Model Shop
Monday, February 21, 2022
My favorite Jacques Demy film is “Model Shop,” starring Gary Lockwood and Anouk Aimée, who plays the same character in an early Demy film, “Lola.” Not long ago, when I found myself in Paris, I purchased the Demy box DVD set. I’m often in my bathtub screaming (not singing) tunes from “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” So, this was an indispensable box-set for me to have by my very nature. I don’t know if Lockwood is my favorite actor, but he is one that I often reflect on. Like million others, I admired Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Still, oddly enough, I find his character in “Model Shop” more distant or foreign-like. He appears to be an astronaut who landed in Venice, California.
As a little boy, I went to Venice all the time, and I have these faint images of the oil wells on the beach pumping the tar up from the ground. There was a consistent noise produced by these giant horse-shaped wells that were creepy, and it seemed it went on for 24 hours, seven days a week. Watching “Model Shop,” where the Lockwood character lived on the beach, Demy captures the sound in all its drama and surrealism. I totally forgot the sound till I saw the film, and it brought back memories of Venice.
I remember as a child was a drunk on the street walking down Ocean Front Walk, which is basically on the beach and seeing him being tormented by a group of kids. Maybe four or five kids in all, but what they do is take turns in pushing the drunk to the ground. Once he tries to get up, they keep pushing him back to the pavement. I remember the sound of the oil wells blended in with the kids taunting the drunk and his voice pleading for them to stop. Then it got really ugly. One of the children began to throw rocks at him. In a way, it was like trapping a small animal and keeping it contained in a space as you commit torture on the poor helpless beast.
Ever since then, I never wanted to visit Venice, but I had to go with my parents because they had so many friends who lived there. Every moment there, my stomach would tie up in knots, and nothing could erase the anxiety till we left the neighborhood. I’m susceptible to space and location, and if something happens within that specific site, I can never erase it from my mind. So even watching Jacques Demy’s “Model Shop” brings back the violence of that neighborhood. Even though I can’t be sure, it seems that Lockwood’s small Venice house is located on or very close to the public beating I witnessed as a child. By watching the film, I became obsessed with the memories. Still, I know being at a distance, and this is only a film, I’m reasonably safe from the trauma.
Living in the canyon areas of Los Angeles, we often have unwelcome insects in our home. The kitchen and bathroom would get a sizable population of ants marching on the counter and, for some reason, in the bathroom washbasin. On hot days, ants I imagine being thirsty, so I would fill the basin with warm water and watch them drown. I would often give a few ants a chance to live or get out of the basin, but I would force the ant under the water to see what they would do with perfect timing. Once it stops struggling, I feel immediately sad and depressed. It reminded me of the drunk. I also connect the soundtrack to “Model Shop” by the Topanga Canyon band Spirit. To this day, I’m ashamed of my cruelty but delighted to have a DVD copy of Demy’s “Model Shop.”