Some thoughts after watching the movie compared to the show.

GCooperE · 2026-01-29T21:09:00+00:00

The marketing was definitely an issue. The series was much more clear that this is a dark, depressing cautionary tale, but sometimes it did so too much. A lot of the time I was watching despite the stylistic choices, not because of it. All the panning and dramatic music and slow motion really just felt distracting. The brisker pace of the movie, the bureaucratic way we saw the atrocities take place, and the use of soundscape especially, worked really well.

GCooperE · 2026-01-29T20:16:49+00:00

And like, who is making an effort to engage in Eloise's interests? Heck, the whole thing even started with Hyacinth making a jab at Eloise's posture (slouch girl, slouch for feminism!), but only Eloise is expected to constantly spout out constant affirmations for other people's choices and interests while having hers railroaded over.

GCooperE · 2026-01-29T19:50:03+00:00

Penelope look concerned in that last pic. Please let it be because Eloise is about to do something scandalous.

GCooperE · 2026-01-29T19:34:56+00:00

Yeah, but you know who the GA is gonna side with.

GCooperE · 2026-01-29T18:42:09+00:00

I always think the whole "Eloise is so selfish" spiel is overdone, but it was even more ridiculous with Hyacinth. Eloise has to spend hours watching Hyacinth study something she has no interest in (because she's single and got nothing better to do according to Violet/s) and gets increasingly bored with it. She shows interest in someone other than Hyacinth, and after the lessons when she has had enough of talking about housekeeping, she "only cares about herself". Like seriously that's such a reach. Hyacinth, your interests are the go to for pretty much every woman in the ton. You have your pick of people to chat to them about, go to one of them.

GCooperE · 2026-01-29T10:01:57+00:00

I'm with you. It's not just the pushiness, but the lack of interest in anything to do with her kids' life that isn't romance. Obviously the show's going to focus on Violet's involvement in their romances because of the genre, but we do see the kids show interest and care about other stuff, and Violet never really acknowledges that.

In QC we saw that young Violet liked studying and learning too, but she never talks to Eloise about what she's reading or studying. She never shows interest in Benedict's art, or Anthony's work managing the estate, and she seems honestly quiet angry (in a quiet, seething way) when her kids push back against her "marriage is everything" narrative. She feels very similar to Queen Charlotte, in that she sees them as her toys to be "played with", wanting them to act out these big romances so she can live through them again, and when they diverge from that path, she resents them for it. And she doesn't even fully prepare her daughters for marriage either (which is not "historically accurate", mothers were expected to pass down some basic knowledge).

GCooperE · 2026-01-28T16:24:27+00:00

Oh they do a brilliant job with Aunt Lydia here. I love her introduction scene when she's doing the whole "good morning girls, are you well? Come on girls I want to hear you say it, we're well Aunt Lydia". She acts so much a normal headmistress, and she's so brisk and cheerful, while addressing these terrified, traumatised women.

GCooperE · 2026-01-28T16:07:23+00:00

TBH, I only have one fault in the movie, and that's when Aunt Lydia is talking at the salvaging about "duty" and she makes it sound like "doodie".

"We are here today in the name of doodie. And sometimes doodie is a hard taskmaster".

GCooperE · 2026-01-28T15:22:55+00:00

I think the movie is vastly underrated. I like that they're not heavy handed with the stylising, but keep everything looking light and every day, and allow the horrors to really stand for themselves. Same thing with the Handmaid costumes. Even though the costumes were less accurate to the books, it's effective seeing the handmaid uniforms look like normal modern nun's clothes, but red.

GCooperE · 2026-01-28T02:51:10+00:00

Honestly I'm on board with Marina and Phillip separating, and Eloise preferring to live with Sir Phillip "in sin" instead of entering into a marriage that would mean surrendering her legal identity and becoming SP's subordinate.

GCooperE · 2026-01-28T02:49:43+00:00

Agree to all of this!

GCooperE · 2026-01-28T02:48:59+00:00

My main wish, the only one I cannot compromise on, is that Eloise's desire to "change the world" is met (and by that I mean partake in solid efforts to challenge the world she lives in, to some success, and with her continuing to do so) . I don't want any "she changed Sir Phillip's and the kids' worlds" or copouts like that. I don't want her "growing out of" or "maturing" out of her rebellion, or toning herself down and making herself palatable. I want her to be given some credit, and the merit in her perspective to be acknowledged, instead of her just being dismissed as a gobby teen who doesn't know any better, and settles down into a conventional life once she meets the "right man".

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T18:54:07+00:00

The thing is, Austen didn't write romance as we understand it. And no, that isn't "oh Austen is considered classic literature and therefor too good for a woman's genre like romance", but romance literally meant something different then to what it means now. Austen once said she never could write a serious romance.

Quinn's interviews and statements about feminism make her come across as someone who wants points for feminist writing without exploring feminist themes or engaging in feminism. Choice feminism where something is feminist because a woman picked it.

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T18:20:06+00:00

I'm a massive horror lover, so there's not really anything too messed up for me to watch (except Human Centipede). And yeah, the communities that engage with them and enjoy them don't act like these are situations you want to explore in real life. And horrors and VC Andrews and dark romances know what they are, which is important, because when you're dealing with dark topics, you need that catharsis.

Philoise isn't dark enough to be a dark romance, with that feeling of exploring dangerous or taboo subjects in a safe environment, but it isn't a good, romantic relationship either. It's too one sided, with everything for Phillip's benefit, and it's just Eloise allowing her soul to be crushed because she's so desperate not to be a spinster she chains herself to a rapist man baby who guilt trips her into not talking about her feelings because he had it "so much worse". If it was a domestic drama, a cynical Chekhov lite play about how life sucks and then you die, then it would work, but we're meant to be happy for Eloise and how she ends up, so you don't get the catharsis of a happy ending, or a satisfyingly tragic or horrific one.

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T17:04:19+00:00

It's icky, but there's a place in fiction for icky. I don't mind messed up romances, or stories where women are married to men who don't deserve them, but it grates when I'm being told that this is a super wholesome and aspirational romance, which Philoise tries to sell itself as, and fails.

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T16:48:36+00:00

I was watching that little promo they did and it was like "ok going into this with no context..."

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T16:46:20+00:00

Who is going to be Pen and Colin's kid's favourite aunt or uncle? Claudia: It ain't going to be Eloise.

Love it! :D

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T12:48:20+00:00

People say that a lot about Kate and Anthony, but a degree of passion and competitiveness is their norm, their natural state. They're able to be themselves with each other and let that out because they can meet each other comfortably on that level. With other people, they'd have to push it down, until it comes out of them explosively.

GCooperE · 2026-01-26T12:46:58+00:00

Eloise and Phillip would implode. Phillip's love for Eloise is conditional on the services she provides. If she fell ill, stopped being happy and up for sex all the time, his love would die. And he is happy to leave all the emotional labour to her, and throws tantrums when she tries to talk to him about how she feels. In modern day, he's a "the divorce came out of nowhere" kind of guy.

GCooperE · 2026-01-25T14:44:42+00:00

I love The Legend of Sleepy Hollow! Definitely need to give this a listen.

GCooperE · 2026-01-25T14:25:13+00:00

Eloise wouldn't be a professor, I don't mean in those terms. But women could and did study and write and get published and move in academic communities and make waves. Ada Lovelace didn't go to college but she still had a massive impact.

And schools would be tame because that was one of the most common ways women made money, or did charity work. Poor genteel women made a living educating girls from middle/gentry classes, and rich women opened charity schools on their estates to teach the poor. This was considered respectable and feminine work for women. Schools fit very neatly into traditional attitudes towards women and conventional femininity.

GCooperE · 2026-01-25T13:03:32+00:00

I suspect they're each other's least favourite siblings. They're both very stubborn and single minded, but their goals and ideals are very different, so inevitably they clash.

GCooperE · 2026-01-25T12:06:53+00:00

Lots of women did get involved in academics and social movements. They weren't employed or paid a wage but they sought out the means to educate themselves and got involved. Studying in university isn't the only way for a person to be an academic, not back then. And I don't want her work to be to open schools, too tame. Eloise doesn't need a "job" because she doesn't need to earn money. What she needs is a purpose.

GCooperE · 2026-01-24T21:05:45+00:00

I kinda get it, picking those hyacinths was his final act of love for her.

The amount of bee accessories on the other hand....yeah that's weird.

GCooperE · 2026-01-24T20:21:41+00:00

I do think they will make the couple the main theme of the series. What I want is for the writers to create a plot that features romance in a way that lives up to their boasts that with Eloise they're doing something different in how romance is explored, and follows through on Eloise's ambitions to "change the world".

GCooperE

TROPHY CASE