‘Sound of Violet’ - Romantic Comedy

Post Reply New Topic

This movie was originally a book. Now available for streaming. The premise is “high functioning” autistic guy is dating a prostitute without him realizing she is a prostitute.

Trailer


Rotten Tomatoes has a critics rating of 14 percent an audience rating 83 percent

I couldn't care less. And don't tell me I do care just because I replied to this. Romantic comedies suck, anyway. Yes I'm a woman and I think romantic comedies suck. Is that so wrong?

Never seen such a divergence between the opinions of critics versus those of the general public.

Not wrong at all. I feel the same way about rom coms so I probably won’t like it no matter how good or bad the autistic representation is.


I wonder how the autistic public will like it. The divergence of reactions is the only reason I am even contemplating watching this.

This film was the last in my mini binge of watching films with Autistic characters in genres I usually don’t watch.

This film adaptation was directed by the guy who wrote the book and features a unknown cast of neurotypical actors. An autistic crew member was said to consult.

I did read a number of reviews after viewing and as mentioned above reviewers either loved it as groundbreaking or found it offensive.

Out of all the three films I watched for this mini binge I had the lowest expectations for this one. Those expectations were way to high. I was not offended because it was too cringy to be offensive. Actually the word cringe seems inadequate here. I do expect a high dose of cringe in a rom-com but, but.

Let’s start with the good parts, the actors did a good job with the crap they were given and it was nice to see what Seattle looks like with the sun out.

As is all too often the case the Autistic character demonstrates all of the autistic traits at once to an extreme, similar to Shawn in The Good Doctor. The autistic character in this film is also named Shawn, coincidence? The film starts with his date literally running away. He never figures out that all of her “auditions” appointments with Johns, that her “manager” is a pimp(who is black, I have never seen a pimp portrayed who is not black). That might be somewhat believable except for that she told him she was a “ho” they first met.

While I decided to watch the film for its autism portrayal that was easily the least cringy thing about it. When Shawn meets Violet it is at a company “Pimps and Hoes” party, and it just gets worse from there. I guess the thing to do here is under a spoilers tag is give more examples. I can’t do that, rehashing plot points would be too painful.