Unicorn store - 2017

 I liked it, I did! Surprisingly. I wasn’t so sure after the first few minutes but it turned out good.

Details:

We see Kit growing up. Born in 1990, we see a beautiful, adorable little girl growing up, laughing and colouring, until she’s actually painting right now, in front of three very stern looking people, who of course do not like her exuberant painting style and do not accept her.

She goes back home to her parents, feeling very low and a bit of a failure. It doesn’t help that her parents kind of walk on tiptoes around her and bring home Kevin, who now works with them at Emotional Quest, Kit feels like they like him more than they like her.

She ends up blurting out that she has a plan, a temp agency she heard on tv, telling them what the commercial said.

She leaves her colourful clothes behind and wears a serious outfit that once belonged to her mother. She says she wants to be a professional from now on, she doesn’t want to be a disappointment to her family. She wants to be a new improved her, a grown-up who eats her veggies even though she hates it, and who wears a grey outfit instead of a rainbow one.

She starts working as a temp in a company where she… uses the copy machine. At first that seems the only thing she has to do, but on her first day she meets Gary, the vice president, who apparently likes her. She asks him if ever wanted to do something else, and it appears like he did have a dream when he was little, but then he says “why not wish we could fly? we can’t, so we focus on what we can do”.

Apparently she works in a company that makes commercials, and they are working on one for the ‘mystic vac vacuum’ product, and she tries out a few sketches ideas.

After finding a strange card on her desk, or her purse, or delivered to her (or all of them, not sure actually) she goes to this place called The Store that promised to sell ‘what she wants, what she needs’ without any other specifics. She goes there and the place is big, but there are no customers and no goods, only a man who calls himself The Salesman, and they talk. She always wanted a unicorn, since she was a child, and he says that that is in fact a unicorn store, and she can get her own if she wants. A magical creature full of love who will love her ForEver.

Of course she wants. 

The man doesn’t ask for money, but gives her tasks. She has to provide a suitable home-like place first, so she wants to build a mini-stable. She goes to a hardware store but since she doesn’t seem to know what she wants, the man there probably thought she was a bit looney and directed her to another employer called Virgil, probably because he doesn’t like him and likes to dump annoying customers on him. The young man tries to tell her no but she insists she needs his help and he accepts.

Then The Salesman tells her about providing food adequate for a unicorn, so she buys lots of hay and kips it in colours to make it more… appropriate. After all, this is a girl who likes glitter almost too much, and still talks to the stuffed Care Bears in her room, and is planning to actually buy a unicorn. Plus, the coloured hay really did look good and suitable for a magical ‘horse’.

At this point, The Salesman tells her she has to provide a loving environment, loving family, so she tries to get closer to her parents, sort of make peace although it’s not like they actually fought or something. So she goes on a “Emotional Quest” trip with them, and it seems to be going well until night time when it’s ‘truth circle’ time. Two of the girls there tell her that they always lie, that there must be tears otherwise it won’t be enough, and that they always make up sad stories. Every kid share a story with the others, and Kit’s parents listen and nod and say encouraging words, until it’s her turn. She doesn’t really want to, but they really want her to join in so she does, she asks if they want the truth and then she says it all, she says she is going to get a unicorn. Her parents are a bit… upset? worried? both? On one hand there’s the question, is she ok? is she still this childish? on the other hand there is: is she doing it on purpose? is she not taking this seriously? is she just taking the piss? I think it’s a combination of all this points that has them taking her away from the others to talk, but she insists she’s being serious, she’s really getting a unicorn, and then she tells them that they listened and believed all those lying kids but not to her. Her mom storms away, her dad tells her that they know perfectly well those stories were lies, that many kids often lies, but that they all had tragic, hard stories behind and even lying could help.

After this, she focuses on her job presentation, she paints the vacuum and covers it in glitter, she goes to work in ostentatious clothes and throws glitter everywhere. It’s a real mess, honestly, but her presentation is good, if rather messy, and then she explains that it would be a vacuum for ones problems and fears, but the lady in charge of deciding isn’t convinced at all, she doesn’t like the mess and the rainbows and all that mess, and they go instead with the other, the previous idea (the usual stuff, you know, only made it worse for effect: a sexy lady in lingerie with a baby in her arms vacuuming her house, the modern sexy version of a 50s perfect housewife, whenever there’s a commercial like that I make a note to NOT ever buy anything of that brand). And of course she’s fired, not promoted. 

Through all this, she kept working with Virgil, talking to him, doing everything with him unless she was at work. They were having quite a nice relationship. He only said ‘okay’ when others would have asked her if she was insane, he was admiring her art work and said the guy who said she wasn’t good was an idiot (the artist famous for putting a stick in a box), who smiled fascinated at her when she was being her odd-self, honestly, they were adorable together really, but then she finally decided to tell him why she wanted that stable. She already said it was not a horse, not exactly, so now she tells him about getting a unicorn. Of course he doesn’t share her enthusiasm. He doesn’t yell or anything, he’s really a dear, always sweet and funny, but of course he doesn’t believe in unicorns and wants to go with her to the store. They go together, and the place is empty, nothing of all the things she saw before, no Salesman in sight. Virgil tells her that it was a con-man, but she doesn’t understand. She didn’t give him money, she didn’t give him financial details of any kind, nothing really, so how? why? 

She tells him she wanted a unicorn so it would love her ForEver, and rejects his attempts to say that he likes her - in a very friendly way, though, not in a ‘hitting on her’ way, not at all at his point, so it’s not like a ‘I don’t want to sleep with you’ rejection, it’s actually a ‘nobody can really like me, you’re just saying that but you don’t, I can’t believe it, nobody really likes me for who I am’ kind of feeling. I really felt for her there, it was the first time my soul felt like exposed. She also thinks she failed in her task to provide a loving environment when she had that fight with her parents, and that why she blew her chance with the unicorn.

She’s so down now that she throws out all the stuff in her room, all her childhood drawings and paint and stuffed bears and of course the glitter and everything like that. Virgil is not talking to her, apparently, she left him two messages, but then she hears him working in the backyard and she comes out to see the small shed is now completed and full with all her stuff, completely decorated with the stuff she tried to throw away. It’s very full, quite colourful, and very very ‘her’. 

“It’s an art show of my life”, she says, and then he says one of the sweetest things: “if you were a building, this is what you’d look like”, and I like it so much, feeling a bit weird because maybe not everyone would like to be compared to a home-made little shed in someone’s backyard, full of childhood drawings and glitter, and yet it was very sweet because spoke of understanding and acceptance, because it was indeed very much her, and he put it together with her parents, without anyone asking any of them, witch spoke of true affection.

She felt like me though, because she replied: “that is the nicest thing a man ha ever said to me”, although I’m not sure why specifically ‘a man’ and not ‘anyone’, but it’s okay, it works either way.

Now, her phone rings and it’s The Salesman, telling her her unicorn has arrived. He also says that the store is only for her, that Virgil couldn’t see because he doesn’t believe, and that there is another woman who wants the unicorn, so if she wants it she must decide now and hurry up. Virgil wants her to say no, thinking it’s not true, but she says ok, she says she must go, she can’t live not knowing, or something like that. So she goes, apparently she goes immediately since she seems to have on the same colourful pajamas and also slippers.

The Store is there again, and she goes in and finds… a white unicorn, like the one she always dreamt about. She talks to him. It’s a male. For the whole movie she kept saying ‘she’, having already decided on two names to call her, but now The Salesman says it’s a he and she starts talking, remembering when she was little and a unicorn was her imaginary friend that she called Steve and that used to play with her, and how she loved Steve, and also adds that now she can go on, there is another woman who needs him and he will have to be there for her, be her best friend like he once was for her, and I had tears in my eyes. I had a tree. I loved that tree. I hope it’s still alive, but I don’t live there anymore and people often don’t care about trees even if it was important and made the best, most delicious cherries in the world, after many years still haven’t found the likes anywhere.

We see that The Salesman enters the room with Virgil, who apparently now can see it, and they go out together, bumping into a nervous woman who received the same card she once got, evidently the ‘other woman’ that needed the unicorn. A woman dressed in black with tears in her voice.

Kit and Virgil leave hand in hand. The end.   =^_^=

p.s. The Salesman is a pink-wearing Samuel L. Jackson with glitter in his big hair… who sounds a little bit creepy when he tells her if she doesn’t want to “hug the shit out of her very own precious pink unicorn? Braid its hair? sing it songs? ‘bake it cookies’?”  and who also sounds so very serious when he replies to her “unicorns aren’t real” with: “as a person who works in a unicorn store, I take great offence in that”. SLJ can really do anything, can he? Not many are so versatile, he’s really something ^_^

p.p.s. Larson and Athie were very good too, I liked it very much ^_^

Kit- Brie Larson

The Salesman- Samuel L. Jackson

Mom- Joan Cusack

Dad- Bradley Whitford

Virgil- Mamoudou Athie

Sabrina- Martha Macisaac

Gary- Hamish Linklater