X Marks The Spot - Again - In The Nanny Diaries

Big Screen Little Screen (weren't they a pair of regulars on Playschool?) have posted a UK-friendly iFilm version of The Nanny Diaries trailer. Sadly, it's in the wrong aspect ratio.

Take a look at the furnishings and decoration of the appartment in which Scarlett is nannying. You'll see a far higher concentration of X shapes than in The Departed even. This time, however, it strikes me as a much more appropriate and sensible application of the motif, not to mention worthwhile and effective.

For one thing - and not the main thing, let me stress - the appartment belongs to Mr and Mrs X. That's the name given to the employers of our Nanny Diarist, both on the page and here in the adapatation. Secondly, and much more importantly, the design is used to create a very opressively ordered, choking style in the production design. The wallpaper, the chairs, everything - they look heavy, tied-down, that bit more claustrophobically enclosing than if the X structures had not been woven into them.

A very good job by directors Springer and Berman, and particularly Mark Ricker, the film's production designer.