IDENTITY THEFT

Bling Ring tells the true story of a group of California high school students who rob luxury clothing and jewelry from Hollywood celebrities. The kids never really understand that what they’re doing is immoral, as well as illegal. And the movie, though it satirizes them gently, especially at the end, when they’re caught and brought to trial, doesn’t really make a judgment. Instead it looks more deeply at the way they use their loot (a black asymmetrical Lanvin cocktail dress, a quilted leather Chanel clutch, glossy pink Loboutin heels, a cookie-sized mens gold Rolex) to craft identities for themselves.

Their leader, Rebecca, says she wants to go to design school and have an accessories line, and her sidekick Brad says he wants to manage his own lifestyle brand. And all of them take turns styling one another before they step out together socially. But they’re not deeply interested in fashion, or even in celebrity. What they’re really interested in is crafting identities for themselves, as all teenagers are, both in social media and in the world. Their parents and teachers are absent and distant and monotonous, and the only cohesive, appealing identities they see are those of celebrities.

There’s a lovely, long view of Rebecca inside Lindsey Lohan’s home during one of the robberies. She’s dressed in one of the starlet’s dress and some of her jewels, gazing at herself in the dressing room mirror. The mirror is festooned with bright apple-sized bulbs, a vulgarization of a stage actor’s mirror. As Rebecca looks at herself we look at her, in pure profile, with tenderness and objectivity, not so differently the way we look at Vermeer’s Woman in a Pearl Necklace. What we’re seeing is a young woman constructing and discovering an image of herself, and, finally, accepting it. It’s something that, in American life, as adults, we do and redo, every day.

Image from The Bling RIng courtesy of A24Films.

June 06, 2014 by Nalina Moses

MODERN HOUSE WITH DOLLHOUSE VIEWS

I watched the Bling Ring, about a group of high school students who rob the homes of Hollywood celebrities, with little interest in their exploits. What I really wanted to see was the landscape of Los Angeles, where I spent a blissful sabbatical four years ago. But the movie unfolds mostly inside – of the sun-filled suburban houses where the kids live, the compact cars they drive around in, and the opulently appointed mansions they plunder at night. We see more of Paris Hilton’s dressing rooms, a maze of gaudy, gilded, chandelier-lit chambers, than we do of the city’s skyline.

But there’s one heart-stopping cityscape, of a modern house in the Hollywood Hills at night. It’s meant to be Audrina Patridge’s house, where the group’s robbery was captured on security camera video and came to the attention of the police. We see the drama unfold as a bird would, from a point high behind one corner of the house, with the hills spilling down around. The view resembles an axonometric, a type of architectural drawing that shows an object without distorting its vertical or horizontal dimensions. It’s a view that feels, somehow, more objective, cooler, than a perspective, which distorts the scale of objects that are very close and very far.

The house’s skin is opened with glass and balconies on all sides, and its rooms are flushed with cool white light, so that, like a dollhouse, all its insides are revealed. (Its architecture, anchored by two floating concrete floor slabs, is a splendid homage to Le Corbusier’s Maison Domino.) The camera remains still for several minutes and we watch, silently, as the kids enter the house from below, survey the first floor, arrive at the second floor, and then, slowly, wander back downstairs and leave. After they drive away we’re left looking for about half a minute more, far longer than the story demands. The house remains empty, and the city pulsates around it like a tissue of light.

Image from The Bling RIng courtesy of A24Films.

June 04, 2014 by Nalina Moses

LESS AS MORE

The movie Her is set in the “slight future” of Los Angeles. It’s the story of a young man, Theodore Twombly, who falls in love with his smartphone’s operating system, Samantha. The film’s set designers have imagined the city as one free of noise, crowds and character. People live and work in high rises floating free from any landscape, that could be just about anywhere: Singapore, Barcelona or Lagos. (These exteriors were filmed in Pudong, China.) The clusters of glass towers are connected by wide, raised walkways that seem to float in the air. From this vantage the city has no cars, trees, or billboards, no dirt or clutter, and no music, conflict or conversation either. People don’t look at or talk to one another; they are always, seemingly contendedly, interacting with their phones.

Theodore lives alone downtown in a big modern apartment with ribbon windows, a glass box in the sky. (These interiors were filmed at WaterMarke Tower in LA.) There are no curtains, no carpets and no artwork, and there’s no sofa or coffee table either. The home feels barren, as if it’s been just recently abandoned, or just recently rented. What furniture there is, chairs and a desk, are pushed to the walls and corners. These pieces are contemporary, crafted simply from wood, steel and leather, and reference mid-century modern designs. But none are iconic, precious or beautiful; they are all small, dark and worn, sadly pragmatic.

Like Theodore’s wardrobe of sexless button-down shirts, chinos and desert boots, the furniture suggests an intelligently simplified lifestyle that’s been drained of fashion and glamor, as if they are frivolous. What matters most for Theodore, it suggests, is his inner life, as it’s given expression in his conversations with Samantha and the letters he pens for strangers at his job at BeautifulHandcraftedLetters.com. While the depleted physical environment is sad, there’s something bold about it too. It points to a way of living that’s resolutely anti-material.

Image from Her courtesy of Annapurna Studios.

May 31, 2014 by Nalina Moses

BURNING BRIGHT

This year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) has its share of charming hand-blocked wallpapers, embroidered throw pillows, and driftwood end tables, but what shines most brightly are the LED light fixtures. LED technology is advancing so rapidly that each year brings lights that are more energy-efficient, longer lasting, less costly, and with improved light quality. LED’s are so much more smarter and smaller (about an eighth of an inch in diameter) than incandescent, halogen and fluorescent bulbs, that they might do for lighting what steel did for construction – bring about an entirely new model for design.

And just as the first wave of steel-frame buildings were clad in stone panels to give the sound appearance of a building, most LED light fixtures are designed with shades and baffles that, primarily, give the sound appearance of a lamp. Vendors at ICFF are cloaking LED diodes in nostalgic fittings, with shades made in warm materials (dark woods, textured metals, cardboards, felt), as if trying to soften the technology before permitting it into our living rooms. One Swedish company even sells an LED pendant that looks like a bare incandescent bulb.

Only a few designers seem interested in exploiting the tiny size of the bulbs. Unsentimental designers tend to line the diodes up in lines, like a tape, or add a long, cylindrical lens to them, turning the brilliant pinpoints into light sabers. But there are hints of what lies ahead. One English fabricator is showing wallpapers that have LED diodes integrated within their baroque patterns, and one artist is showing lamps made of clouds of them, that resemble models of the atom more than chandeliers. They get at the potentially revolutionary question: what does an LED light fixture look like?

Image of “Bubble Chandelier” courtesy of Pelle Designs.

May 28, 2014 by Nalina Moses