This novel looks and reads like the novelization of a mood board. You can practically see the images that the author used to help plan the book on Pinterest – rainy night shots of city skyline viewed through smeared windows, particularly grimy hotel rooms with unmade beds, two wine glasses left on a room service cart in a damp wipe of a towel. The aesthetic is paramount and works beautifully to create a consistent, rich and melancholy atmosphere of high-end loneliness. In many cases the plot and characters seem to have been designed to support this mood rather than forming the basis of the story in themselves. A book to read when you’re alone and it’s raining outside and you want to feel sad in a certain, very cinematic way. If you’re someone who chooses books by ‘aesthetic’ then this is a great choice.
This is stretching it a bit, but Richie Tenenbaum’s deeply troubled relationship with his adopted sister, Margot, in The Royal Tenenbaums could be classified as romantic. He loves her and it destroys him. Although Margot is not the stepmother of Richie, it is another example of love trespassing family boundaries. I perceive this in a very different way than I would in a more serious dramatic film, than in a wacky and offbeat comedy, and than in a perverted and seedy thriller. Perhaps the visual style of a film has a lot to do with perceiving such relationships in a particular way.
I also try to find stories where the step-parent is just as lost as the kids in order to defy the thousands of years of fairy tales’ depiction of the stepmother as the default evil person. Modern films try to undo this perception, but it is hard to get rid of the shadow of the evil stepmother.
'Once Were Warriors' is another brutal, unflinching film from New Zealand - and in this one the central violence is between the parents, with the children's suffering and the total failure of both parents to create a safe, loving home the core of the movie. As a counter-balance to many of the fairly positive step-parent relationships portrayed in movies today, 'Once Were Warriors' is a necessary and very tough film to watch. 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape' is a slightly gentler take on life with an incapacitated mother and her children - including teenage Gilbert - having to raise her. The new woman in Gilbert's life promises him a chance to escape from his familial responsibilities to care for his mother and return to his carefree adolescence - but she also represents a threat to his duties as a parent to his mother.
There’s a great set of parents in ‘Easy A’ of the main character, but then there’s the side-story of her best friend. Her best friend has an annoying little brother. He’s being raised by his two gay dads. Again, this is handled amazingly well in ‘Easy A’, and it’s normalized for a teen-comedy in a really progressive way. The step-parents are just parents in this movie. They’re really great.