Grantville, USA, Part 2: The Saga Continues

part 1

Further Reflections on

The Naked Kiss (1964)

a film by Samuel Fuller

Undaunted by the deliverances of her cologne-induced epiphany, Kelly sets out, a spring in her step, to reinvent herself. But first she needs a clean bed and fluffy pillow on which to rest her head as the wheels continue to whir. 

Happily, she espies amidst Grantville's well-groomed suburban lawns a sign:

A local seamstress--also an independent contractor who goes by her first name, Josephine--is offering a room for let. What's more, it meets Kelly's requirements, above all, that the space be pleasant.

The landlady and prospective tenant hit it off from the moment they meet, exchanging stories and agreeing about a variety of matters, including the importance of a comfortable bed, given that so much of one's life is spent there. The spinster-seamstress, whose fiancé, Charlie, never returned from the war, takes an immediate liking to Kelly, who is obviously also a strong woman of spirit.

The next step is to find a job. Perhaps inspired by her collection of wardrobe costumes and props amassed over the years to use in various role-playing games requested by clients, it dawns on Kelly that she could really be a nurse. She does look rather fetching and smart in that cap, white support stockings, and large-pocketed pinafore-style cotton dress. 

Fate would have it that the local children's orthopaedic hospital happens to be hiring. Kelly's interview is a smashing success, and the head nurse decides to give her a shot at the job even though she has no references to speak of.

Meanwhile, Captain Griff has been lurking around Candy's establishment, a popular local haunt which guarantees its customers indescribable pleasure. He fully expects to find Kelly there, but to his surprise, his ichi-ban is nowhere to be seen.

Candy, the savvy proprietor and seasoned madame, who evidently chose figure over face--a dilemma posed most famously by Catherine Deneuve and one with which every beautiful woman wrestles as she confronts her inexorably advancing age--reports that Kelly has yet to take up residence at her place.

Griff embarks on a fact-finding mission and soon learns that Kelly now works at the hospital. Knowing (in the biblical sense) her true credentials, Griff immediately assumes that Kelly must have sidled up to the hospital director, furnishing him free "libations" in exchange for a post. 

The police captain confronts Kelly directly, making his disapproval known in no uncertain terms.

Kelly wailfully insists that no such thing has taken place. No! She slept with no one at the hospital to get her job! Kelly begs Griff, who possesses the full power of the law to banish her forever from Grantville, to permit her to attempt to change her ways and to earn an honest living. 

After putting up some resistance, Griff finally relents, 

a decision which he believes he may later come to regret.

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Now a well-respected member of the hospital staff, Kelly is invited to the Grantville holiday party, where everyone who's anyone convenes each year at the illustrious home of Mr. Grant. The townsfolk all refer to this distinguished, cultured gentleman of old money as Grant, and it was indeed his family who literally put Grantville on the map.

As Kelly enters the foyer of the mansion, all eyes are on her, including those of Grant and Griff, who are obviously struck by this woman in stunning formal attire, her beautiful blonde hair arranged sleekly in a cinnamon bun style befitting a high society lady of manners and means.

The sexual tension in the room sizzles like cold water splashed into the deep fryer at the Grantville local diner.

Griff is visibly disturbed by the attentions being lavished upon this simple tramp all dressed up in a costume and only posing as a grande dame. Even worse, the party's host appears to have fallen for Kelly's ruse.

After some holiday greetings and small talk, the group assembles in the parlor. Grant, being not only a successful businessman and the heir to the Grant family fortune, but also a philanthropist, returns from his trip to Europe each year laden with gifts for all his city's high-level service personnel.

                                                                            He offers Kelly a Venetian vase, and she immediately impresses everyone present with her erudition, spontaneously confirming that she knows the meaning of the word: 

"From Venice!"

The head nurse looks on approvingly, musing to herself, "She may not have any nursing credentials, but she clearly has a college degree!"

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After this propitious first encounter, things start really looking up for Kelly, as the wealthiest man around, a well-educated gentleman of refinement and taste, has taken a liking to her.

Grant and Kelly begin to meet more and more frequently. They trade literary allusions (both have read Goethe), and enjoy listening to the music of Beethoven, a statue of whom Grant has in the entryway to his luxurious abode.

The couple especially loves the Moonlight Sonata, which they listen to while lying on the animal-print velour-covered sofa. They share a passion for painting images of European landscapes with words. The clincher comes when Grant "invites Kelly to Venice," proceeding to turn on his movie projector and screen serene boat scenes from the canals. The seduction is now complete. 

As the couple kiss, Kelly suddenly starts, as though an evil thought has entered her mind. 

More likely, given her previously demonstrated sensitivity to cologne, it is Grant's fragrance which has caused the smitten woman to pause and push her would-be lover away.

 Fortunately, olfactory fatigue quickly sets in, and the evil thought exits from her mind.  

A few months down the line,  Grant, to Kelly's great surprise, pops the question, asking her to be his lawfully wedded wife. In a state of shock, Kelly recognizes that she can no longer hide the truth of her past from Grant. 

She tells all and awaits the retraction of his marriage proposal.

Instead, Grant tells Kelly in effect that love conquers all, and the proposal therefore stands. Confused by Grant's acceptance of her disreputable past, Kelly takes leave, explaining that she needs some time to think.

Back in her rented room, the former-mistress-of-the-night-turned-orthopaedic-nurse indulges in some heavy drinking from the very Venetian vase given to her by Grant on the night when they first met. 

                                                    

The next morning, 

Kelly decides that her answer is: Yes. 

Grant is delighted to be apprised of the news and provides Kelly with a key to this, her new home. 

The bride-to-be's days become filled with wedding preparations, including the dress to be designed by Josephine, conveniently Kelly's landlady. The couple also deliberates about where the honeymoon will be. 

It all seems like a dream. 

part 3

Grantville, USA: Where Prostitution, Pederasty, and Unisex Cologne Collide

Reflections on 

The Naked Kiss (1964)

a film by Samuel Fuller

                                                                                                                                                                                There once was a bald prostitute named Kelly, who woke up one day and decided that she wasn't going to take it anymore. Her lying, conniving pimp had held out on her too many times before. 

           Added to that, his idea of a practical joke was to slip her a mickey and shave her head, which was how she became bald in the first place. The time for justice had clearly arrived. Kelly beat her oppressor up, and removed from his overstuffed wallet precisely the amount of money he owed: $75, no more and no less. The rest of the grubby bills she threw disdainfully down at her former overlord lying unconscious on the dirty-carpet-covered floor.

She placed her wig back on her shiny head and set out on her own, 

never to be taken advantage of again.

The date of this life-transforming event, logically enough, was July 4, 1961.

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Two years later, now a seasoned independent contractor, Kelly has been working through a variety of small towns. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                     One fine summer day, the now blonde woman happens by chance upon Grantville, USA, where she strolls off the bus at the depot and is immediately taken note of by the local police authority, Captain Griff, who, it later emerges, always works in plain clothes, because everyone knows who he is.

They exchange looks of interest and Kelly sets her trap, her hips swinging from left to right and back again in a curve-hugging boiled wool skirt in all likelihood designed by Gabrielle Chanel. Kelly finds a comfortable place on a bench in the local park, where she proceeds to rest her weary legs and read a few pages of a paperback book--romance genre, naturally.

Captain Griff, being a red-blooded heterosexual male, takes the bait. He chats Kelly up and learns that she is a traveling saleswoman, peddling a new kind of champagne. The alluring woman offers Griff a special price as a way of drumming up business in the new town, she says. She knows from past experience, of course, that getting in good with the law is always a sound approach to avoiding potential tangles later on down the line.

After a bit of bubbly, the couple prepares to part ways, Griff leaving Kelly in his apartment, where he says that she can stay just until the end of the day, at which point she'd best take her business elsewhere, beyond the city limits of Grantville, USA.

At first, Kelly is miffed by Griff's rebuff, but he magnanimously offers to help her out by revealing that Candy's place is open for business, and it's located just outside Grantville, a short walk away. Griff assures Kelly that he'll be a regular customer and looks forward to seeing her there. 

The couple agrees that Kelly will be Griff's ichi-ban, a Japanese expression which he learned while serving in the military abroad.

The two part amicably, Kelly leaving behind a keepsake pen, to ensure that Griff will not forget her name.

A bit later, Kelly is snooping around Griff's apartment and discovers a bottle of cologne. 

She opens it up, takes a sniff, nods approvingly and applies some of the fragrance to her neck and décolleté.

As Kelly rubs her moist fingertips together to better diffuse the cologne, she is struck by an epiphany. She catches a glance of herself in a mirror across the way and moves closer in to carefully examine her face. 

In the harsh afternoon sunlight streaming through the window, Kelly suddenly sees that her crow's feet and marionnette lines are deepening with each passing day.

For the first time she realizes that she'd better find an alternative means of gainful employment, as the unthinkable has transpired: she has reached middle age!

part 2

Would Chloé wear Chloé?

Reflections on Chloé (2009), directed by Atom Egoyan 

Chloé is a prostitute. A high-class prostitute, but a prostitute nonetheless. Her clients are well-to-do Toronto men who meet with her at a hotel adjacent to the gynecology office of one Catherine Stewart, a successful physician married to an equally successful college professor of music, David Stewart. 

The couple has a teenage son, Michael, who is about to graduate from high school. 

The Stewart family is beautiful.

How do the worlds of a high-end hooker and a successful yuppie couple manage to intersect? Certainly Chloé is comely, and Catherine has taken note of her, looking down from above, as she peers out of the windows of her slick office, without initially realizing that the blond woman is a prostitute. From a distance, she looks just like a well-to-do young lady going out on a date with a man of means.Who'd have guessed that such apparently amorous attentions could be directed toward a "working girl"?

Unless, of course, she happens to be spotted with another such man in another place, say, a restaurant where the Stewarts happen to be dining out one night with friends.

Yes, by process of deduction, Catherine Stewart determines that this young woman is in fact a prostitute. She makes her acquaintance, oddly enough, in the bathroom, as Chloé is sobbing and in need of tissue, which Catherine helpfully passes to her under the stall.

Perhaps we can say that shoes are the great equalizer, for from this view, it's hard to tell which woman is which, though their trades do focus on the very same object, so to speak.

Chloé seems to be suffering from love troubles, as she mutters something to the effect that men are jerks. Catherine wholeheartedly concurs, having recently been suffering from worries that her apparently DH may be not so devoted after all.

The two beautiful women exchange a few words in front of the mirror before returning to their respective "dates".

The troubles chez the Stewart clan have been brewing since David failed to appear for his surprise birthday party, claiming that he had missed his plane after teaching a course in another city (New York?).

In fact, he purposely skipped the party. The question looming large in Catherine's mind is: Why?

The very next morning, the unwelcome answer blips into David's cellphone as it sits unattended on a table. 

Let philanderers herewith be forewarned: gadgets are not your friends. No, not even yours, Anthony Weiner.

At this point, Catherine's disappointment that David was a no-show to his birthday party begins to ferment into anger and suspiciousness to the point where she interprets his every word through the lens of a jilted lover. Blinded to all else, what she now sees through that lens is a shameless adulterer.

No amount of yuppie eye candy, in abundance throughout the Stewarts' not-so-humble abode, can lift the fog under which Catherine now labors.

No, I'm afraid that money cannot buy you love, Catherine and David.

All of these trappings of success are worthless in the face of disaffection.

As a self-possessed woman of means (although it's worth pointing out that she took her husband's surname), Catherine sets out to prove once and for all that her formerly devoted husband has transmogrified into just another mid-life-crisis-afflicted cad, chasing after thong-clad nubile co-eds young enough to be his child.

She sets up a meeting with Chloé, during which she makes her a rather peculiar proposition. 

Chloé is at first taken aback, but then agrees to play a role in Catherine's scheme, by posing as a college student and placing herself strategically within David's sight to find out whether he will make his move.

David appears initially not to take the bait. But Catherine persists, returning to the ATM machine to procure the funds needed to hire Chloé once again.

Eventually the two women end up in the hotel room where, Chloé reports, the dirty deed has been done.

The two women sit together in the very same, sin-infested space, 

Chloé's hair still wet from her post-coital shower. 

Catherine plummets into despair upon hearing Chloé's latest report.

As Chloé attempts to console Catherine later that day, at last the moment for perfume arrives. 

Catherine detects Chloé's scent and asks her what perfume she's wearing. 

Chloé informs her that it is not perfume but lotion.

She takes the tube out of her purse and offers some to Catherine, gently rubbing it into her hands.

The scented lotion takes on a new and deeper meaning for Catherine later, when David detects the scent and asks her whether she is wearing perfume. Catherine replies, as did Chloé to her identical question, "It's not perfume. It's lotion." To Catherine's horror, David whispers in a raspy voice: "I like it."

Aghast that her husband now smells on her the scent of the tramp with whom he has only just slept, Catherine is filled with disgust. From here, everything spirals downward, but I'll not reveal the dénouement...

I will say that throughout the story a few interesting subplots pop up, including Catherine's discovery that her beloved son is now sleeping with a young woman who dashes about the Stewarts' house in Victoria's Secret undies.

When the proverbial couple with everything attend their son's brilliant piano recital, what should be a cause for great joy, Catherine cannot wrench her troubles from her mind.

Catherine is mad, and she's not going to take it anymore.

Amidst all of the cinematographic beauty of this film (or is it just yuppie eye candy?), our underlying and truly pressing question remains:

Would Chloé wear Chloé?

The answer, I find, is: YES! Let us examine the facts, and my grounds for this belief.

First, Chloé does not wear perfume, she wears lotion. Second, Chloé must be clean and pristine for each client whom she meets, who may or may not enjoy the rich and redolent scents of natural tuberose, rose, iris, narcissus, ylang-ylang, jasmine, or any other complex floral scent existing in nature.

Chloé in fact needs, in order to succeed in her chosen profession, as a high-class hooker, most of whose clients are well-to-do married men looking for some safe diddling on the side, to smell clean. Clearly, given her market niche, so to speak, she must make it believable that she is not disease infested or some kind of dime-store whore wafting of Tabu.

And she is not, we learn at one point during the film, as Catherine asks Chloé to present her "clean bill of health" dossier before engaging in any hanky-panky with David. Chloé graciously obliges, showing up one afternoon at Catherine's office (she is, lest we forget, a gynecologist), "papers" in hand:

Chloé would not, I think (for a couple of reasons, only one of which I'll reveal here), wear Chloé Love (pictured on the right).

Chloé and Chloé Love

Chloé Love has a detectable iris note, and a resinousness which might or might not appeal to Chloé's clients. Chloé also probably would not wear the original Karl Lagerfeld Chloé, which I am sorry to say that I never got a chance to sniff before it was ruined by reformulation--at least according to Roja Dove.

Chloé would, however, wear the new Chloé, a quintessentially abstract floral scent which falls squarely into the twenty-first-century category of shampoo and conditioner frags. Squeaky clean, as though she just emerged from a shower, Chloé wearing Chloé would be a perfect pair!

I rest my case.

part 2--spoiler discussion