Everyone knows that the most genious films have no plot but plenty of shots of planetary movements, lava, bacteria, and jellyfish.

Black satin shorts and pinstriped shirt, Monki. Brown leather satchel, Vero Moda. Black army boots, Vagabond. Lipstick, "Red Revolution" by Maybelline.

(Photos by my boyfriend Ronnie.)

My dear boyfriend is great. In so many ways. Just not when it comes to my camera.

Honestly, it's like he's trying to get me out of focus - which makes me talk in almost every photo, saying "honey, please point the camera directly at me, it doesn't work like that, people are watching, please just do as I say!".

But he doesn't. I think he believes "normal" photos are "boring". I try to tell him that photos I can't use are even more boring, but he doesn't agree. And I know that the moment I start arguing, he's going to refuse to take any more photos for the rest of my stay here in NYC. So I do my best to keep my mouth shut. At least he sometimes gets a photo or two where you can actually see that it's me in the picture and where I don't look like a dinosaur.

He's very supportive of my style, though! When I asked if he liked the outfit he said "yeah, sure. You look like a schoolgirl who... umm... has been held back for many, many, many years." I chose to take that as some kind of a compliment.

Disclaimer: Ronnie is a brilliant person, the best one I know. He may not be very much into fashion, or style, or shopping, or blogging, or outfit photography. But he hangs in there and tries to help out with the blog, and I'm grateful, even when I complain.

Anyway! Last night we went to see The Tree of Life, but first, we scarfed down the most delicious bacon cheeseburgers I've ever tasted.

And then... wow. The Tree of Life. What can I say? I have never, ever been so bored at a movie theatre - wait, yeah, I have. When I saw The Thin Red Line with the rest of my class in the 9th grade and felt like I was being tortured. Guess it should have come as no surprise that the same Terrence Malick directed both of them - but when I discovered it, after we came home last night, I laughed out loud for five minutes straight. Man, Mr Malick and I sure don't have the same view on the subject "how to make a film that is not pretentious crap and does not make the audience pray they're on Candid Camera and that at any moment the lights will come on, they will all feel stupid but relieved and then the REAL movie will start".

The only reason we didn't leave the theatre during the first twenty minutes was that we're both way too cheap - I'd just paid 26$ for those tickets and I wanted my money's worth!

Big mistake. BIG MISTAKE. We soon realized we would gladly have paid 100$ - each - to get those 2 hours and 18 minutes back.


But please! Go see it if you want. Just because I thought is was a piece of horse manure doesn't mean you will. 99,99% of the world's critics claim this is a masterpiece; "cinema that's thinking big." They adore the excruciatingly long sequence of "shots of planetary movements, hot geysers, lava, bacteria, molecules, jellyfish, canyons and churning seas give way to a CGI dinosaur caressing another injured beast – a scene of prehistoric kindness." (The Observer.) They write about the fact that the film does not have a plot like is sensationally clever, like all the trivial, mundane films out there who actually have a plot simply don't know better.

Yeah, I'll admit it: it pisses me off to pay money only to feel like an idiot. I find it embarrassing and a bit offensive. I watch an enormous amount of films of plenty of different genres, I read novels, I read books about films; I'm interested, I'm open-minded, and to be honest, I'm quite easily impressed. But I can not stand watching a movie where I'm supposed to look at lava and molecules and white clouds for twenty minutes while voices are suggestively whispering "why... why did you.... are you watching me? What is the purpose... tell me..."

The whole thing made me think of one of my professors at University. This sweet lady with long, grey hair and huge glasses. She was some kind of filmmaker - or at least she wanted to be - and in my first class with her, she showed us a short film she'd made. What I remember is this: a lake, some clouds, a traffic light, two swans flying away. When she turned it off, she looked anxious and asked us, "is it way too obvious?". (Apparently it was supposed to be about September 11th. Obviously.)

Oh, how I can see Terrence Malick standing in front of his crew, having finished putting together the everlasting sequence with the jellyfish, the lava, the bacteria, the planets, the canyons, the dinosaurs and the voice over whispers, anxiously asking: is it way too obvious?