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T O P I C R E V I E W
GHcool
Posted - 03/25/2007 : 07:10:57 Dear FWFRers,
I just saw a terrible film called The Sleeping Dictionary. Yukon got it right when he wrote, "From A to Zzzzzzzzz." The story is about an English colonialist jerk that comes to Malaysia to "civilize the savages" so to speak and ends up falling in love with his sleeping dictionary. A sleeping dictionary is a native Malaysian prostitute fluent in English that services Englishmen colonialists and teaching them English in return for ... well the movie never really makes that clear, but I can only assume he gives her money or something. Needless to say, the movie focuses a lot more on the "sleeping" part than on the "dictionary" part of the job description. Things get complicated for our young hero when the forbidden love between him and his sleeping dictionary gets compounded by her culture, his soap opera domestic situation, and his own boundless stupidity in every major decision he makes throughout the film.
So yes, the movie has some major flaws, but on the other hand, it delivered exactly the two things I rented it for in the first place: a beautifully photographed exotic location, and an even more beautifully photograph and exotic woman that plays the sleeping dictionary, Jessica Alba. My friend told me that this crappy movie was her at her most beautiful and damn was he right. She's not a great actress, and doesn't quite pass for Malaysian and its pretty obvious that they use a body double for the nudity, but who cares? Jessica Alba has that rare face and figure that's more than just sexy, but also stimulating like a Vivaldi violin concerto or a Rembrandt painting.
(P.S. Sorry to all you feminists out there who discourage objectifying women, the "male gaze," etc. etc., but I hope you can understand that I mean no disrespect.)
