Someday I want a certain still from the Luc Besson film The Professional to hang on the wall of my writing studio. The shot I want is of two pair of shoed feet, those of Leon (Jean Reno) and the young Matilda (Natalie Portman) as the two embrace in the office of bad guy Norm Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in the DEA building in New York. Portman's Matilda is so little against Reno's Leon that her feet as they embrace hang a good foot off the floor. It is endearing to me, this shoes-only disembodied essence of their strange and beautiful love. I have been in love with this Besson film since it came out in the mid-nineties.
I named my beloved pet ferret after Portman's character in 2001 after she came to me from an animal shelter under the most extraordinary circumstances (not unlike those in the film). Just an infant, Matilda the ferret was found by police amid a stockpile of guns in a motel room after her owner, a paranoid schizophrenic, was arrested for wandering armed and delusional down old Route 66 in Albuquerque.
At the time feeling more than a little crazy myself, I remember having a deep empathy for the man who, scared into a gun collection frenzy in a desolate motel, had with him a baby girl ferret to keep the demons at bay. This told me a lot about the man, or so I thought. More than that, it told Matilda's story and gave her a magical glow. When I removed myself from my mentally unhealthy relationship there a few months later, I took Matilda with me to New Orleans. She died of kidney failure just a few months later.
In the Leon-Matilda scenario from which my dearest pet got her name, it should have been me who gave my life for her. Alas, there was little I could do for my much tinier tiny little girl pet after the vet sentenced her to death. That was seven years ago. I haven't had a pet since.
I was about to say I haven't had a girlfriend since, either. But that isn't true. I haven't had one that's lasted longer than Matilda lived, which was less than a year. That much is true. And none have filled little Matilda's shoes. No no. Not one.
-RSM
I named my beloved pet ferret after Portman's character in 2001 after she came to me from an animal shelter under the most extraordinary circumstances (not unlike those in the film). Just an infant, Matilda the ferret was found by police amid a stockpile of guns in a motel room after her owner, a paranoid schizophrenic, was arrested for wandering armed and delusional down old Route 66 in Albuquerque.
At the time feeling more than a little crazy myself, I remember having a deep empathy for the man who, scared into a gun collection frenzy in a desolate motel, had with him a baby girl ferret to keep the demons at bay. This told me a lot about the man, or so I thought. More than that, it told Matilda's story and gave her a magical glow. When I removed myself from my mentally unhealthy relationship there a few months later, I took Matilda with me to New Orleans. She died of kidney failure just a few months later.
In the Leon-Matilda scenario from which my dearest pet got her name, it should have been me who gave my life for her. Alas, there was little I could do for my much tinier tiny little girl pet after the vet sentenced her to death. That was seven years ago. I haven't had a pet since.
I was about to say I haven't had a girlfriend since, either. But that isn't true. I haven't had one that's lasted longer than Matilda lived, which was less than a year. That much is true. And none have filled little Matilda's shoes. No no. Not one.
-RSM
