Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes and clips and puts it all in perspective.
If you've ever thought to yourself that being a model isn't that interesting and then you stopped yourself and decided you didn't give the industry enough credit, The Model is here to tell you that you had it right the first time. You know what? Anybody can rattle off cliches about what it's like to be a model. Move to Paris. Fall in love with a moody photographer. Struggle with temptation. But not everyone will go out and make a movie with all those cliches in it. That's commitment.
Imagine if, while making this movie, someone said, “I feel like some of this has been done this before. Like when the model discovers the photographer kissing another model. Or when the model get jealous and throws things in the hotel room, Can we put a spin on it?” The producers had to dig in: “No surprises in this movie, damn it, that's NOT the vision, that's not how we're doing this. Now let's light the scene where the model stands on the balcony and stares off into the middle distance and let's get it right this time!”
If there's a surprise at all, it's how much it all conforms to what our expectations would have been if we didn't overthink it. If you thought a movie called The Model might be ironic, that its simple title belies a much more imaginative story, then you were WRONG! And you know what? Sometimes you get exactly what you pay for. You go to a restaurant and order a hamburger, you get a hamburger. You like the band Bad Company? Well they have an album called Bad Company featuring a song called 'Bad Company.'
It's not fancy, but we don't always need fancy in our lives. And that takes us back to the meta commentary of The Model. Models are fancy, but do they like it? No. Never. And sooner or later, they're playing with the knives they find in the kitchen drawer. So let's try not being fancy for once in our miserable lives.