Do you ever watch something and think hm, yes, that’s me, exactly! Or, on the flip side, have you ever watched something and instantly become obsessed, trying to replicate it exactly to embody one of the characters? Well, for this week, our film and television editors attempt to explain what film they would be, if their life was a movie. No judgements please!
Audrey’s Pick
As chaos reincarnated, I identify with Christine from Lady Bird. To romanticise everything, maybe I’d call myself a Sofia Coppola mess. In female manipulator fashion and as someone sick of couples making out in the meadows, maybe I’m Summer from 500 Days of Summer. Not a dream girl, but an exhausted one.
I’m seeing someone that reminds me of Heath Ledger, so in some way I’m Kat Stratford from 10 Things I Hate About You, though I probably relate to her more questionable traits. Her ways of despising men and being a hater that would only find love for a Fender strat is utterly relatable, and I also find myself in her being the type of person to write poems about people she definitely shouldn’t be thinking about. Nonchalance? Never heard of it.
In a way, AGM elections mean life kinda feels like The Favourite, although not that politically serious, but equally charged with wanting to impress the right people and secretly caring about what they think.
To consider my inner demons, I can imagine Terence Fletcher from Whiplash yelling from the depths and corners of my mind, “NOT MY TEMPO”, when I consider my academics, rejections, or regrets. Though I also admit that sometimes, “I want to be one of the greats”.
Finally, in proper young person fashion, I will simply always be channelling Frances in Frances Ha— “I’m so embarassed, I’m not a real person yet”.
Nikola’s Pick
If my life was a film that film would be Playtime (1967). Not the funniest choice. Not the cleverest one. Am I expecting readers to laugh out loud at this pick? No. Do I think you’ll be revelling in my cinematic literacy for referencing a French film? (Ooh, ooh la la; Cinéma français; Kino) No, not at all. I’ve been thinking about what movie would fit the bill, and I couldn’t see any other title but this one. For some reason, Playtime kept coming back. And I don’t think that’s because this film reveals anything about me. If everyone’s life was a film, it would be this one.
How do I even sell this? It’s Kubrick’s 2001 meeting Where’s Wally?: a 70mm spectacle where plot lies less in linear narrative and more in an muddled mosaic of nested visual gags. A joke within a joke within a joke. A satire that takes an anthropological lens on all the strange idiosyncrasies and social norms of modernity that we take for granted. It makes me feel like an idiot. I also feel a strange sense of pride in feeling like an idiot. It’s nice to laugh at ourselves.
Livvie’s Pick
Right now, I feel like a collage of disastrous women—Danielle from Shiva Baby, Julie from The Worst Person in the World, Fleabag from, well, Fleabag. Oh to live without mistakes is to never live at all, but must I suffer so much embarrassment?! I’ve always adored these characters because, no matter how chaotic my own life felt, theirs were inevitably more absurd, more tangled. But lately, I’m starting to see too much of myself in them.
Do I wish my life played out like a perfect rom-com, with Hugh Grant standing before me as just a boy, or Meg Ryan crying in the park as she hoped it was going to be me? Sometimes, absolutely. (Please, dear reader, surprise me with a grand romantic gesture.) But if I had to choose, I think I’d want my life to be La La Land—to feel everything in vivid colour, to be swept up in the music, the love, the magic. Maybe not perfection only found on the silver screen but God I hope it’s interesting.
And yet, if my life were a film at this very moment, it would be titled Girl Late for Copyediting, with the tagline: “Will she ever get out of bed?”
Illustration by Rebecca Tate, @rebi_draws on Instagram