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"Set Me Free" | page 1, 2
And in one gorgeous and surprising scene, Hanna shares a deeply passionate underwater kiss with Paul. They've been swimming playfully, like the kids they still are. The kiss happens spontaneously, the result of an obvious jumble of confusion, curiosity and misguided longing, and the fact that it takes place beneath the surface reinforces its intimacy and otherworldliness -- it's an action that poses the question, Does a kiss count if it takes place in an alternate universe? The two pull apart quickly, and Paul swims to the surface. Hanna lets herself sink to the bottom and folds there, fooling him into thinking she's drowning. After he has dragged her to the surface -- his panic and fear that she really may have drowned are written all over his face -- she breaks her death's mask facade and laughs. The aftermath of the kiss is almost as touching as its occurrence: Hanna, realizing how potentially confusing the kiss is for both of them, takes the responsibility of shattering its spell with a practical joke. All of Pool's characters are subtly drawn, particularly Hanna's parents. (And in coming-of-age stories, it's almost always the parents, the "aliens," who are handled most roughly.) Pool shows the desperation of Hanna's mother in small ways: We see her taking a break from her dismal sewing job, cracking open a chocolate bar and eating it desperately and furtively, as if it were the only pleasure in life left to her. Hanna's father, in a moment of reconciliation after he's had a horrible argument with Hanna (and after she's faced a sexual experience that might have been devastatingly damaging to her), tells her he's going to make her some osso buco for dinner: "It has everything your body needs. Three carrots, an onion, grade A meat ... tomatoes, celery ..." The simplicity of the gesture -- not to mention his unawareness of its limitations -- is heartbreaking, but it also offers us a kind of relief. Hanna's teacher, recognizing the difficulties she's having with her father, has assured her, "He loves you. Badly, perhaps, but I'm sure he loves you." And when he offers her that osso buco, we see that it's true. Aside from the effectiveness of "Set Me Free" as a coming-of-age story, it's also one of the most poetic avowals of love for movies that I've seen in years. As Hanna watches Karina's Nana on-screen, drinking in the sight of her playful flapper bob and her sooty, seductive eyes, we see more than just delight and fascination on her face. Hanna loves Karina's Nana just as Godard intended us to, and just as he loved her himself. Why shouldn't Hanna want to become Nana, to drink in that vision of feminine beauty and freedom (albeit freedom with responsibility attached) until it becomes inseparable from who she is? Watching Nana in the semidarkness of the movie theater, Hanna becomes suddenly radiant, as if a transformation were taking place, gradually but rapidly, between the flicker of frames. Pool reminds us that growing up happens just that fast, and just that slowly. Blink and you'd miss it -- if only it didn't hurt so much.
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