My friends comment after this movie was, "I am not surprised French marriages don't last long considering they pride themselves on F***ing anywhere." Part-time Parents isn't exactly about that, but rather the little girl that is the innocent victim of her parent's divorce. It looks at how she interprets the divorce from the angle of a ten year old, and also about how she goes about trying to get them back together again. I at first thought it was a serious movie, until I realised that the TV paper doesn't actually describe what the movie really is like.
The problem is that the little girl, Neomie, is moving once a week between her parents and she hates it and it is affecting her school, so she is taken to a councilor to try and solve the problem. Her parents can't work it out so she decides that she lives in a house and her parents move in when appropriate. This leads to numerous comic situations. What is interesting though is how the filmmakers mold the movie. In one incident they are using food metaphors to describe a mass sacking in a factory only to find that a big "Miam-Miam (Yum-yum)" has been printed across the page.
The plot revolves more around the girl's attempt to reunite her parents and she has made a list of what upsets them the most about each other. Then she slowly works through the list trying to remove them. The movie plays tricks with us making us unsure as to whether they will come together. There are times when the seem about to come close only to fall apart and drift away. The movie leaves us unsure about what the outcome will be.
This makes me think about the whole nature of relationships. Neomie makes a list of her parents bad points and tries to eliminate each one. I don't really think that it works like that. Moreso I think it is because of what causes a lot of marriage breakdowns is the removal of the facade. When the commitment is weak then we like to put up facades so that our partner will not think badly of us and stay with us. When we are married then the commitment is allegedly for life, and such we no longer put up these facades and act ourselves. Suddenly the person whom we are married to is not the person that we were engaged to. Another problem is how we really relate to the other person. Neomie's parents no longer saw each other as special and probably stopped doing things for each other. Paul Harrington said that love is defined by what we do for people, and the more loving actions we do for people the more we will love them. There are times when we don't feel like loving people, and if we don't do loving things for them then we will drift apart. I guess we cannot tell what caused them to break up but we do know that all of their quirks were superficial. I guess they simply didn't want that commitment anymore.
The problem is that the little girl, Neomie, is moving once a week between her parents and she hates it and it is affecting her school, so she is taken to a councilor to try and solve the problem. Her parents can't work it out so she decides that she lives in a house and her parents move in when appropriate. This leads to numerous comic situations. What is interesting though is how the filmmakers mold the movie. In one incident they are using food metaphors to describe a mass sacking in a factory only to find that a big "Miam-Miam (Yum-yum)" has been printed across the page.
The plot revolves more around the girl's attempt to reunite her parents and she has made a list of what upsets them the most about each other. Then she slowly works through the list trying to remove them. The movie plays tricks with us making us unsure as to whether they will come together. There are times when the seem about to come close only to fall apart and drift away. The movie leaves us unsure about what the outcome will be.
This makes me think about the whole nature of relationships. Neomie makes a list of her parents bad points and tries to eliminate each one. I don't really think that it works like that. Moreso I think it is because of what causes a lot of marriage breakdowns is the removal of the facade. When the commitment is weak then we like to put up facades so that our partner will not think badly of us and stay with us. When we are married then the commitment is allegedly for life, and such we no longer put up these facades and act ourselves. Suddenly the person whom we are married to is not the person that we were engaged to. Another problem is how we really relate to the other person. Neomie's parents no longer saw each other as special and probably stopped doing things for each other. Paul Harrington said that love is defined by what we do for people, and the more loving actions we do for people the more we will love them. There are times when we don't feel like loving people, and if we don't do loving things for them then we will drift apart. I guess we cannot tell what caused them to break up but we do know that all of their quirks were superficial. I guess they simply didn't want that commitment anymore.
