Wednesday, 27 July 2016

Love and Friendship

This weekend, my parents and I decided to have a family day, so we spontaneously went to the cinema and saw 'Love and Friendship', which is based on the Jane Austen novel 'Lady Susan'. My mum, being an Austen fan, obviously chose the film and because I've watched all the BBC versions of her novels, I appreciate the satire and witty conversations. Dad, on the other hand, goes because my mum says so, and even though it wasn't the most mind-blowing film in the world, it was enjoyable.

The protagonist, Lady Susan is a widow and has a reputation for being flirty. She is manipulative to the people around her in order to live a comfortable life for herself and to secure a future for her daughter. Despite her taking advantage of the misguided, I was definitely hoping she would get things her way at the end, because I admired her cunning thought process. The film itself was presented with a lighthearted manner, with the introduction of characters been put in a spotlight and a written description of who they are in relation to others and their characteristics, which I found really amusing. It was quite a funny film, especially the character Sir James Martin, who is a bumbling fool. But not as amusing as my dad...

There are sometimes families who are embarrassing in theatres, cinemas, official ceremonies, etc. My family is one of them. Like when it was my high school celebration night when I was in my final year, and my year level had to stand at the front of the stage and have the rest of the school sing at us. Unfortunately, my dad who was sitting in the audience,  made eye contact with me and I could see him laughing at me and the ridiculousness of it all, which made me have to suppress my own laughter. The previous year, my dad smuggled in jelly beans to the school event to make it bearable (because believe me, those school functions were so boring) and he tried to open the packet without making noise. In the process, he opened them down the middle and the jelly beans went flying everywhere. I think that was the same year my parents and I parked far away and had to walk through a public park and the sprinklers turned on and we had to run across the grass, laughing and ended up soaking wet.
Yesterday at the cinema, when the lights went down and the screen lit up, dad started laughing and whispered to me that the man sitting in front of him, who was bald, his head was glowing and reflecting the screen. Now, when my dad laughs, he can't stop. So for the first ten minutes of the film, my dad was hysterically laughing, while I was struggling to keep a straight face (I was silently laughing and tearing up), while also hiding my face from all the people surrounding us who didn't understand why these crazy people were laughing. Mum was just as confused as the others, but I couldn't tell her what was going on until after the movie was over, because, like I predicted, as soon as I told her, she started laughing loudly... and the sad thing is, it wasn't even that funny.
I love my parents.




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