The long story: Time Out London magazine sent me a free pass to go see a French flick that sounded somewhat interesting. And by that I clearly mean that I manipulated a past email they sent me and changed the date to May 13 and the movie title to Heartbeat Detector and voila! Instant movie pass! (I’m okay with this since these movie screenings are never at capacity.) I show up at 6:20 to the 6:30 showing and the theatre is sparse. I know it’s not going to get much more populated either. Here is a picture of what the seating looked like. “Other People” are blue squares, “Yours Truly” is the pink square.
Enter a man and his girlfriend. They stop and scan the theatre, assessing the seating situation. Guess where they decide to sit. Take a look back at that seating plan. Look at all the empty seats. LOOK AT THEM!!! Now, I will ask you again. Where do you think this wanker and his cow of a girlfriend decided to sit? Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaat’s correct. Right. Next. To. Me. (Wanker and cow are green squares.)
So fine. They’re sitting next to me. I can deal with that. I just won’t be able to drape my legs over the armrest (which may or may not be a rude thing to do anyway) and if it’s a tearjerker of a film, I’ll just have to be discreet about wiping my tears. But then. Then, my friends. He takes out a sandwich and begins to attack it with his face. It sounded like like the sound effects from Jurassic Park. I prayed that he would take big bites and just get it over with already. I didn’t care that I was staring at him and making judgemental faces; I was just hoping he would catch me glaring at him and realize that wild boars have more etiquette than he does. So finally(!) he finishes the sandwich. And I breathe a sigh of relief. But no sooner do I finish thinking, “What an arsehole,” that he takes out a Fosters tall boy. For the love of all that is holy!!! And so the loud beer sipping begins, followed by the silent, yet pungent, beer burping. At this point the movie hasn’t even started yet and I am contemplating walking out. Between sips he leans over to French kiss his girlfriend and all I can do is wonder, “Who is this woman that she not only tolerates this disgusting behaviour, but she is still physically attracted to him enough that she wants to kiss that mouth?” The movie begins. It is dreadful. It is the slowest movie I have ever seen and there’s a scene that is just literally one man singing for 10 minutes. He trails off at some points and you think he’s done but just like Austin Powers peeing for the first time after the cryogenic freezing process is complete, he starts right back up again. Everyone in the theatre laughed when this happened because they too couldn’t believe that there is a filmmaker out there that sadistic. But I continue watching. Because I like to boost my culture levels and watching an awful French movie seems like a good way to do that.
But that man. Oh, that man. He starts to do this nose breathing/throat clearing thing. At first I think he’s laughing…you know, one of those big-burst-of-air-through-your-nose types of laughs. But nothing funny was happening in the movie. And then he did it again, a little more abrasively this time, and I cringed thinking, “Oh heavens to Murgatroyd! He has a nervous coughing tic! Will the horror never end?!” And so it continued. For the next two and a half hours! One time it was so loud that I thought for sure someone would say something like, “Hey buddy, if you’re gonna do that, take it outside will ya?” It was terrible. It was soul-wrenching. It was homicide-inducing.
I went home and took 6 hot showers trying to wash the bad away.
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