Speed Racer

2008 // USA - Australia - Germany // Andy and Larry Wachowski // May 21, 2008 // IMAX Theatrical Print

[Full Disclosure: Although its trailers had intrigued me, the overall critical drubbing that Speed Racer has received (35% on Rotten Tomatoes, 37 on Metacritic) dissuaded me from seeing the film in its first week. However, a beautifully written and overwhelmingly positive review by Dennis Cozzalio re-piqued my interest, prompting me to catch Speed Racer at a late IMAX showing. In most cases, I avoid reading reviews for films I know I'm going to see, lest the reviewer's impressions creep into my own. I violated this rule of thumb for Speed Racer, and I will acknowledge up front that Dennis' work likely lent a positive bias to my review, in that he helped me see the virtues of this apparent flop.]

B - Right out of the gate, let me lay out some facts about Speed Racer: 1) It is absolutely batshit crazy. By this I mean that it refuses to play by the rules and exhibits abnormal, even alarming, behavior. 2) It is not, despite initial appearances, an empty vessel of day-glo gloss and digital mayhem. 3) It is an ideal family film for parents to share with older children and preteens. 4) It is a work of ambitious filmmaking, and in the final analysis, it succeeds more often that it stumbles. 5) Did I mention that it's CRAZY?

I've never seen the Speed Racer cartoon, so I can't say how closely the film hews to the formula or the details of the source material. The first twenty minutes or so lay out the premise in a nifty extended sequence that twists together several flashbacks with a contemporary scene. We meet little Speed Racer in his schoolboy days, obsessing over auto racing and idolizing his older brother Rex, a crack driver for the family-owned Racer Motors team. Rex eventually departs the Racer team (and home) under a cloud of bitter feelings and harsh words, and thereafter develops a reputation as a notoriously dirty freelance driver. Then an accident during a brutal rally race takes Rex's life, leaving the family to mourn what has been left unsaid and Speed to take the wheel of the team car, the Mach 5. Back in the present day, Speed (Emile Hirsch) has grown into a spooky-talented motor sportsman, literally chasing a holographic ghost of his brother in an attempt to best his record track time. (This is one of the film's many debts to what I can only describe as a Mario Kart aesthetic.)

Speed's rising profile as one of the world's best drivers prompts tycoon and racing patron Royalton (Roger Allam) to approach the family about an alliance. Royalton offers resources and perks Racer Motors can only dream of, and he makes it clear that refusal is not an option. The plot of Speed Racer is essentially the tale of Speed's moral journey through the world of racing. Despite the victories that Speed has racked up, both his wary father, Pops (John Goodman), and his own tunnel-vision approach to racing excellence have thus far shielded the family from the greasier corporate realities of the sport. No more. Speed is simply too good at what he does to evade difficult choices any longer. He is now a brand, a commodity, a rival, and a liability to be eliminated.

Speed Racer arrives courtesy of Andy and Larry Wachowski, the writer-director brothers who gave us the genre-upending, multimedia behemoth that is the Matrix trilogy. Speed Racer attempts something similar to those films, in that it constructs a fantastic universe to tell a simple story without a glimmer of irony. In fact, Speed Racer might be more deftly executed than even the first Matrix film. Heresy, you say? Speed Racer's gee-whiz sensibility lightens the film's tone, giving the emotionally affecting moments space to breathe. While the Matrix veered into leaden pretension, Speed's human landscape is straightforward and heartfelt. While the Matrix is at times downright incomprehensible, Speed's plot is outlined at every turn in bold strokes, even as it zips along dribbling detail and back-story.

Visually, Speed Racer is an amazing achievement. The shiny, neon-bright quality to the film's futurist aesthetic has received a lot of well-deserved attention. Speed Racer's time and locale are indeterminate, and while the film certainly takes place in the Future, there are hints that its universe is a parallel one, where automobiles, corporations, and superficial glitz rule. (Well, maybe not so parallel...) Although they treat us to plenty of wondrous computer-generated sights, the Wachowskis also keep the George Lucas-style gaping to a minimum. Indeed, they often return to the comfy confines of the retro-suburban Racer home, just to keep us grounded.

As eye-popping as the production design might be, much less attention has been paid to the look of Speed Racer as a moving picture. If you've seen the trailers or commercials, it's probably already apparent that the racing set pieces have a brain-melting kineticism. However, what struck me was the Wachowskis' use of shifting and sliding layers in the film's visual language, even in the quietest scenes. Characters glide through the foreground as events play out in the background. Plots points are often conveyed in two or even three separately framed zones of action. Meanwhile, everything is kept in constant motion, often with relentless panning and effects-embellished cuts. Visually speaking, it's pretty much unlike anything I've seen in a film in recent memory, and the Wachowskis earn some auteur bragging rights for pulling off such a novel style.

The drags on Speed Racer's performance are fairly typical for this sort of big-budget, (mostly) family-friendly adaptation. There are patches of the script that are unforgivably silly or simply hackneyed. Several of the film's attempts at humor are hopelessly broad and cardboard-stiff. And yet it is a funny film, one that rarely winks knowingly or extends a gag past the point of no return. (Christina Ricci as Speed's girlfriend Trixie claims the best one-liner of 2008 so far: "Was that a ninja?") The presence of the family chimpanzee Chim-Chim seems to be a nod to the original series and little more. Call me a cold-hearted bastard if you must, but chimps just aren't funny as sidekicks. (The Wachowskis forget that chimpanzees should be paired with people for pathos and with other chimps for humor, a.k.a. the Lancelot Link Principle.)

Ricci as Trixie, Goodman as Pops, and Susan Sarandon as Mom all bring the right tone to the material. Goodman and Sarandon in particular could have been forgiven for phoning it in and cashing their paychecks, but they stake out a clear sense of the Racer family's dynamics and priorities with a pair of genuinely touching portrayals. Hirsch is a bit of a disappointment, if only because the film is supposed to be about his character, and he comes off as colorless and thick most of the time. Last year's Into the Wild begged for a magnetic cipher in its leading role, but Speed Racer needs a Boy Scout hero with nitro in his veins. Hirsch just doesn't rise to the occasion, although to his credit he nails some of the trickier aspects of the performance, such as Speed's Zen focus behind the wheel and his wonderment at his own celebrity and inhuman skill. Many of the secondary characters are a tad too cartoonish for my taste, but this is less a criticism of the actors than the Wachowskis (shades of Dick Tracy's exaggerated Sunday-funnies sensibility abound).

Allam claims the film's juiciest role as silk-suited villain Royalton, and to call what he does with the part over-the-top is a gross understatement. Royalton is a paunchy, windy, grasping, pompous murdering monster with expensive tastes and a God complex. Watching Allam spit oily seducements and volcanic declarations is a bit like the acting equivalent of an ogre crushing fleeing peasants into goo. In Speed Racer, at least, this can be a good thing. Royalton's repulsive nature distinguishes him from not just the noble Racer family, but the consumer-spectators of the film's world, and that's important. Royalton is a Cheater, and the message of Speed Racer is one of white-hot sports idealism: Cheaters never prosper. In particular, the mere existence of an athletic godling walking the world—a Jordan, Woods, or Racer—annihilates corruption and deceit and hands Cheaters their comeuppance.

And then there's Paulie Litt as Speed's little brother Spritle. Spritle is the sort of child character who should be annoying as all get-out, and sure enough he flirts with annoyance from time to time. He's also at the center of some of the film's corniest moments. (Watch as Spritle and Chim-Chim raid the candy stash and stuff themselves silly! Ho-ho!) And yet... there's just no way that I can deny that Litt is one of the many unexpected pleasures of the film. The kid's a fine comic actor, and he brings an expressive, cheeky current to Spritle that's more interesting than the work from most of the secondary adult performers. Certainly, he's in an altogether different league than Nicholas Elia, who portrays young Speed and delivers the film's only truly awful performance.

Speed Racer is a bizarre, audacious film, but it's also an excellent film to share with a family. Other than one well-timed obscene gesture from Spritle, there's nothing objectionable in it other than lots and lots of borderline fantasy-scifi action. Every minute of Speed Racer boasts discoveries and delights for both adults and any kid past the third grade. Viewers at the younger end of this range might not catch the more sophisticated dimensions to the film's family and corporate drama, but that's okay. I'm willing to bet that Speed Racer will still hold them rapt.

In the end, I have to line up on Dennis' lonely side of the fence of this one. Speed Racer is outrageous, odd, relentless, and even occasionally bad. It's also original, fearless, and blessed with a big heart. In its best moments, it's downright magnificent to watch it unfold. I can sense that Speed Racer will not appeal to a lot of people, and for that reason I was tempted to give it a C (Take It or Leave It). However, the more I think about it, the more I'm resolved not to pass up an opportunity to recommend a film this unique, this daring, and this much fun.

Young@Heart

2007 // UK // Stephen Walker and Sally George // May 19, 2008 // Theatrical Print

B - If someone had summarized the premise of Young@Heart to me a few weeks ago, it would have raised my condescension hackles to critical levels. "This is a documentary film about a community chorus that performs rock, pop, R&B, and soul songs. Oh, and all the performers are over 70 years old. Funny, huh?" Fortunately, Young@Heart is not the terrible documentary it should have been. In fact, I'll go further than merely admitting and retracting my suspicions, however well-founded. Young@Heart is a damn good film. There's nothing especially artful to it, and it probably would have worked just as well on cable television as on the big screen. Yet it pulls off a tricky storytelling feat: It treats a subject matter strewn with perils in exactly the right way, juggling an array of reflective themes about age, death, art, performance, pop culture, and human worth. It's a triumph of the first principles of documentary film-making: take an interesting topic, construct a narrative, keep things moving, and make it sing.

The Young@Heart Chorus is comprised of Northampton, Massachusetts retirees who have made it to their eighth decade (and beyond). The Chorus' "babe in the woods" is its middle-aged musical director, Bob Cilman. Over two decades ago, the Chorus started out performing Vaudeville numbers, but pop music is now its bread and butter. Cilman is utterly no-nonsense about the Chorus' legitimacy and his own standards of excellence. They rehearse relentlessly in order to master Cilman's novel arrangements of familiar (and not-so-familiar) pop songs. Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenic," Allen Toussaint's "Yes We Can Can," and Coldplay's "Fix You" are just a few of the selections rehearsed and premiered in the film. There's nothing particularly unusual about the dynamic of the Chorus other than its members' age. Cilman is the passionate, critical, and anxious taskmaster. The Chorus members are spirited and dedicated, and sometimes resentful of their director's pointed reprimands.

Substantively, that's pretty much all there is to Young@Heart. It's a portrait of a group of performers. Given that we're talking about a feature film here, however, director Stephen Walker has to find a story to hang his hat on. His approach is to follow the Chorus' preparations for its new season, from the first rehearsal where Cilman trots out the latest songs to the Chorus' season premiere in its home town. The film's overarching drama is concerned with the nuts-and-bolts of the performance. (Will Lenny and Dora master Cilman's duet arrangement of James Brown's "I Got You"?) This might sound like undemanding reality show fodder, but the film is very well-constructed, and we feel the performers' frustrations and the strain on Cilman. There are also plenty of subplots, most of them (naturally) dealing with the illnesses and passings of Chorus members. Walker mostly keeps the focus on a half-dozen or so of the performers that catch his eye, each a character with an accessible hook.

Admirably, Young@Heart manages to walk a very narrow tightrope in its portrayal of the Chorus. The subject matter is ripe for chuckling derision: "Look at these wacky old folks, pretending to be rock-n'-roll stars!" Walker stumbles occasionally, but his overall treatment is so graceful and sincere, it's easy to chalk up his missteps as expressions of an unfortunate cornball sensibility rather than mean-spiritedness. It certainly helps that all the performers are endearing people, whose hobbyist approach to music cloaks a lusty, Jagger-esque longing for the spotlight and the roar of the crowd. Revealingly, the Chorus is truly a collaborative effort, and the warm, vigorous dynamic of the group seems to hint that age can purge the egocentric taint from rock's soul.

The Chorus "music videos" that Walker slips into the film at regular intervals are a mixed bag, and mostly rely on a crude, jokey correspondence between the lyrics and the performers. On the one hand, The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" and the The Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere" exhibit wry humor and clever staging. On the other, Bowie's "Golden Years" and the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" fall flat, calling to mind limp talent show numbers or the pop culture parodies that The Simpsons mined and exhausted long ago.

What makes Young@Heart compelling is not the one-joke premise, but the substantial questions about art and aging that surface as we get to know the Chorus. Indeed, Walker quickly zeros in on a crucial point: both the performers and Cilman are ruthlessly earnest and hard-working about the whole enterprise. The Chorus' un-ironic, disciplined outlook, elegantly and repeatedly conveyed, banishes any notion that their efforts amount to a lark or a novelty act. This is no joke. This is rock-n'-roll, and don't you forget it.

In its way, Young@Heart is an exceptionally nimble inquiry into two emerging realities of American life: the waxing length of the autumn years due to medical advances, and the saturation of our shared cultural experience with pop entertainment. Walker's achievement is to discover the unexpectedly dense thicket of themes where these realities overlap. To risk a cliché, Young@Heart makes you think, about life, death, and music. I wouldn't call it an illuminating film exactly, but time and again it makes you pause to ruminate on matters from the frivolous to the momentous. Does art have to be of high quality to serve a social good? Does the rebellion of rock lie in aesthetic contrarianism or the social courage that attends it? How do we find meaning in life when death is such an imminent and inescapable dimension of the human condition?

This, I think, is the success of Young @Heart. It is a film about a relentlessly adorable subject that has no need to be ambitious, yet Walker makes it ambitious with a perceptive and careful hand. In doing so, he exhibits that most enviable talent in a documentary filmmaker: the ability to uncover fertile human commentary within a simple premise.

The Visitor

2007 // USA // Thomas McCarthy // May 10, 2008 // Theatrical Print

B - Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor is a sweet, noble film. Its parameters are comfortable and appealing (and perhaps a bit tired). This is a curious thing in a film that tackles the perils of comfort quite forcefully. The film tells the story of Walter Vale, an economics professor who, by his own admission, is no longer engaged in his own life. We follow Walter's encounter with an immigrant couple—him a Syrian drummer, her a Senegalese jewelry-maker—and the friendships and trials that emerge from this meeting. The film succeeds so effortlessly in sketching a moving story of decent and flawed humanity, that to dub it a "feel-good movie" seems an offense. McCarthy keeps usurping our expectations, and when he slips in a polemic against callous, absurd immigration policies, it doesn't seem out of place.

Walter (Richard Jenkins) is a sympathetic figure, but not particularly likable. He teaches one economics course at his college in Connecticut, recycling his syllabus from previous years. He is ostensibly laboring on a fourth book, although we never see him writing. He drinks wine, listens to classical music, and stares out his office window. His tenured position has apparently left him with only a shadow of ambition. He has been trying to learn piano, possibly to preserve some echo of his deceased musician wife, but as the film opens he dismisses his fourth consecutive instructor in frustration.

Walter travels to New York City for an economics conference, returning to the city apartment he hasn't visited in months. To his shock, he discovers Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira) living there, squatting amid his furniture and the mementos of his wife. Following a tense confrontation, they quickly apologize and hustle out of the apartment. Then Walter changes his mind. He offers to share the apartment until the couple can find other arrangements.

This contrivance is the dramatic version of Meeting Cute, and the participants are a little too movie-friendly in their particulars. Walter is the good-hearted sad sack who needs a spark to transform his life for the better. Tarek and Zainab are strikingly attractive, sincere, and decent. They are also exotic, and therefore fascinating to the humdrum Walter, as well as to the film's likely audience. Especially in its first half, a whiff of lip-service multiculturalism clings to The Visitor. This isn't so much unpleasant as it is unadventurous. "See?," McCarthy seems to be saying, "Immigrants aren't all bad!" The film exhibits at least some self-awareness, however, such as when it provides a brief, discomforting scene with a condescending Ugly American. This highlights Walter's more equitable, evolving stance towards his new friends.

Based solely on a description of its concept, The Visitor might sound like lukewarm film. However, the luster of its storytelling is admirable, and the detours that it takes on its path are genuinely poignant and thoughtful. McCarthy, who also wrote the screenplay, elegantly and convincingly shows how reaching across cultural comfort zones—constructed along racial, religious, class, and linguistic lines—can reap profound emotional rewards.

The talisman of this theme is Tarek's drum. Walter takes a tentative interest in the musician's instrument, and eventually discovers that he has a modest talent and effusive love for drumming. It's telling that McCarthy uses this revelation as a gateway to a closer relationship between Walter and Tarek, and not as an end in itself. Indeed, one of the film's best scenes captures Walter's self-consciousness, and then his joy, as he moves from spectator to musician in an ad hoc public drum circle. Jenkins' spot-on performance and McCarthy commitment to vigorously render the musical experience both serve to check what would otherwise be an overstated metaphor.

Just as the new roommates are acclimating, Tarek is arrested under confused and questionable circumstances. His immigration status is disputed, and he finds himself incarcerated in a private correctional facility in Queens. Both he and a helpless Walter and Zainab come face-to-face with the bleak realities of Arab life in modern America. Tarek's widowed mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), arrives from Michigan, and it is she who then moves into Walter's apartment as they navigate the cruel corridors of immigration law. Despite the trying situation, an affection begins to develop between Walter and Mouna, something not quite friendship and not quite romantic love.

The performances are exceptional, with each actor finding a stance that complements his or her fellows. There is potent chemistry between all the principals that conveys authentic friendship and attraction rather than the traces of a script. Sleiman and Abbass as mother and son are particular standouts, despite the fact that—or perhaps because—they never appear on-screen together. Sleiman renders Tarek as a humorous, proud, mildly careless artist with a generous spirit. Abbass, meanwhile, delivers a believable portrayal of a mature Syrian woman, made guarded and resolute during her years in America.

Throughout the film, McCarthy keeps the tale fresh and endearing by having the nerve to wander away from formulaic plotting. Walter never surpasses his mentor at drumming, nor does the instrument re-invigorate his love for teaching and writing. Tarek puts on a brave face at first, but his charming persona begins to crumble during his detention, and he lashes out at Walter in his anger. Even in its character details, The Visitor is intriguing. Mouna confesses that her favorite CD is Phantom of the Opera, a hint that her exoticism is an illusion concealing ordinary Midwestern tastes.

The film concludes on a note that is simultaneously ambiguous, sentimental, and earnest. It's a credit to McCarthy that The Visitor rises above its movie-of-the-week premise and emerges as a thing of grace and heart. Without question, the film condemns inhumane immigration policies. However, its most enduring face is that of a complex morality tale, one that lauds humility, kindness, and courage as necessary elements for life in modern multi-ethnic America.

Iron Man

2008 // USA // Jon Favreau // May 4, 2008 // Theatrical Print​

B - Entries in the superhero genre have been coming fast and furious lately. Lamentably, for every adaptation that conveys thrills, humor, and heart in an artful way, a slug of forgettable nonsense or outright dreck comes down the studio pipe. Arriving at the bleeding edge of a densely packed summer action film season, Jon Favreau's Iron Man is the latest attempt to breathe twenty-first century cinematic life to a seminal character. The film certainly hits all the right notes for its source material, but it occasionally stumbles into the usual action film sins: predictability, ridiculous dialog, and trite character development. Yet despite these flaws, Iron Man emerges as a delicious work of modern techno-fantasy, and reveals Favreau as an action director of generous skill.

>I never read the Iron Man books back in my hardcore comic fandom days, but the story is familiar to anyone devoted to the Marvel Universe. Anthony Stark, wealthy defense industrialist, constructs a wondrous metallic suit that gives him the ability to soar like a fighter jet, withstand bullets, and unleash a dizzying arsenal of weapons. Fortunately for the residents of the Marvelverse, Stark uses his power armor to serve goodness and justice. It's hard not recognize the archetype-bending appeal of such a character for the Popular Mechanics set. The Smith forges the Sword and, rather than bestowing it on the Hero, becomes the Hero himself. Stark is both a brilliant engineer and fabulously rich. In other words, he is just the sort of eccentric with the talent and resources to turn himself into a superhero as an act of sheer will.

Unlike the wealthy, technology-dependent superhero from that other comic universe, however, Stark's Road-to-Damascus moment is less about personal grief than a humanitarian epiphany, at least as envisioned by Favreau. When Iron Man opens, Stark is already settled into an adolescent-minded middle age. He leads a charmed life filled with computerized comfort and an endless succession of beautiful women. While the Tony Stark of the comics might have been an asshole prior to taking up the superhero mantle, Robert Downey Jr. also adds plenty of his trademark lightning-witted charm. It's a vital and perceptive addition to the character. We want to see the spoiled, negligent Stark receive his comeuppance for his years of bloody war profiteering, but Downey's charisma also ensures that we long for his conversion to heroism.

While demonstrating his company's new missile in Afghanistan, Stark is caught in a convoy ambush and captured by a local warlord. The attack leaves Stark with shrapnel embedded in his chest, fragments that will work their way into his heart over time. That is, they would without the powerful electro-magnet—powered by a car battery—that was hastily installed in his chest by his doctor cellmate, Yinsen (Shaun Toub). Stark's reputation has preceded him to the mountains of Afghanistan. The warlord, Raza (Faran Tahir), knows exactly who he has captured, and he orders Stark to construct a duplicate of his company's new missile using spare parts and scrap.

This is roughly where any lingering believability goes out the window. This is a comic book movie, however, and Favreau and Downey both display a talent for rendering absurdities in a giddy, compelling way. Using missile parts, Stark recreates his company's "arc-reactor" in miniature, a sort of perpetual motion energy source to replace his crude life-sustaining device. He and Yinsen then labor to build a means of escape, a suit of robotic armor powered by that same arc-reactor. Makes sense, right? It's the sort of ludicrous leap that seems perfectly sensible within a comic book reality.

I'm not spoiling much by revealing that Stark eventually flees the Afghanistan caves with the aid of his prototype suit. His captivity has changed him. Publicly, Stark abandons his flippant jingoism, resolving that he is morally culpable for the destruction wreaked by his company's weapons. The rest of the film mainly revolves around Stark's ambition to develop a refined version of the suit in his engineering lab, and the complications and opposition he encounters when he deploys it in the service of a private, righteous war. He is forced to fend off concern and suspicion from his allies: capable personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), friend and Air Force liaison Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard), and Stark Industries executive Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

Favreau mostly sticks to the established superhero origin formula. He doesn't do much that's surprising with it, but he often does it with a kind of high-octane grace that's enviable. What he does exceptionally well is shoot and edit his action sequences with an eye for beauty, coherence, and drama. It's an all-too-rare skill, and to see a comedy director like Favreau rise to the occasion is... well, impressive isn't the right word. It's thrilling. Not momentous, mind your, in the sense of an auteur's breakout film, but it nonetheless inspires excitement about the future of action cinema under Favreau's hand.

Iron Man's visual effects are quite remarkable, and they expertly serve to suck the viewer into its glossy reality. It's easy to accept the film's technological hand-waving when old school effects and computer wizardry blend together so seamlessly. Favreau expertly taps into the visual wonder of his story's science fiction foundation, never gaping with his camera, but coaxing the viewer to gape. This is a vital distinction.

Although Favreau generally raises the stakes in terms of the action, he works by the numbers in most other respects. There's a blossoming love interest, a secret betrayal, a climax dependent on vague technological tension, and so on. The dialogue is fairly groan-worthy in places, although to his credit, Downey works his wry magic on all of his lines, no matter how silly. The supporting cast is really in place to convey broadly drawn personas, and they're serviceable enough in this respect. Unfortunately Favreau commits other screenwriting offenses, such as introducing plot points and then abandoning them, and going adorable when he has no right to.

Iron Man feels like a middling superhero movie in some ways, but it's hard to disregard the ways that it is exceptional. Favreau strikes a careful balance between gleeful, engrossing action sequences and an empathic exploration of his protagonist's transformation. The filmmakers never fully explore the intriguing themes that the story begs, particularly the righteous elitism and technocrat-warrior impulses in Stark's character. These elements just sort of glide beneath the surface of the film, acknowledged but never truly engaged. Still, such subtle nods seem like virtues when I imagine the soulless exercise that Iron Man could have been in the hands of a lesser director. And, to be fair, the story of Iron Man doesn't require the operatic intensity of, say, Batman. Rather, it taps into the technophile's lust for powerful and shiny toys, accented with twinges of American guilt and compassion. Favreau—and Downey—accomplish this tone so precisely, I can't quibble too much with the film's tendency to stick to superhero movie conventions.

The Duchess of Langeais

2007 // France - Italy // Jacques Rivette // April 26, 2008 // Theatrical Print

D - The Duchess of Langeais brings to mind a fundamental question about film quality: Can a movie be reasonably well-shot and well-acted in the service of Very Serious Themes, and yet still be a dull, dreadful mess? Are the two mutually exclusive? Last year, Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley, a film that seems increasingly like a fumbled embarrassment with the passage of time, suggested that the two aspects could coexist in the same film. Now here is another French adaptation of a revered author's work that evokes a comparably contradictory sensation. In this case, the author is Honore de Balzac, and the director is New Wave icon Jacques Rivette. I have a hard time calling this a Bad Film, but it is almost certainly a failure. If I squint very hard I can almost be convinced of the phantoms of an engaging work, and maybe even understand—but not share—the praise that this film has received from my admired critics such as Glenn Kenny and Noel Murray. Yet I can't lie to myself: I just don't see it.

The film opens in the early nineteenth century. Guillaume Depardeiu—son of, yes, that Depardieu—portrays Armand de Montriveau, a French officer on a diplomatic visit to Spanish Majorca. While listening to a cloistered order of nuns sing at a local convent, Armand is overcome with emotion at the sound of one sister's voice. It is the sound of a woman he knows, a woman that has haunted him for years. Armand makes arrangements to confront the nun and confirm his suspicions, and the film then returns to their first meeting, a flashback that will comprise most of the film. The melodious nun was once Antoinette de Langeais (Jeanne Balibar), a comely Duchess wed to a man the viewer never meets. She moves through the splendor of Parisian aristocratic society, sly and moody and slender as a statue. At an evening ball, she chances upon Armand, a wounded war hero recently returned from exploits in the heart of Africa.

There is attraction. She is intrigued by this worldly man, rougher than the powdered gentility she is accustomed to. And although initially standoffish, Armand is quickly and completely smitten with her. Unfortunately there is a disparity of passion and a cultural gulf in their relationship that leads almost immediately to frustration and conflict. Armand is forthright and savage in matters of the heart. He declares on the first night that he loves Antoinette, begging (and later demanding) that she reciprocate his affection. Antoinette is flighty, alternately preoccupied with coquettish games, social propriety, and religious guilt. These people, however strong their attraction might be, are not likely to share a happy ending.

It's a challenge to detect anything instructive or even coherent in the way that Armand and Antoinette behave. Rivette approaches the cruel game of the relationship is a way that is unaccountably distant, shapeless, and meandering. Despite the film's apparent interest in the monstrous character of aristocratic gamesmanship, the viewer doesn't see much of that world, or the evidence of its immorality. Too much of this film consists of Depardieu and Balibar alone together, urgently delivering lots and lots of obtuse and mannered dialogue. The dialogue isn't awful, per se. On the contrary, it's often quite poetic. It's just unfocused, rambling, and far less torrid than it imagines. I had difficulty discerning the characters' motivations from moment to moment, save for the plainest and most understandable impulses. (Armand's frustration at Antoinette's dithering at least evokes some sympathy.)

Don't misunderstand: the performances are fine enough. Depardieu in particular displays a flair for conveying Armand's strange blend of longing and loutishness. And that's another problem. Armand is a thick-headed, sadistic, selfish brute, while Antoinette is a creepy, maladjusted, juvenile flake. I'm supposed to care if such people find love together?

The most frustrating facet of The Duchess is that while it reveals scattered flashes of delicious drama, these moments never culminate in anything that justifies the heaping helpings of blandness. It's not a good sign when the film's most powerful emotional moment occurs ten minutes into its running time. Rivette finds little nodes of electricity here and there that hint at his august and allegedly potent cinematic storytelling talent. (This is my first of his films.) When a vengeful Armand ominously and obliquely warns Antoinette at another ball, "Don't touch the axe," the viewer begins to feel her rising, clinging dread. There are some juicy twists to the plot, but these seem oddly diminished in their impact due to the film's overall ambivalence about its characters' virtues or the cruelty of their circumstances. By the time the bitter irony of the film's ending is revealed, my empathy with anything going on up on the screen had long expired.

To the credit of the filmmakers, The Duchess is a gorgeous film. The sets and costumes are all richly detailed, giving off just the right glow of dazzling beauty and moribund excess. I should also point out that Rivette and cinematographer William Lubtchansky exhibit an uncommon skill: they know how to light period interiors in a manner that is utterly authentic. I can't think of a film in recent memory with such a convincing shroud of pre-Industrial gloom. Now that I've said something nice, can I talk for a moment about the irritating sound design? I'm not sure what possessed Rivette to highlight every single creak in the floorboards when any character takes a step. Is this a metaphor for the warped and incessant character of French aristocratic society? All I know is that twenty minutes in, with the creaking actually obscuring the dialogue, I wanted to slap him.

At best, The Duchess of Langeais is a visually exciting muddle that aims high and falls flat. It's really the French literary equivalent of a big, dumb, superhero movie, and that's mighty disappointing. Want to see a masterpiece about the institutionalized malice of aristocratic society? Do yourself a favor and rent The Age of Innocence instead.

Paranoid Park

2007 // France / USA // Gus Van Sant // March 25, 2008 // Theatrical Print

A - Director Gus Van Sant, now in his mid-fifties, is enraptured with the psychology of young people. There are few living American filmmakers as unflinching and unabashed in their artistic curiosity towards the teenaged or young adult mind. Van Sant's new film, Paranoid Park, is more than a reaffirmation of this impulse: it may be his most gently ambitious and conscientious work to date. The film hums with a jumbled, embryonic sensibility that is strangely effective, and often outright devastating. Van Sant's tangled approach inherently precludes the dramatic ferocity that might have made Paranoid Park a legacy knockout. That said, what the film offers is a valuable, pained glimpse into the adolescent heart of darkness, realized with visual and aural audacity.

Alex (Gabe Nevins) is a doe-eyed Portland, Oregon high school kid who drifts through the fringes of that city's skateboarding culture. His separated parents are nearing an inevitable divorce. His possessive girlfriend is pressuring him to take her virginity (and soon). School is a bore, and skating is the only thing that holds any interest for him.

Something has happened to Alex, Something Bad. This event compels him to scratch out his memories and reflections in a notebook, and it is these writings that he narrates in a halting voice-over. Paranoid Park is a snarled and meandering film, and by necessity. Alex is telling his own story, and as the kid freely admits, he didn't do so well in his creative writing class. We sense that he has difficulty organizing and articulating his thoughts even under normal circumstances. In relating the Bad Thing that happened one Saturday night near an illegal skate park, he can barely find his footing. He glosses over significant events, skips around in the chronology, backs up and begins again. His disjointed story is part confession, part therapy, part act of creative defiance.

If Paranoid Park were a straightforward mystery, this stuttering structure might feel cheaply affected and exasperating. Fortunately, Van Sant has created something far more penetrating and determined. This is pensive psychological drama in the fullest sense of the term. Crucially, the nature of the traumatic event in Alex's tale is revealed at the film's halfway point, and yet it is not a deflating moment. Van Sant crisply conveys that Paranoid Park is not about the event, but about Alex's understanding of and responses to it.

The film establishes its interest in the inner world quite literally. Van Sant maintains the focus on Alex in shot after shot. Few directors are confident enough to linger on their protagonist in silent close-up for sixty seconds or more, permitting the camera to search and wonder at what lies behind their eyes. Van Sant often deliberately underlights Alex, capturing him as he ambles or sulks within gray-yellow shadow, evoking a twilight melancholy and menace. The director also splices in skateboarding footage, much of it shot in raw 8mm, to suggest Alex's state of mind, whether wistful, sullen, or obsessive.

Characters wander into Alex's field of vision and ours. The adults in his world are frequently off camera, off-center, or out of focus, only snapping into clarity when he shifts his attention to them. Characters speak but he does not hear. One exception is a police detective (Daniel Liu), whose penetrating eyes and cunning questioning unnerve Alex. What does he know, and what does he suspect? Nothing, Alex's skater friends reassure him. Yet they know even less.

Most of the young actors in Paranoid are unpolished and naturalistic. Nevins' performance is slightly more studied, but it feels remarkably real in its awkwardness. When he intones, "There's different levels of stuff" in all seriousness, we're seduced by the convincing, twisted-up apprehension in such an adolescent faux-insight. There are acting misfires, however. Taylor Momsen as Alex's girlfriend Jennifer, and Lauren McKinney as his sort-of friend Macy don't find the same tone as the other performers. Momsen is far too calculated, as though she stepped out of a mainstream teen comedy. McKinney, meanwhile, taints her lines with a self-conscious quality that is distracting.

Paranoid Park lacks a climax or even a clear resolution. The film offers a cathartic release that is more whimper than bang. There's something a bit soggy and forced about the enterprise that prevents the film from congealing into a true landmark for youth film. I can only describe this problem as a half-hearted striving for accessibility. (The over-the-top intolerability of Jennifer comes to mind as an example of this disappointing tendency.) This inclination contrasts with Paranoid Park's otherwise stunning insistence on a daring, credible vision.

These are minor quibbles in tone, however. I left the theater musing that Paranoid was a lesser cousin compared to the searing, unblinking glare of Van Sant's Elephant. Now that I've had a day to ruminate on it, I believe this latest film is not only more obviously compassionate, but also a richer and more maturely motivated work. It's rare for a tale of teen angst to achieve the haunting qualities of Paranoid Park without a parting sucker punch. Here Van Sant wallops us in the middle and then lets Alex and us spend the next hour—indeed, the rest of our lives—getting our breath back.