Why this movie? It showed up in a list of new additions on Kanopy, and I liked what both this poster and the title itself promised about its content. So for the first time in a very long time, I watched a movie I knew nothing about, that wasn't a new release on one of the streamers. (Plus, as I've written previously, the end of the month is the perfect time to use up your Kanopy credits because you can't take them with you.)
So glad I did. What a good movie.
One of my favorite things about Ben and Suzanne was its specificity. The title characters are an American couple in a long-distance relationship, because she has taken a job in Sri Lanka and they don't want to break up. She works for an NGO that gives small loans to female-run businesses, which is usually a fulfilling calling, except when she has to go try to collect on the loans, which is what she's doing now. In fact, she did not expect to be doing it because she thought the ten days over Christmas and New Year's were going to be a proper vacation for her and her partner, who is visiting from parts unspecified in the U.S., only her boss had other ideas. He's Indian by heritage and can understand a little Tamal, which might help in collecting the debts, which he reluctantly agrees to do even though this was supposed to be a holiday. As is usually the case with long-distance relationships, each new time together is a mini referendum on the relationship, because things have changed in the intervening time and you have to suss each other out to see if the other one is still committed. And of course there are awkwardnesses over physical intimacy and differing needs, plus the usual logistical nightmares involved in any trip through a third world country. Ben and Suzanne are played excellently by Sathya Sridharan and Anastasia Olowin.
But you know my favorite specific thing about this movie?
There is a running plot point about Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, my #55 on Flickchart.
How unexpected was that?
Ben and Suzanne spoilers to follow.
Early in the film, Ben asks Suzanne what the insect threat is like here, and whether we're talking Starship Trooper level. Just that single name drop would have been fun enough, but not worthy of a blog post.
But Suzanne says she hasn't seen it, and Ben responds with incredulity -- especially since he thought they watched it together that time in that hotel in Maine. (Another great bit of specificity in the script.) That's one of the other things that happens during these "reunions," where it becomes clear that something has gone out of synch and that the two don't remember the same things about the relationship, almost as though one is gaslighting the other -- and it's usually a portent of worse things to come, which it is here.
So Ben goes on a quest to find Starship Troopers in rural Sri Lanka, and he actually succeeds on the first attempt, which they both find to be a bit of a miracle. They don't actually have a DVD player, though I don't think this is mentioned at the time.
Lo and behold, a few days later it's Christmas, and Suzanne has acquired a DVD player as a gift to Ben. He's chuffed, to use the Australian term. They're finally going to get to watch Starship Troopers.
Only there's a region mismatch. The DVD is region 1 while the DVD player would be (checks internet) region 5. They both luxuriate in exquisite but funny disappointment.
You'd think that would be it for Starship Troopers in the story, but of course you wouldn't actually, because if you are familiar with even the basic elements of screenwriting -- especially romcom screenwriting, which this broadly is -- you know the final callback is still coming.
So a few days and an apparent breakup later, the two are staying in separate rooms at their final destination on the trip, and Ben notices that Starship Troopers is playing on TV that night. Perhaps unusual New Year's Eve programming, but not the craziest you've ever seen. He goes over to her hotel room to tell her, but she's not there. Back in his own room, he faints.
Later when the movie is actually starting, she's had the TV on in the background, and hears it announced. Even though she's mad at Ben, that resolve is already crumbling and of course she gets a delighted look on her face -- and it helps that she's broken a choice to go dry, having gotten silly on wine. (Don't worry, she's not an alcoholic, she was just going dry for unspecified reasons.) She's interested enough to leave the movie on but not to contact Ben about it.
When it ends and she's loved it, she goes to find Ben, only to learn he had to be taken to the hospital. (He had terrible food poisoning a few days earlier, and this might be part of that.) That's when she (drunkenly) rushes to the hospital, kind of the equivalent of the rushing through the airport scene at the end of most romcoms. (This movie will have its airport scene, but it has a decidedly different flavor, which is just one of this film's strengths.)
When they're reunited and Ben is, in fact, okay -- which we the viewers didn't know until this point either -- Suzanne gushes that she saw and loved the movie, and they go through about a minute's worth of rapid-fire sharing of the movie's best parts, not to mention a sophisticated overall take by Suzanne on the larger movie and what it's doing. And when I say a minute, I mean a minute -- not the 15 seconds that would have been enough. They get it -- Starship Troopers is awesome both on the macro level of its themes and the micro level of its gore and action scenes. They've finally reconnected, even if it might be for the last time.
I'm just sitting here watching this with a big dopey grin on my face.
You might have thought from the title of this post that I was going to come up with a sort of listicle of other times movies I've loved have factored into the plots of other movies I might like or even love, but the truth is, I really just wanted to talk about this movie. I hope you'll see it, even though I've spoiled it.
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