Shirley Valentine | Film review

Shirley Valentine is a middle-aged Liverpudlian housewife who spends most of her time asking the wall of her kitchen 'Why, if they give us so much life, aren't we allowed to make use of it?' whilst romanticising the idea in her head that, one day, she's going to take a break from her everyday routine and take a trip abroad somewhere. However her husband is less concerned with his wife's obvious disenchantment with the life she leads, and more bothered about the fact that she's given him chips and egg for tea rather than steak.

After watching the film version of this play a couple of days ago, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It's like a modern(ish), British version of Revolutionary Road, except this time she actually manages to get away and live the way she wants to. I love the fact that it seems like it could become a kitchen-sink type drama, where the woman has a middle-life crisis and starts up an affair with a boy half her age, but the harsh depiction of her abusive relationship with her husband alongside the director's ability to make viewers laugh, cry and genuinely care about the film's outcome means it becomes so much more.

Thankfully I'm not at a point in my life where I can totally relate to the character of Shirley Valentine, but the way she's constantly questioning herself, as well as her gutsy decision to take the plunge and leave her husband behind as she goes jetting off to Greece with her man-hating friend, make her somebody I feel slightly akin to yet also in complete admiration of. 

Of course, it is kind of stereotypical in its nature and some of the jokes aren't necessarily that funny, but the emphasis on self-reliance and independence towards the end would leave any woman with a feeling of reassurance and pride.

Hope Gangloff

Gangloff is somebody whose artwork I've only just recently discovered, after a fair few of her paintings appeared on my Tumblr dashboard. I reblog her work every time it comes up, and I just can't get my head around her knack for articulating patterns and the attention to detail she demonstrates.

Her art contains a cast of characters, most of whom I believe are her friends, set in front of comfortable, cozy backdrops, and she seems to love experimenting with different textures and styles, and there's a sense of naturalness to what she does that I just adore. I particularly love the nudes that she paints, because there's no sense of provocativeness to them; the lack of interest the figures display for those viewing the artwork makes it seem like they are only physically present in the painting, yet mentally somewhere distant. 

What's even better is that these paintings seem to have been cut out of a much larger scene, as if something a lot more interesting is happening elsewhere, but we're unable to know what.