Pet Sounds

Varda's pastoral colour study is Pet Sounds in another medium — sunshine surface, devastating interior. Both works use beauty as the bait that walks you into the trap.

Waller-Bridge's monologue is the Brian Wilson method in voice form — the pop surface keeps grinning, the inner room is a wreck. Both refuse the choice between.

Plath's Esther Greenwood is Pet Sounds at novel length — sun-bleached surface, immaculate prose, a young woman recording a depression the era refused to name. Both works are about the bright room with the locked door.

Caetano, Gil, Mutantes, Gal — the manifesto record of Tropicália uses pop as Wilson did, as a Trojan horse for everything denser the surface won't admit. Brazilian dictatorship, American suburb, same trick.

Yuasa's pastel space-amnesia fable is Pet Sounds animated — childlike form, shattered emotional content. Both works trust that the bright palette will get you to the difficult feeling.