One Perfect Shot: Style & Scene Retrospective, “Prime”

This is really less of a look at wardrobe (less than, say, my Karen Retrospective) and more of a total love letter to the director of Prime—an unsung gem of a film. Outing myself as a total psycho here.

I haven’t watched this movie often, but for the few times I have over these 9 years, it has always resonated, and for different reasons.

I don’t tend to love movies. I watch them, and I go to them, but I’m not super dialed in. I miss easter eggs and themes and hidden messages. I’m a feeling movie watcher, not a thinking movie watcher.

I understand how they are an art, but mostly, cinematography gets absorbed and appreciated by my bean, not picked apart and analyzed. (Until I discovered One Perfect Shot, which is slowly changing the way I watch movies. It’s all about composition, and composition is my language of choice.)

But, given my limited cinema vocab at the time, this movie blew my mind when I saw it. And I’ve been uncovering why ever since.

It made me fall for New York—New York as a place that people call home and grow up in and get their hearts broken in, not just as a backdrop. I noticed all these camera tactics playing out in patterns. The movie sings with a chorus of subtleties: the acting, the pitch-perfect supporting characters, the wardrobe, and the soundtrack choices, which all happily took a backseat.

[Ben in a shot that perfectly sums up those first, abysmal moments when you let go of the apron strings. Throw in a broken heart and chasing down a dream, and that’s 24.]

More importantly, when I first saw this, I was only a year older than the character Ben. I lived in a shit apartment with a lousy-paying job and all I cared about was partying and being in love. The last time I watched it, however—I’m less than 3 years younger than Rafi now. Bam.

It seems like I got from there to here in an awfully short amount of time, but here we are. This gradual shift in which character it was that I related to (and for more reasons than age) has made this movie kind of a timeless piece of poetry for me. For, even given how much I related with Ben at first, I wanted to relate more with Rafi, even at 24—not because I wanted to be a cradle-robbing divorcee, but because I wanted to be successful, self-sufficient, have things I earned on my own, and the confidence (and sex appeal) that comes along with all of that.

Of course, Uma Thurman’s skin and body wouldn’t hurt, either.

[Worlds collide: 24 meets 36. And it’s pretty hot.]

Like the way that one dentist told you to brush more gently blinks on in your mind every single time you’re brushing your teeth at night—I’m cursed by always thinking about this movie at odd moments. And not even because it was the best thing I’d ever seen. It just stuck. Being a 24-year-old who had nothing together at all when I first saw it, to this last viewing being a 33-year-old ‘grown up,’ it occurred to me that I’m closing in on the end of the part of my life during which I can relate to either of the protagonists. Which is sort of a terrifying way to think  about it.

So let’s just dive right into the visuals with my amateur commentary, because that’s really why we’re all here.

1. Rafi in Therapy.

The same angles were used in the bulk of the therapy scenes. Mostly, it’s over Meryl’s shoulder. I love this. It’s so simple, and like coming into the office every day was a comfortable routine for her, we’ve given the same luxury: the comfort of sameness. We’re all in the nest. And you can actually weigh the doctor’s words against what you’re seeing: her growing, each visit a waypoint on Rafi’s arc. From worried, heartbroken and lost (top left) to the vibrant, fulfilled sex pot (bottom right), we watch it it all unfold, with the best seat in the house.

Her clothes come to life, too, just like she does. Let it be known Uma Thurman is my guilty actress pleasure: equal parts graceful, goofy, and goddess. Man, I can’t believe I just admitted that.

 2. Let us break bread.

You don’t have to live in NYC to love going out to eat, but man they do it right there. It’s my favorite thing in the world to do, so these scenes—the variety of them, and how they summed up that point in the story every single time—sort of acted like marker buoys for me.

90% of the movie could have taken place in restaurants and I wouldn’t have felt like I’d missed a thing.

Top right: “Have you ever had ikura with quail egg? I swear it’s just like having sex.”

Below: Relationship starters; relationship enders.

3. Framed up.

This director loved to put pivotal moments locked up in frames. You couldn’t miss what was happening, like a little movie present wrapped in a bow, and it just works so damned well.

Like, the first date, below. He gets carded buying beer, and the age conversation starts… and never really stops.

And Ben making his way into Rafi’s world, literally and figuratively:

Magic:

A date in an art warehouse framed by the loading dock, under the gaze of her favorite painting. When this shot pulled back, it felt like we were reluctantly deciding to give them a little privacy:

With the above somewhat foreshadowing Dave selling his own paintings, from a basement. All framed perfectly, pun intended.

Glimpses like these needed no dialogue at all, framed in a restaurant window, or an elevator door.

They’re both often shot looking into the other’s world through a visual frame, as if to say, no matter how close they are, there’s something perceived that’s separating them. Below, Dave has an illuminating moment on the phone with his mother; Rafi watches Ben playing a scratch game of basketball with some pals. So close, but still so far.

4. Contrasts.

Without harping on it, because it’s more about how people so far apart in age can be (almost) perfect together regardless, there are some clever ways the movie reminds you just how different these two are.

First blush (oh, it’s on):

First phone call:

First meeting, so well set up:

And first bits of abrasion:

[Which are you, frustrated professional, or unemployed couch surfer? I’ve been both.]

5. Graphic tees, or, ‘contrasts, continued.’

It’s like the precursor to How to Make it in America, also starring Bryan Greenberg. Put Dave and Morris in all graphic tees, all the time, and you can’t help but think, “Ok, yea, he’s younger, I get it.”

6. I Heart NY

As mentioned above, NYC is a scene-stealer, but in an almost accessible way.

A favorite scene: top right, taxi cab make out, when she goes incognito into Ben’s scene on a Friday night. 

7. And, of course, the cat.

If mi casa et su casa, same goes for pets in relationships. I love how the cat goes from casual observer to crime partner, but serves to remind us about Rafi’s own predicaments: loneliness, for one.

I have such a thing for the way guys interact with cats. And vice versa. It’s my thing.  

8. And, Uma.

Whether you fall into the “alien finger” camp or you love her (like me), she’s got this weird, alluring output I can’t put my finger on. Like putting a lot of fuzz on an electric guitar, or vaseline on the lens. She moseys around. And she’s the exact physical opposite of me, so, I’m born fascinated.

Her wardrobe is clean and modern. Unfussy. Relaxed. Somewhere between a girl and a lady—just like Rafi. Just like all of us thirty-somethings.

-C.