Word: aunts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Aunt Augusta chases after the dream of her youth and finds it seedless. Hers is a persistent past, and she dwells in reminiscence. She drapes herself in shoulder furs and slinky sequined gowns, and mannerizes the carefree '20s with every flourish of her cigarette holder. Her figure has the lines of Beardsley, and her history mimics the twists of those lines. Her life was all amour--she cavorted at their serenades, whirled waltzing in their arms, and made indulgent love to them. And when they abandoned her, she resurfaced like an invincible Molly Brown...
...Aunt Augusta crowds the apartment she shares with Wordsworth with souvenirs of her continental high life, but they give it only a faded ratty elegance. Her dresser-gleams with mirrors, powder jars and pin bowls; glass ornaments flash ever-where--curlicue knicknacks, gold cherubs, and a chandelier like an overturned wedding cake, are cheap reminders of now hollow dreams. For at seventy, she is unmarried, childless, and penniless, and the mauve colored gauze through which she views her world cannot protect her from...
...quite an ode to romanticism, Travels With My Aunt is more an elegy to its passing. The romantic Cukor has turned capricious skeptic, and sentiment becomes a gambol. The loops of his freewheeling narrative dip eagerly into the past and circle back a bit crestfallen. And in between, cherished romance turns sappy to the taste and drippy to the nth degree. Cukor has dished out sentiment in order to bid it fond farewell...
Whimsical, quirky, sensuous Aunt Augusta is Henry's last chance at life. For he has risked nothing, suffered nothing, lost loved, given nothing, dreamed nothing. Travelling, both to Istanbul and into Aunt Augusta's past, is Henry's initiation into life. As this provincial survives one mindblower after another, stiff primness relaxes into tolerance. Augusta tells him that his legal mother was in fact a virgin, Wordsworth substitutes that woman's ashes with cannabis, he is accosted by whores in a sleazy Paris nightclub while a stripper twirls platinum coated nipples in the spotlights. Aunt Augusta is Henry's wicked...
Cukor is proselytizing for the style of the good old days but he knows full well its illusions. He only half-heartedly retreats into a past he cannot believe in. As his camera traipses gaily through the scenes of Aunt Augusta's youth, lighting it in rich rose colors and tuning it to a soundtrack of syrupy violins, he risks distending what should be entertainment into statement...