3 hours ago
2
In 2022, I was living in a flat in north London above a chicken shop, with two flatmates and a cockroach infestation (what did we expect, said the landlord, living above a takeaway?). My flatmate was from Lithuania, and was due to go home in January, and our other flatmate, his girlfriend, was away for Christmas. I’d been home to Canada the month before, so for Christmas Day itself it was just the two of us.
I bought a small chicken to roast, and served it with stuffing I’d brought back from Canada – it’s the same concept as the stuffing in the UK but somehow fluffier and with more texture – and some pasta. I made brussels sprouts, trying to recreate a dish I like from a restaurant in my home town by cooking them with bacon, maple syrup, parmesan and a mayonnaise drizzle. It wasn’t very nice. We had some prosecco that my flatmate had won in a competition, even though neither of us really liked prosecco. It felt like we should, because it was Christmas.
My flatmate set up a projector in his bedroom – we didn’t have a living room – and we sat on desk chairs, eating our weird Christmas lunch on our laps, and watching a film I’d always wanted to see: Tiptoes, in which Gary Oldman plays a man with dwarfism. Matthew McConaughey plays Oldman’s twin brother, who is average-sized (and obviously much younger in real life), and has kept his family – all of whom have dwarfism – secret from his pregnant girlfriend, played by Kate Beckinsale. I think it was supposed to be a comedy, or at least a dramedy, but it was still a difficult premise.
Tiptoes had intrigued me and my best friend from back home for years – despite never having seen it, we talked about it a lot and watched loads of YouTube videos where people shared their reviews. We also collected weird facts about the movie, such as Beckinsale only agreeing to be in the film if she was allowed to wear her “lucky hat” during filming. It looks a bit like a Santa hat, but with black-and-white stripes. Having now seen the film, I can confirm it looks as odd as it sounds.
Although the film does have roles for actors who have dwarfism, including Peter Dinklage, the main character is played by Oldman, who largely walks on his knees, placed in his shoes. There’s a scene where he’s on a sofa, and it’s obvious that the rest of his body is hidden inside it. It’s not as if the film is really old – it was only released in 2003 – so its inappropriateness feels even more jarring. My overwhelming feeling was: how did this get made?
There is supposed to be a quite artistic director’s cut somewhere, which is interesting because the film that was released is comically bad: poorly written, with dialogue that feels deranged.
I felt guilty watching it without my best friend, and later, when I confessed, she was furious. But I think if we had watched a Christmas film, it might have made us sad not to be with our families. A weird film, with weird food, on a weird Christmas Day seemed right. As told to Emine Saner
