There’s an issue, apparently, with the rapturously reviewed new Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another, and it’s not that it’s loud and confusing (my review based on watching the trailer, an experience that left me craving a little lie down with a Maeve Binchy – I like films where people in nice clothes discuss their feelings).
No, the problem is peeing. With a run time of nearly three hours, people who hold out until the end are bursting, and with audiences skewing heavily male (PTA’s fanbase is pretty bro-y), queues for men’s lavatories are unusually apparent. New York magazine collated social media posts on this: one woman said the gender imbalance was something she had only previously experienced at hockey games; another said her favourite part of the film experience was getting “to skip right past” the men’s loo queue; someone else compared it to an Oasis gig.
