Breakfast on Pluto: Dir. Neil Jordan
Having waited six months to see this film, I confess that I was a trifle concerned that it would not live up to the hype. However, Breakfast on Pluto has not only met and exceeded all of my expectations, it has transfixed me, rendering me helpless in a state of semi-hypnosis, counting the hours until I can once more be held in its thrall.
Based on the time period (late 60s to 70s), the soundtrack (the U.S. trailer utilizes T. Rex’s “Children of the Revolution”), and its focus on trans/queer issues, one could draw parallels to my favourite film of all time, Velvet Goldmine. Indeed there are some similarities: a young man, obsessed with music, confronts his sexuality, escapes his repressed family, and travels to London. But Breakfast on Pluto is not a Citizen Kane-style trip down Glam Rock’s yellow brick road.
“A girl like you. . . “
Stephen Rea and Cillian Murphy
For one, it is more politically charged, employing the very real setting of the horrific violence in Ireland during the period. Additionally, whereas Brian Slade, the icon who was at the vortex of the turmoil in Velvet Goldmine, was a selfish megalomaniac, stealing from everyone but giving nothing of himself, Patrick/Patricia “Kitten” Braden (Cillian Murphy), is the heart in the midst of a heartless world. When Bertie the magician pulls Kitten’s pulsing, bleeding heart from her chest and quips, “there’s the problem,” it’s a painfully poignant visual metaphor. Kitten’s devastating necessity for love – for belonging to someone – and her willingness to give herself to anyone who shows the slightest care towards her, is her defence against that heartless world.
Several critics have been less than kind. The Village Voice is positively cruel in its assessment of the film as well as Murphy’s portrayal of Kitten, while Ebert and Roeper exhibit fairly nasty homophobia. It’s disturbing that they seem repulsed by Kitten’s feminine displays but describe Brokeback Mountain as nothing short of a masterpiece. Apparently it’s acceptable for two macho cowboys to make out, but saints preserve us if a man wants to wear lipstick and bat false eyelashes.
Other reviews have portrayed Kitten as shallow, uninteresting, and just plain unlikeable, which seems less like an honest acceptance of Kitten as she is, and more like outright fear of a trans character being more than someone who has a penchant for nail polish. There is a difference between someone who dresses as a woman (the broadest interpretation of the word “transvestite”) and someone who sees himself as a woman. A frank discussion of this grey area of gender and sexual identity is probably more than Middle America is ready for these days, despite Felicity Huffman’s role in Transamerica. In this way Breakfast on Pluto shares more in common with Boys Don’t Cry and Hedwig and the Angry Inch than To Wong Foo.
How could anyone not feel Kitten’s sorrow when her friend is killed? Or sense her pounding heart when she approaches what she thinks is her mother’s apartment? How can anyone not share her pain when she loses the love of her life or when she is brutalized by the police? Her avoidance of what she calls the “serious serious serious” world is not self-centred; it’s self-preservation. This world of fantasy, of silly pop songs and flamboyant clothing keep Kitten sane and alive, even when the world around her is often bleak and horrible.
She attaches herself to Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks, a band that seems prematurely aged, until one realizes that unlike those who saw the glam movement as a freedom you could allow yourself, they see it as a means to an end. These homely blokes with their badly applied blue eye shadow are none too happy with a real ambisexual princess like Kitten, and it brings to mind this snippet of a 1998 web chat with David Bowie’s guitarist Mick Ronson on Velvet Goldmine and the “glitter revolution,” which again betrays more than a slight fear of the queer:
Mick Ronson: A fact that gets lost is that a boy in those days wearing a lot of makeup would probably attract a lot of girlfriends, speaking for myself. Makeup was nothing to do with being gay; it had a lot to do with getting laid, for a very heterosexual person. You couldn’t fuck a lot of girls unless you were wearing some mascara.
But Kitten isn’t an act. In fact, Cillian Murphy inhabits the character as if she is real: a living, breathing, perfumed goddess, all soft whispers, trembling lips, coquettish eyes, and petulant meowing.
Murphy’s performance is truly groundbreaking and the ultimate testament to his skills as an actor. Kitten is nothing like the characters Murphy portrayed in his last two films (Batman Begins and Red Eye) and to call him the newest bad guy on the block is a dismal failure at seeing the scope of his remarkable talents. The nuances of his expressions – in which his whole face transforms, flitting from hopeful to ecstatic within a nanosecond or simultaneously enraged, needy, and terrified- are miraculous to behold. His body language is intoxicating and we are besotted, beguiled, enthralled, and enchanted. His Kitten is feminine without actually being female, and without the garish theatrics of stereotyped drag queen performers. She is the grace amidst the squalor, and when you see her marching through a dishevelled vacant lot, aquamarine umbrella held high and shoulders set to take on the world, you cannot help but be spellbound.
While Murphy-as-Kitten owns the film, the lion’s share of the credit must of course go to Director Neil Jordan and Patrick McCabe, who wrote the novel upon which the film is based. There are definite differences between the film and the novel (a more neatly tied up and upbeat ending, for one), but Jordan (who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation with McCabe) captures the essence of Kitten as well as the atmosphere of 60s/70s Ireland as it is described in the novel.
Jordan’s film is whimsical, magical, otherworldly and at times, serious, serious serious. There is no shortage of tragedy or comedy in this picaresque tale and he handles both with equal amounts of expertise. The soundtrack is a gorgeous blend of fluff and circumstance but is more than just background music; these pop songs comprise the soundtrack to Kitten’s life. Wonderful visual and emotional parallels abound. Kitten’s confrontation with her real father in the confessional and his resulting confession to her in the peep show booth is rich with symbolism. Father McIvor tells Kitten, “Call me Father” when she approaches him on his doorstep and the bittersweet irony stings. The hatred and disgust for the Irish is a metaphor for the feelings many have for Kitten and in some cases, themselves, for wanting her in the first place.
The harsh reality of this hatred and disgust is a slap in the face, especially with someone like Kitten, who is neither man nor woman, but some mythically indefinable combination of both. In a rare acknowledgment of her precarious situation she notes that she is “not very employable,” which begs the question: where does a misfit like Kitten go? In one critique of the film she is reduced to nothing more than a “cross-dressing hooker,” as if selling sex was something she aspired to instead of the last resort of someone with no options.
In this post-Queer Eye world of same sex civil ceremonies and man-crushes, it seems that what may be seen as growing tolerance or even acceptance of trans/queer characters is just mere tokenism. That anyone could see Breakfast on Pluto as anything less than absolute, cinematic magic is disheartening to say the least. And how anyone with a soul could not fall deeply in love with Patricia St. Kitten Braden is beyond my comprehension. So I’ll just see the film again and again and temporarily forget this cruel world as I visit the stars and journey to Mars, finding my Breakfast on Pluto.
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Wow…fanastic review. I haven’t even seen the film and I feel blown away by it.
Hear hear!
No time to respond at length, but your insight about the heart is brilliant. I totally didn’t get that. The confession symmetry thing I did get though – that was lovely.
Thanks for the compliments, y’all!
Thanks a lot for your review! You put it so beautifully all those feelings I don’t know how to say.
I got tears in my eyes at the end of this film. Then I went online looking for reviews to rec this film to my friends. Imagine my shock when I read all those bad reviews. How could those people call themselves critics when they’re so blind to the subtlety of this film?!
I agree. One of my friends teased me a bit about being an “over-protective mom” in my defense of the movie, but you are correct in that so many critics didn’t get it. Were they all getting popcorn when Kitten tells Silky String that she has to pretend her life is a story otherwise she “might start crying and never stop?”
I recall similar vitriol and confusion regarding Velvet Goldmine. Now I love Velvet Goldmine – a lot – but it’s flawed. Breakfast on Pluto is a more fully realized, richer, deeper movie than VG, with better acting, dialogue, camera work, etc.
Oh, and thanks for your compliments!
I disagree with VG being flawed–I honestly think it’s one of the most perfect and complex films ever made. The problem is that it IS complex, but doesn’t “appear” to be so, and a lot of people seem to dismiss it as fluff. Its only possible flaw is that to get it in FULL, one has to be familiar with Oscar Wilde, Jean Genet, Bowie, Foucault, queer theory, queer film, plus all of Todd Haynes’ previous work–and so on–almost every single line is an allusion, but it’s not coded as such, and each allusion means something. I think I’ve got most of them by now, but I can’t be sure.
Anyway, sorry, my one quibble is that Kitten isn’t gay–she’s “straight.” AS far as I saw, she was a mtf transsexual, which would make her a straight woman.
Good points. I didn’t become familiar with several of those things (except Bowie specifically) until AFTER I saw the movie but it was a great introduction into learning those things. I think a lot of people have issues with VG because they expected it to be “The David Bowie Story” and it isn’t at all.
I’d be interested in knowing how Foucault and Jean Genet play into the VG world. I would also add Classic Hollywood Cinema to the list, particularly the Citizen Kane structure.
I think VG is flawed as some of the cinematography is a bit amateurish (the zooms remind me of the ones in Easy Rider) and it often feels a bit stilted at times with the dialogue and JRM’s acting, which is a bit wooden, in my opinion. The biggest plot hole I take issue with is when Arthur connects Tommy to Brian via the press conference with Shannon – Haynes shows a flashback to Shannon crying with Mandy on the settee and it’s an event for which Arthur was not present.
Don’t get me wrong: I ADORE VG. It changed my life in countless ways and has been one of the most profoundly moving and influential pieces of art I have ever experienced. I even have a CURTWLD license plate!
I see your point about Kitten being “straight,” but how is that a quibble of yours? Please elaborate!
Thanks for your thoughts.
Heya. The quibble with Kitten being straight isn’t a quible with the movie–I was just noting that in your review, you say he comes to terms with his homosexuality, when that’s not really it. :-)
About VG: right, Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, etc, are also allusions there. It’s hard to list them all. :-)
>>I’d be interested in knowing how Foucault and Jean Genet play into the VG world.
Foucault is just useful in general, not in specifics. He’s simply a big part of sex/gender studies, and Haynes engages a lot with theory. I suppose he was helpful to me, but that could have been a personal thing.
As for Genet, Haynes makes a lot of allusions to him, too. That scene with Jack Fairy in the restaurant where the waiters whisper at him? That’s taken straight from “Lady of the Flowers.” Jack Fairy himself is basically a Genet-esque character. The opening of the movie, where Jack sneaks up to a mirrored vanity table in the dark and puts on “lipstick” is shot very like the opening in Haynes’ earlier movie “Poison,” which was all based on Genet. Also, the “sailor” that follows Jack around (in the club on New Year’s) until he’s reappropriated into Brian’s gang has to do with Genet. Basically, the way I see it, Haynes sets up three modes of queer identity in the film, and Jack Fairy is a nod to the type of queer identity developed in Genet’s work. (Which, I argued in a thesis, Haynes himself has at this point rejected, but that’s another story.)
Hmm. Yes, I’ll have to give you that the Arthur/Shannon thing was a plot hole. But the same thing is present in Breakfast on Pluto–when Kitten is told by her friend’s father that he saw his mom in London, it’s her friend’s father that saw his mother–Kitten never has. Yet it’s Kitten who’s shown later as having that memory, and it’s Kitten who “recognizes” her mother in the London Underground from that “memory.”
Also, there was that strange bit (to me–I haven’t read the book) with Billy Hatchett’s house. It seemed to be a good way off from Kitten’s hometown, but then suddenly it was shown that Kitten was able to go back and forth just like that, with no means of transport that we’re aware of.
Which, also, does not mean I didn’t love the movie. :-D
>>I think VG is flawed as some of the cinematography is a bit amateurish
Yea, I haven’t noticed that, but then I’m not a film expert. You may be right. I have to say though, I always saw VG as a veritable collection of cinematic techniques, so depending on *which* zooms you mean, it may be intentional. (Or not–as I said, I haven’t noticed that, so wouldn’t know.)
>>it often feels a bit stilted at times with the dialogue and JRM’s acting, which is a bit wooden
Aha! For this I can answer. :-D
The dialogue is obviously stilted, as, as I said, everything said is an allusion. There’s very little dialogue in there that’s actually original. That said, I bet most of the stilted dialogue takes place within Brian’s story, and not the scenes where Arthur, himself, was bodily present. What’s key to keep in mind is that everything we see, we see from Arthur’s pov. Even when Mandy or Cecil or whoever are telling him the story, we don’t see their memories per se–we see the story as it is imagined and filtered by Arthur as he hears it. (Thus, btw, the cries of “it isn’t really how it was!” by people who say there were there for glam and don’t think it’s authentic–it’s not meant to be–it’s embellished and shown as how it appeared in the imagination of a young fan as he is taken back to his boyhood. The “glam” scenes that Arthur was actually *there* for–the concert in the beginning, the Flaming Creatures in the nighclub, and the Death of Glitter concert at the end–are wholly realistic. In fact, they’re basically lifted straight from video footage recorded at the time.)
Er, got sidetracked there. *blush* But that’s also my pov on Brian’s “wooden” acting–that he wasn’t acting a *character,* he was acting a legend. We get to hear everyone’s story but his–he is never present, we don’t have access to his point of view on the events, and when we actually get to see him in real-time and not in memory, he doesn’t even look the same. Up until the very end, he is literally a character that only exists through how *other* characters construct him, not a “real person.” And to be constructed into everyone’s fantasy was in fact the point of Brian Slade, in many ways–or at least that’s how people perceived him. So I actually think JRM’s acting was intentional, because he was basically portraying a cardboard cutout that others would build up to their desire, manifesting their own interpretations of him on its surface.
…I can talk for way too long about VG.
Ooops, messed up the gendered pronouns there when talking about Kitten’s mother. In case that was confusing:
“when Kitten is told by her friend’s father that he saw his mom in London, it’s her friend’s father that saw his mother-Kitten never has. Yet it’s Kitten who’s shown later as having that memory, and it’s Kitten who “recognizes” her mother in the London Underground from that “memory.”"
When I said “his mother,” I should have said “her mother”–I obviously meant Kitten’s mother, not the friend’s father’s.
>>Heya. The quibble with Kitten being straight isn’t a quible with the movie-I was just noting that in your review, you say he comes to terms with his homosexuality, when that’s not really it. :-)
You know, I went back and re-read my review twice just now and I am not sure what you mean by that?
>>I’d be interested in knowing how Foucault and Jean Genet play into the VG world.
Well, my Foucault is a bit rusty as I haven’t read him since I was in Film Theory classes, so I will have to brush up. I’m not familiar with Genet at all, but perhaps I should be!
>>Hmm. Yes, I’ll have to give you that the Arthur/Shannon thing was a plot hole. But the same thing is present in Breakfast on Pluto-when Kitten is told by her friend’s father that he saw his mom in London, it’s her friend’s father that saw his mother-Kitten never has. Yet it’s Kitten who’s shown later as having that memory, and it’s Kitten who “recognizes” her mother in the London Underground from that “memory.”
Good point! I suppost it could be explained away by Kitten’s history of retelling the tale of the Phantom Lady and adding bits of others’ memories as she goes along.
>>Also, there was that strange bit (to me-I haven’t read the book) with Billy Hatchett’s house. It seemed to be a good way off from Kitten’s hometown, but then suddenly it was shown that Kitten was able to go back and forth just like that, with no means of transport that we’re aware of.
You know, funny you mention that because tonight, during viewing #3, I started wondering that myself! I don’t think Hatchet himself was in the book, but I need to re-read it to be sure.
>>it often feels a bit stilted at times with the dialogue and JRM’s acting, which is a bit wooden
Aha! For this I can answer. :-D
Very interesting indeed!! I’ve always been annoyed by the “it’s not how it was!” complaints, particularly from Bowie who, having stolen so many things himself, really has little room to bitch. ;P
I’m constantly finding things that VG borrowed and going AHA! So that’s where that was from! I love that Arthur is the central storyteller. He’s the most sympathetic character and I can’t imagine a better actor to have played that role than Christian Bale.
>>Er, got sidetracked there. *blush* But that’s also my pov on Brian’s “wooden” acting-that he wasn’t acting a *character,* he was acting a legend.
Again, very interesting!
>>�I can talk for way too long about VG.
LOL, I can, too. What a shame it wasn’t around when I was in film classes.
By the way, did you find my review via one of the Cillian Murphy or BoP LJ communities?
You should read the BoP book. It’s a lot different from the movie, but well worth reading. I’m about to read it again, actually. I read it before I saw the movie and now I want to do a more thorough comparison.
Oh! Found it – in the first paragraph:
“confronts his homosexuality”
I meant that through the course of the film, we see Kitten having (well, actually we don’t SEE, but it is alluded to) Kitten having homosexual experiences. I see your point, though, that if Kitten is a transgendered character then technically Kitten would be a straight woman. Biologically though, Patrick is a male, and that is what I meant. I changed it to “confronts his sexuality,” to be more accurate. Thanks!
>>Well, my Foucault is a bit rusty as I haven’t read him since I was in Film Theory classes, so I will have to brush up.
Nah, I don’t think you have to–he was helpful to me when I was writing my thesis (yes… VG was part of it, heh), but as long as you’re familiar with the ideas he put into circulation, or even others’ ideas that go back to him–that’s all you need.
>>I’m not familiar with Genet at all, but perhaps I should be!
He’s a good person to know: Bowie references him too, in his song “Jean Genie,” which is why I decided to look him up. I kind of consider him a cocealed explosive in VG–he’s not mentioned anywhere by name, but when you know him and Todd Haynes’ history with him, suddenly you see that his influence played a key part in the movie, and there’s hardly a hint of that to the casual viewer!
>>Good point! I suppost it could be explained away by Kitten’s history of retelling the tale of the Phantom Lady and adding bits of others’ memories as she goes along.
Yes, I thought of that–I thought that the same might actually work for Arthur, though not quite so well. In both cases though, neither should be able to “recognize” a person based on how that person appeared in someone else’s memory. (It works better in “Breakfast” because I don’t think we’re definitively told the woman he saw IS his mother–maybe he thought he recognized her, but she was just another woman with blonde hair in a bun.)
>>”it’s not how it was!” complaints, particularly from Bowie who, having stolen so many things himself, really has little room to bitch. ;P
Yeah, I think Bowie’s simply too personally invested to watch this movie properly. But it did take me forever until I figured this bit out, as well as that it was part of what Haynes meant about it being a “valentine” to glam rock. Once I got that, I thought that the fantastic, colorful, dream-like atmosphere of most of the scenes captured very well the aura of excitement and romance that most young fans associate with the musicians they idolise–I think it shows how such a fan might picture the idol’s life quite accurately.
>>I’m constantly finding things that VG borrowed and going AHA! So that’s where that was from!
Me too. :-) Have you ever seen “Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture”? The beginning, with the fans queing up and chattering excitedly, and Bowie getting ready in his dressing room, is quite similar to the beginning of VG, minus the threatening overtone. Some shots are almost duplicated (such as the pan of the line of fans outside the theatre marquee), which goes back to my saying that the scenes where Arthur was present are “accurate.”
>>By the way, did you find my review via one of the Cillian Murphy or BoP LJ communities?
Yep! I’m not a member of any of them, but I was browsing through and found you. I’ll look the book up. :-)
Great review! I definitely need to read the book. :)
I’m glad you liked it! Thanks.