bring spirits alight.
Watch
Two disparate genres have occupied my film-watching1 as of late:
“Starting Over”
Vegas
Starting Over
The 1st Genre is comprised of two films: Starting Over (1979) and A New Leaf (1971). Both films have a ‘70s kitschy humor to them, deal with themes of marriage (A New Leaf) or divorce (Starting Over) and encapsulate that slapstick, hokey mood that paved the way for so many films to come.
Here’s some background from Criterion’s “Fresh Starts” Collection:
In these portraits of dreamers, outsiders, and risk-takers, characters yearning for renewal seek reinvention through everything from the promise of new love to the freedom and adventure of life on the road (LOST IN AMERICA). Capturing both the exhilaration of starting again and the messy realities that come with the process, these films are a testament to the all-too-human impulse to begin again.
Starting Over (1979), Directed by Alan J. Pakula, Starring Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh, Candice Bergen (mother of Vogue’s Malle, Chloe)
Burt Reynolds is Phil Potter, a magazine writer whose life crumbles when his wife (an Oscar-nominated Candice Bergen) leaves him to pursue her dreams of a music career. Seeking a fresh start, Phil moves from New York to Boston and meets Marilyn (Jill Clayburgh, also Oscar-nominated), a free-spirited schoolteacher who tries to help him move on with his life.
Starting Over reminded me of An Unmarried Woman (1978), if it was told from the male perspective — funny enough, both films star Jill Clayburgh!
A New Leaf (1971), Directed by Elaine May, Starring Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston
Elaine May stars as the endearingly awkward, plant-obsessed heiress Henrietta Lowell, whose fortune becomes the target of trust-fund-depleted patrician wastrel Henry Graham (Walter Matthau), who’s willing to go as far as marriage and murder to get his hands on it.
Vegas
The 2nd Genre is comprised of a few films I watched in succession: Priscilla (2023), The Last Showgirl (2024), and Lost in America (1985).
