Two Lovers

Evidently, Two Lovers will be Joaquin Phoenix’s last film ever. That may not be a bad thing. This film seems to be a warm-up for whatever role he has assigned himself to play in life these days. (He’s apparently grown a beard and intends to become a rapper.) As Leonard Kraditor he is distracted, mumbling, inarticulate, slightly overweight. He even tries to rap briefly in a car, and there’s a pretty embarrassing dance scene at a club. It’s hard to say if this is acting, or if it is Phoenix consumed by his new persona, or if the new persona is an act that builds on the character of Leonard. But who cares? J. Hoberman of Variety calls Leonard a “tragic asshole,” and that seems about right, with the caveat that the latter term tends to cancel out the former.

In the film’s first sequence we see Leonard try to drown himself, half-heartedly, by jumping in the bay, but he swims to the surface and a couple of guys pull him out. He walks home dripping water in the dead of winter, looking like drowned rat. We learn that he’s been institutionalized and has medications. But what really seems to be driving him crazy is that his fiancé dumped him. So, deinstitutionalized, he’s come to live with his parents in their tiny apartment and to do deliveries for his dad’s dry cleaning company, which a competitor is trying to buy from Leonard’s retirement-ready father. Somehow to seal the deal both sets of parents seem to be in collusion about getting the daughter, Sandra (Vanessa Shaw) together with the crazy, unskilled, not-terribly-bright Leonard. Why anyone, especially her parents, thinks this a good deal for her is beyond me.

At the exact moment that this arrangement is progressing, Leonard meets another resident of his apartment building, Michelle, played by radiant Gweneth Paltrow. She, as it turns out, is having an affair with one of the partners at the law firm in which she is a legal assistant. He’s married and Michelle fears he’ll never leave his wife for her. For inexplicable reasons she finds Leonard to be sparkling company and soon takes him her confidant. As if to demonstrate her lack of judgment, she invites Leonard to a dinner with herself and her lover, thinking that Leonard will be able to discern his sincerity. Of course, Leonard can do no such thing (surprise!) and knows only that he is utterly smitten by the drug-addled Michelle.

When not counseling Michelle, Leonard progresses with Sandra; she goes to bed with him (the two sets of parents having sent her from a party at their house to Leonard’s apartment, presumably knowing what will happen), buys him some nice leather gloves, and generally falls for him based on wanting to “take care of him.” In the meantime Leonard nurses Michelle through a miscarriage and persuades her to dump her lover and to fly away with him to San Francisco. Some comically bad timing ensues as he is supposed to leave for the airport with her in the midst of a party at his parents’ apartment. He’s attempting to duck out just as the hapless Sandra is arriving so that he has to hide in the stairwell. It’s not clear to me if this is intended to be funny, but it certainly has the structure of comedy.

I’ll refrain from disclosing the ending, but it strikes me as too neat by half, and I find I don’t know how cynical one should be about Leonard’s choice.

Gweneth Paltrow is quite convincing as the bad-choice-making Michelle. One critic summarized the movie as a guy “having to pick between Gweneth Paltrow and some other girl.” (Some readers may be interested to know that Ms. Paltrow has occasion to flash a little skin in this role. Flash is the operative term here.) Former David Lynch queen Isabella Rosselini is depressingly dowdy as Leonard’s Jewish mother, whom some critics have seen as a shrewish stereotype, but I can’t see that at all.

This film got very good reviews and was a hit at Cannes. Maybe I’m missing something, but I found it weird, and not very convincing, with Phoenix’s eccentric portrayal of Leonard as off-putting. It is difficult to imagine that he could win over these two lovely women without a modicum of charm.

Che (Parts I and II)

I suppose this movie could have been called Blame It on Fidel as well, but it seems more appropriate to blame director/producer Steven Soderbergh. I can’t for the life of me see what the point is here. Typically with a biopic you expect to get some insight into the character of the subject, but Che remains an absolute sipher. Played by Benicio Del Toro (usually a fine actor), we see only the outer man (he smokes a pipe, he has asthma, he has five children, he makes sage comments), but we never, for an instant, get any sense of an inner turmoil, of doubt or spiritual struggle. Del Toro, presumably at the behest of his director, gives us almost nothing of an inner man. His and Soderbergh’s Che is simply the committed revolutionary, making things happen by whatever means necessary. Maybe the problem is that the source material is Che’s own autobiographical writings and his diary; these may have been written as propaganda to support the revolution.

The second of the two films, which I found somewhat more satisfying than the first, is set in Bolivia, where Che has come to continue the revolution after the success of the Cuban revolution. We get absolutely no insight into this decision, only the TV broadcast of Fidel reading a letter of “explanation” from Che, as he deserts all his governmental posts and even gives up his Cuban citizenship (he was Argentine). He arrives in Bolivia (in one of the worst disguises ever on a movie screen) where the resistance consists of no more than a dozen or so armed peasants avoiding the army in the Bolivian mountains. Bolivian people are distrustful and indifferent of the resistance and things never really pick up for Che. He builds his army up to about 50, but they are are gradually picked off and he himself is eventually captured and executed. Did he have any doubts about the revolutionary endeavor in Bolivia? Not that we know about. We see only his actions.

You have to figure a film is in trouble if the director feels it necessary to begin with silent three-minute shots of maps (in the first film of Cuba, in the second of South America), with each state glowing in a different color and its major cities identified. That fifth-grade-geography-lesson moment is a warning sign that the director's intentions. Even the battle scenes are dull. Che’s relationships with his colleagues seem guarded and mediated by his revolutionary zeal; he tells his men how difficult it is to lose colleagues, but we never see a tear from him. When an attactive female revolutionary shows up in camp, we think, "Aha! Things will pick up now that the love interest has arrived." But no; Che just yells at her for security breaches. Sigh.

I don’t know what the critical consensus is on this ambitious two-film project. I started it on the strength of the director (Soderbergh), the star (Del Toro), and the subject matter (the life of the iconic revolutionary). I watched the first film a couple of weeks ago and determined that I didn’t need to see the second. Then I had a crisis among the thinned out shelves at Blockbuster, so I bit for the second. At least my judgment about the first was confirmed.

Subtitle Alert: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.

Blame It on Fidel

The chief virtue of Blame It on Fidel is its realistic and uncondescending view of childhood. In the film we see the world through the eyes of Anna, a nine-year-old whose early childhood is spent in the early 1970's as the daughter of a well-to-do young Parisian lawyer and a writer for a French women’s magazine. She and her oblivious younger brother undergo a significant change of lifestyle as her parents become radicalized, activists working in support of the Allende regime in Chile. Because of their politics they give up their home, their servants, and Anna’s Catholic school, much to Anna’s chagrin on all counts.

What is realistic about the portrait of Anna as a child of nine? First, she is conservative in the sense that she resists change of any sort. We think of children as flexible, and they do adapt to change generally more quickly than adults, but they would prefer to have, say, their bedtime routine remain the same forever. Second, we see Anna absorbing information that becomes part of her intellectual repertoire, and some of it is nonsense, such as her Cuban nanny’s view of Communists. Or her father’s claim that Mickey Mouse is a fascist. It is difficult for her to assess it, so her prespective is often an incongruous jumble. Finally, it is realistic in showing how children adapt to the world that is presented to them. Slowly, the conservative Catholic little girl becomes absorbed into the left-wing politics of her parents, through her exposure to and eventual affection for the radicals who have become almost co-residents of their small apartment.

Nina Kerval plays the sober Anna, and the movie belongs to her. She does not mug it up for the camera, or pretend to be wiser than she is, nor is she forced to deliver “cute” dialogue. Her demeanor is generally somewhere between worried and stubborn. Her frown, especially toward her brother, is almost constant. There are also moments of defiance (that all parents are familiar with). I imagine all this would be a difficult role for a child actress, but she pulls it off convincingly, probably a result of being well directed. Two scenes stand out—when, angry at her parents, she takes her brother by the hand and, with him scurrying to keep up with her angry walking, they run away--to the library. She brings her brother home finally, her mother takes the boy in and shuts the apartment door in Anna’s face. Anna does not break into tears, nor is her character irreparably damaged. She is merely surprised, and angry and prepared to wait. The second scene is when her parents take her to a political rally, which becomes violently chaotic when the police turns on the crowd with clubs and tear gas. Anna doesn’t understand why the people are running away and stands her ground less in defiance than mere bafflement and surprise. Finally her father finds her and whisks her to safety. The scene is shot from Anna’s perspective; she is lost in a sea of blue jeans, anything above an adult’s waist obscured to her.

One reviewer called Blame It on Fidel a double coming-of-age story. I’m not so sure of that, but the parents certainly are evolving at an accelerated pace. They also make mistakes and disagree. Perhaps the irony of the film is Anna’s relative steadfastness in the face of her parents’ radical makeover.

I can recommend this fine little movie because of its unusually honest take on childhood. Some of the historical events are a little dim in memory, but their impact on Anna and her parents is clear. Thanks to Mary for the tip.

Subtitle Alert: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.

Revolutionary Road

Before going any further I just want to note that Kate Winslet is a wonderful actress; one reviewer of this film was inspired to proclaim that she is the best actress of her generation, and I would have difficulty arguing with that. Her performance here is almost supernaturally sensitive (see, I can be hyperbolic too!); her face is so expressive of every nuance of feeling in this complex and frustrated character. And her face always conveys intelligence, hers and her character’s. She was apparently the driving force behind this film because she wanted to play April Wheeler, and it was a good choice for her.

The film is based on Richard Yates’s novel (I’m reading it now), considered a classic and the progenitor of the novel of suburban angst. The road of the title is the suburban address of their pseudo-quaint home; the name is presumably ironic. We see Frank Wheeler meet April “across a crowded room” at a Manhattan party. Winslet is almost unrecognizable, but also gorgeous, with her straight blonde hair, red lipstick, cigarette, and early 50’s attire. They are drawn to each other, strike up a conversation, and the next thing we know they are a married couple; he is watching, uncomfortably, a bad community theater play she is in; they have a rip-roaring fight on the side of the road after it. Turns out they have two kids and have moved to the Connecticut ‘burbs. Frank works for the company his father did in NYC and April stays home. Frank is restless and unhappy in his job, so for his birthday he gives himself a fling with a hapless secretary. In the meantime, recognizing that Frank is stifled, April suggests that they sell the house and move to Paris; she’ll work while he finds himself. They both become caught up in this dream (and briefly their marriage seems renewed). Then Frank is offered a big promotion with much more pay and April discovers she is pregnant. Things do not go well for either from this point forward; I won’t be the spoiler.

Leonardo DiCaprio does a fine job as Frank. He too is very expressive of his mercurial character’s mood swings, and he covers a huge range of emotion. Frank is not as self-aware as his wife is, and somehow his boyish appearance works well here. It is impressive that DiCaprio has grown from a child star into a grownup one, and one of our best actors period. Winslet apparently was eager to get him for this role.

One other performance, a minor one, deserves a remark, and that is Michael Shannon, the lunatic son of the Wheeler’s former real estate agent and current friend of April. He is one of those truth-telling crazies that movies are fond of, but his mercurial power dominates every scene he’s in. A striking visual image is Frank’s commute to work in NYC in which the city seems to have been invaded by aliens in baggy suits and Fedoras. There’s no stronger reminder that we’re in the 1950’s than the presence of a hat on every male head.

This film is directed by Sam Mendes, successful London stage director, director of American Beauty, and Kate Winslet’s real-life husband. I have noted before Ms. Winslet’s propensity for getting naked in her films, but she does not here, despite having three sex scenes; she remains fully clothed in each. Husband directs; no nudity for Kate. Coincidence? You be the judge.

The film follows the novel very closely (the dialog of the entire roadside argument comes straight from the book). Is a movie about 1950's suburban angst somewhat dated? Probably. And I get irritated when the source of most of the anguish is the characters' discovery that they aren't the privileged special beings they imagined themselves to be in their youths. Hello?

Revolutionary Road is pretty much of a downer, but it is played very well and is well worth seeing.

Let the Right One In

Here I go again, reviewing a movie that partakes of a genre I don’t really get—the horror film. But with a difference—it’s Swedish! Let the Right One In is like Ingmar Bergman meets Halloween 23. Though it’s true that Bergman had some pretty horrifying scenes, they were psychological; here there’s blood on the screen.

The story centers on a 12-year-old boy living with his single mom. He seems to be a social outcast, beleaguered by bullies. He keeps a knife with him and fantasizes killing his tormentors. It is during one of his acting out fantasies that he meets Eli, who materializes in the courtyard of the apartment complex. We know something’s fishy about her right away because it’s the dead of winter and she has no coat on. She’s 12 as well but, as she puts it, she’s been twelve for a long time. The two, who seem desperately alone, form a strange friendship, that is perhaps best characterized by their learning Morse code and tapping messages to each other through the shared wall of their apartments. Both seem emotionally deadened, perhaps with good cause, but it does tend to distance us from the film. An analogous effect is created by the director’s filming scenes in which Eli attacks people from a considerable distance. It is also supported by moments of black humor that leave the audience uncomfortable with their laughter.

The problem with the emotional deadness and distance is that, if the film aspires to rise above the horror genre, it must do so as a coming-of-age film. But for that to work, we have to be engaged with the adolescents involved. It’s hard to know how to relate to a boy who, when worked over by bullies, simply picks himself up, straightens his clothes and goes sullenly on. And Eli’s emotional life is probably difficult, but she is, after all, a vampire and pretty opaque. We also don’t know how innocent she really is. How many times, in her long twelve-year-old life, has she had relationships like the one with Oskar? Early in the film she is living with an older man who kills victims to feed their blood to Eli. He sacrifices himself to protect her in a pretty spectacular manner (which I won’t reveal). Is this a future Oskar may face by remaining with the unaging Eli?

Toward the film’s end Eli’s nocturnal habits are catching up with her and she tells Oskar she has to leave. We see her depart in the upscale car of a mysterious benefactor who apparently keeps vampires from living on the streets. This might be the end of a coming-of-age film—boy loses the first love of his life and then goes on. But in the film’s final sequence Eli reappears at just the right moment as an avenging angel and protector of Oskar. That scene’s violence (though subtly represented) and its theme of revenge, takes us back to the horror genre. It's the ending of Carrie but done tastefully--sort of. But the overall effect seems a bit conflicted.

I will confess that I have seen Twilight (not reviewed here!), a truly mindless take on the theme of human/vampire love. Let the Right One In isn’t that by a long shot, but it isn’t quite free of its genre origins. So maybe it's that rarity, an art-house horror film.

The title, by the way, is from a Morrissey song, of whom the screenwriter and novelist is a big fan: “Let the right one in/ I’d say you were within your rights to bite/The right one and say, ‘What kept you so long?’ ”

Subtitle caution: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.

The Fall

I’ll have to admit that I don’t really get the genre of fantasy, so I’m not a good one to review The Fall. (I was the only person on the planet who didn’t much care for Pan’s Labyrinth.) The plot centers on a little girl, Alexandra, in a hospital recovering from a broken arm, which she has to keep awkwardly elevated throughout the film. She is from a family of immigrant Romanians who are pick fruit in California. In the hospital she befriends Roy, a young stunt man in the brand new film industry, who has apparently attempted suicide (which we may have seen the film’s opening sequence, though it is not entirely clear) and broken both legs in the process. The young man begins to weave an elaborate fantasy story (he calls it “epic”) involving five exotic warriors who have been stranded on a tiny island by a King Odious whom they have all vowed to kill. (One of the warriors is Charles Darwin (???)) The intermixing of fantasy and reality begins early as we see characters from the hospital appearing in the story, including Roy himself. Eventually Alexandra herself appears as Roy’s sidekick. It has been suggested that although the story is Roy’s, the visuals come from Alexandra’s five-year-old mind, but toward the end of the tale, the princess is Roy’s former girlfriend and Odious is the leading man from the film Roy was last involved in. This sort of blending was probably started with the last sequence of The Wizard of Oz and continues unabated to this day.

The film turns dark when it becomes apparent that Roy’s primary motive in weaving this tale for Alexandra is to persuade her to steal morphine pills from the hospital’s pharmacy so that he can kill himself. After his attempt fails, the story turns very dark indeed.

There are many aspects in which the title comes into play. The opening sequence depicts a staged fall from a railroad bridge which may be where Roy was injured. Alexandra falls and suffers a brain injury as she tries to steal morphine pills for Roy in the hospital’s pharmacy. We also see Roy falling into despair. Much has been made of the film’s fabulous visual style, but it should also be recalled that most of that visual spectacle is a pretty ruthless manipulation of a five-year-old girl. Surely the style of the film is implicated by Roy’s motives and we don’t have a pure paean to visual filmmaking. Or not.

The director and writer, Tarsem Singh, is a very successful director of commercials and music videos (that background could have been inferred from the film’s visual manner). He apparently sandwiched between his commercial work and financed it with his own money. It was filmed on 28 international locations. You have to admire Tarsem’s gumption, but I can’t help wish it could have been applied to a project of more substance than this.

The most stunning visual of the film, at least for me, occurs when the warriors escape the island by riding on the back of a swimming elephant. It is mostly filmed underwater so that we see the elephant swimming. Of course, it makes no sense whatever that an elephant would arrive on the scene and save them all, but it was cool to see. I also admired the use of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony as the theme music.

The Fall has been called a fairytale, but not one for children. But being a fairytale also limits its appeal to adults, so it’s hard to imagine the film’s natural audience.

Oh, man, I just figured out how to embed YouTube movie trailers! New feature!

The Duchess of Langeais

The Duchess of Langeais is based on a novella by Balzac, so one might be justified in thinking that this film will be an historical costume drama the main business of which is to make viewers feel good about being cultured. That would be respectably middlebrow, and one could do a lot worse. But this film is directed by Jacques Rivette, a warhorse of the French New Wave who is still at work his eighties. And that fact tells you that any thought of a comfortable, unchallenging evening needs to be put aside. The most aggressively experimental of his peers, Rivette is known for the opacity of his characters and plots, and for doing exactly what he deems appropriate. He is the auteur, after all.

The story is of an unconsummated affair between a wounded hero of the Napoleonic wars who has spent some years as a captive in Africa and a duchess who seems far more intent on maintaining her social position than on an affair with anyone. Initially the impetus comes from the officer who is determined to have the duchess as his mistress. She strings him along mercilessly and only when he is on the verge of abandoning his apparently futile quest does she realize her passion for him, at which time he seems to take his revenge by rejecting her overtures. She gives him one final ultimatum to rendezvous with her or lose her forever. Without giving away too much, suffice it to say, he messes up and she disappears. He mounts a five-year search for her in nunneries across Europe, and finally discovers her in Spain. She refuses his appeals again, and Montriveau and his colleagues plan to kidnap her, at which point I will refrain from playing the plot spoiler.

What, besides his name on the credits, makes this a Rivette film? The characters are psychologically opaque. Gen. Montriveau seems to be deep in depression, but we don’t know why. The duchess maddening inconsistencies toward his advances are impossible to read. (One reviewer suggests that both characters may be mad.) The pacing is Rivette’s usual maddening crawl (though at 137 minutes this film breezes by compared to four plus hours for others). In one scene we spend several minutes observing the Duchess dress and pose herself for a visit by Montriveau. In another we spend at least a minute watching servants light candles in the Duchess’ chamber. Rivette likes to remind us of the artifice of cinema. In this case he inexplicably accomplishes transitions through the use of title cards like those used in early silent films.

I’m not entirely sold on the casting of the two leads. General Montriveau is played by Guillaume Depardieu, son of Gerard, paragon of French cinema. His dour melancholy seems one dimensional in Guillaume, and one can’t help imagine the depth it the father would have imbued it with in his prime twenty years ago. Jeanne Balibar seems singularly unsensual and it’s a little hard to imagine what about her so enflames Montriveau. Her expressions seem very limited in range and convey little of the pathos of their situation. Again, I imagine the richness of the role in the hands of another French actress like Isabel Huppert, who is all barely controlled feeling. That said, I’m confident that Rivette was getting exactly what he wanted from his players.

Despite its weirdness, or more likely, because of it, I was really caught up by this film and I never felt it dragged. If you enjoy it, try Rivette’s take on a “romantic comedy” with Va Savior. (Balibar plays in that as well.) It’s quite wonderfully baffling!

A quick afterword on Guillaume Depardieu—he died at 37 of an infection not long after this film. His Montriveau walks with a marked limp; we assume he has lost the lower part of his leg in the wars. The limp is not faked; Depardieu lost a leg in an accident. How's that for inside Hollywood info?

Subtitle Alert: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.