mmgreenberg

Someone once said we're born innocent and someone else said we're born sinners. The young girl Bug loses her innocence blow by blow, tries to do the right thing and then is accused of being to blame for everything that went wrong. She has to grow up being told she's no better than the worst of them.

Dysfunctional families have so many dynamics that no one gets out unscathed. But watching it all happen to poor Bug is heart-rending. Someone once said tragedy is cathartic. I don't know if ripping wounds open is all that good for a person but this movie made me feel alive to the pain that I guess is everyone's due. Slaid Cleaves the songwriter sings at both the beginning and end of this movie "Everyone is born to sorrow".

The merry-go-round of urban promiscuity, of flitting from sex partner to sex partner on a wave of contraception, the idea of face blindness is thought provoking. Before the plot even unfolds, a feminine acquaintance glorifies waking up not knowing where one is or with whom, as if it were the key to happiness. Not knowing with whom sounds like the kind of thing one laughs at in a loud bar or discotheque where the noise and music are so loud you can only pretend to hear the other person. The idea that such a neurological condition exists probably appeals to the same people who accept pills from strangers so as to join the EDM ooze that calls itself humanity.

It's tempting to come off as jaded and unmoved by Equals, as this movie's haters seem a really cool crowd to belong to, but if you've clocked in to a modern urban workplace lately and not been screened for emotional issues by trained professionals who really, really want to help you, you must be living out on the tip of the peninsula. So good luck to you as there are no drugs dispensed there and no self-help books and the air isn't even a comfortable 72 degrees 24 hours a day. What the heck are you still doing here anyway. You know we really want you to be contented and productive and satisfied. Please don't go.