THOMAS BABCOCK – 27 – Is getting his doctorate in anthropology; he’s witty and very smart and he knows it. He’s full of ambition to become a professor; personally he’s holding onto to two secrets. One is his love for his best friend’s girl, and the other is grief for his deceased sister.
Thomas would typically wear casual button down shirts, solids or minimal patterns negotiating between formality and informality as befits a future professor. Of course, as he’s still a T.A. (Teaching Assistant), his shirts wouldn’t be as new or pressed as above.
“E” A.K.A. EILEEN SMITH – 24 – was an undergrad at this school and is now a grad art student. She is quite talented but still rough and not fully formed. She has actively remade herself into the black-clad artist. She comes off brusque and sometimes angry, all to cover her inner vulnerability and deep, yearning for Thomas.
She would dye just the very bottom tips of her hair, so a bit more subtle than this. At home, she wears black sweats or yoga pants, but cerulean blue slippers that match the tips of her hair
“E” is not completely comfortable owning her sexuality in public and so would wear a contradictory look of loose baggy clothes and tighter, more revealing clothes, i.e. except for the dress she wears at the night out at the bar… in that case, she’s downright sexy.
The “body” of course has always been important in art but starting with Frida Kahlo in the 1930’s on new levels of empowerment and revelation for female artists in particular. It is often either implicitly or explicitly a means of political expression too.
So, “E” is very much in this tradition from Eve Hesse in the 1960’s to the contemporary young artists e.g., Zhu Tian sculpture “Babe” (2013, rubber, pigment and human hair), and especially Sarah Levy whose painting of Donald Trump made with her own menstrual blood clearly is making the personal political.
An important prop at the end of the film in connection to Thomas’ story is an artist’s box made by “E”, very similar to this one made by Joseph Cornell.
MARCUS WILLET – 26 – a grad student in the School of Music… He is Horatio to his best friend Thomas’ Hamlet. Marcus is a brilliant “New Classical” composer in the making; on a personal level, he is always trying to fix any conflict; he is deeply in love with Amandine.
But Marcus, being a composer and musician, is a bit more casual, going for the layered look and much like the actor Matt Mercer wore during the teaser video filming or alternately a long sleeve t-shirt like the accompanying picture. However, Marcus would wear a leather cuff bracelet because Amandine gave it to him to up his style.
(The pictures of Steve Mackey, composer and professor at Princeton University – one photo of him on guitar, jamming with his students; is a partial inspiration for the character of Marcus. I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Mackey many years ago as well as having listened to his compositions on CD.)
AMANDINE LE ROUX – 26 – is from France as well as being a French literature grad student; she is warm, genuine, sensual – a passionate force of nature. She is in love with Marcus but also has a suppressed interest in Thomas.
Amandine would always be stylish even when she’s in total casual mode but typically would accessorize with a scarf, etc.
This short monologue captures her poetry:
AMANDINE: (To Thomas) “But with Marcus… hmmm… love is like that strong wind in spring when I was a girl in Languedoc. After a rain, suddenly like a bird, whoosh the wind comes, and the sky becomes so clear and blue. Marcus is that quiet blue sky and I am the rain. You know? You are too much like me.“
ADAM LEE – 30 – has graduated and is now supporting himself as a paralegal, he is nonetheless the perpetual philosophy student. His shyness and insecurity makes him take deeper refuge into ideas. Yet, he is hopelessly smitten with Dionysian “E” and she responds with derision, which like that philosopher skunk, Pepé Le Pew, Adam takes as a sign of love.
Adam would dress in a poorer version of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s work style above in 500 Days of Summer, and incidentally Zooey Deschanel work outfit wouldn’t be an unusual outfit for Amandine to wear while teaching the undergraduates in her section.
for Emily
