Sound of Noise
(France-Sweden-Denmark)
Directed, written by Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjarne Nilsson
With: Bengt Nilsson, Sanna Persson Halapi, Magnus Borjeson, & Anders Vestergard,
The sound and image anarchists behind the 2001 cult short "Music for One Apartment
and Six Drummers" successfully take their concept and talent to a larger arena in "Sound of Noise," a delightful comic cocktail of modern city symphony, police
procedural and love story.
Played at a lively tempo, the feature debut of Swedish helmers Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson hits tones corresponding to silly, raucous and rhapsodic.
With the most complex and wackily staged musical numbers since Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Delicatessen", the pic was far more demanding to make than it is to watch.
Simple narrative revolves around police officer Amadeus Warnebring (engagingly played by Bengt Nilsson), tone-deaf scion of a distinguished musical family, and his attempts to track down a group of six guerilla percussionists whose anarchic public performances are terrorizing the city.
The drumming set pieces correspond to an avant-garde score with four hilariously titled movements: "Doctor, Doctor, Gimme Gas (In My Ass)," "Money 4 U, Honey," "Fuck The Music Kill! Kill!" and "Electric Love."
Where the short involved the six drummers imaginatively using standard apartment furnishings as their instruments, the feature unleashes them on an unspecified city's civic and cultural institutions.
"Doctor, Doctor" plays out in a hospital operating room, literally removing the sound from a windbag patient; staged like a robbery, "Money" makes beautiful music from a bank's paraphernalia; the classical music establishment comes under attack from heavy
machinery in "Music"; and the dangerous looking "Love" plays out in midair on the city's electric lines.
The screenplay provides an amusing backstory for each of the soberly dressed drummers as well as their nemesis, music-hating investigator Warnebring. Pic pokes fun at policiers throughout, hitting a comic high note when Warnebring's commanding officer orders a roundup of the city's musicians.
Although some viewers might be put off by pic's sillier elements, it's hard to resist the
clever way scribe-helmers Simonsson and Nilsson create music from the dull,
repetitive sounds of everyday life.
Ensemble cast plays in tune with the helmers' humorous intent, even though the five male members of Six Drummers are professional musicians rather than actors.
Reportedly four years in the making, script development involved the drummers
hunting for optimal sounds, recording them with French foley artist Nicolas Becker and seeing if their creative percussion would work sonically and visually -- an elaborate undertaking that owes its success to all who contributed to the complex sound design.
Widescreen lensing of precision-staged setups by Charlotta Tengroth and bright, primary-color production design by Cecilia Sterner (both longtime collaborators of the helmers) lead the visual side of the stellar tech package.
Critical praise and savvy marketing could transform sure-fire fest crowd-pleaser into a niche arthouse success in most markets.
Running time: 98 MIN.
Camera (color, widescreen), Charlotta Tengroth; editors, Stefan Sundlof, Andreas Johnsson Hay; music, Magnus Borjeson, Six Drummers, Fred Avril; production designer, Cecilia Sterner; costume designer, Gabriella Dinnetz; sound (Dolby Digital), Nicolas Becker, Lasse Liljeholm, Eddie Axberg, Cyril Holz, Philippe Amouroux, Gabor Pasztor, Ulf Olausson; casting, Sara Tornqvist.
MORE cast: Fredrik Myhr, Marcus Haraldson Boij, Johannes Bjork, Sven Ahlstrom, Peter Schildt, Pelle Ohlund, and Paula McManus.
A Wild Bunch (France) release of a Bliss, DFM, Nordisk Film production, in co-production with Kostr-Film, Wild Bunch, Film i Skane, Film i Vast, Europasound, Touscoprod, with the participation of Sofica Cinemage 3, Sveriges Television, Canal Plus Suede, the Swedish Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, Nordic Film and TV Fund, Media Programme of the European Union, Konstnarsnamnden. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Jim Birmant, Guy Pechard, Christophe Audeguis, Olivier Guerpillon.
Reviewed By Alissa Simon at Cannes Film Festival (Critics' Week), May 18, 2010.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Octubre
(October)
(Peru-Venezuela-Spain)
Directed, written by Daniel Vega & Diego Vega.
With: Bruno Odar, Gabriela Velasquez, Carlos Gasoi, and Maria Carbajal
The frozen heart of a moneylender begins to thaw when he's forced to care for an abandoned baby in bittersweet dramedy "October," an impressive feature debut for Peruvian co-helming brothers Daniel and Diego Vega.
Although a superficial description might suggest something syrupy, pic's depiction of Lima's slums is gritty enough to cut the sugar. Meanwhile, the Vegas' expressionist style, restrained emotional palette and delicate humor herald the arrival of promising young talents. "October" could be a viable contender for niche distribution offshore after a season at fests.
Middle-aged Clemente (Bruno Odar), who lends money to people at high interest rates, is known by everyone in his neighborhood as the pawnbroker's son, even though his father died long ago.
Judging by his dingy apartment, he's better off than most, but hardly living large, and the worst he does when a client is late on a debt is to break the guy's window. He seems to have no friends, and visits prostitutes for sexual gratification.
Clemente comes home one night to find someone's broken in and left a 3- or 4-month-old baby girl in a basket. For awhile, he makes a perfunctory effort to look after it himself (prompting amusing scenes of him holding the baby limply against his shoulder while he deals with clients).
Eventually, he hires Sofia (Gabriela Velasquez), a maternal-hearted spinster neighbor longing for companionship, who moves in to look after the baby while Clemente searches for the child's mother.
In her spare time, Sofia takes part in the weeklong religious procession that happens every October in the streets of Lima. Sequences showing the real procession add vivid color, especially in the film's striking last scene, while reinforcing the subtle strain of religious imagery throughout, lightly foreshadowing this story of redemption.
In press notes, the Vegas cite contempo Latin American pics such as Uruguayan helmer Juan Pablo Rebella's "Whisky" among others, along with work by Robert Bresson, Aki Kaurismaki and Jim Jarmusch as influences.
This isn't pretentious name-dropping, because "October" really does feel like a well-homogenized blend of those filmmakers' styles, especially in its use of running gags (Clemente keeps trying to fob off a forged note) and deadpan thesping.
Compositions are precisely framed, which somehow balances deliberately jarring, semi-comic editing by Gianfranco Annichini that favors hard cuts.
Camera (Deluxe color, widescreen), Fergan Chavez-Ferrer; editor, Gianfranco Annichini; production designer, Carla Sousa Garrido; art director, Guillermo Palacios Pomareda; sound (Dolby Digital), Guillermo Palacios Pareja, Daniel Thiessen; assistant director, Valentina Viso Rojas; casting, Ricardo Valverde.
Running
time: 109 MIN.
MORE cast: Sheryl Sanchez Mesco, Victor Prada, Sofia Palacios, Norma Francisca
Villarreal, and Humberta Trujillo
A Maretazo Cine presentation, in association with Sue Cinema, Comunicacion Fractal.
(International sales: Umedia, Montreuil.) Produced by Daniel Vega, Diego Vega. Executive producers, Vega, Vega.
Reviewed By Leslie Felperin at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), May 19, 2010.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Outrage
Autoreiji
(Japan)
Directed, written by Takeshi Kitano
With: Beat Takeshi, Kippei Shiina, Ryo Kase, Tomokazu Miura, Jun Kunimura, and Renji Ishibashi
While erstwhile king of yakuza epics Takeshi Kitano doesn't try to do much new in "Outrage," the Japanese multihyphenate's first such nihilistic bloodbath in the decade since "Brother," the results are so visually stunning, why quibble?
Focusing on the absurdly ultraviolent tit-for-tat tussles among a trio of Tokyo crime families, the film is a beautifully staged marvel that confidently reasserts Kitano's considerable cinematic gifts.
Unlike his '90s masterpieces "Sonatine" and "Fireworks," "Outrage" boasts a narrative that's intricate only in linear fashion, to the likely benefit of worldwide B.O.
Kitano's trilogy-long sojourn into the territory of self-reflexive (many would say self-indulgent) dramas (e.g., "Takeshis") has left his core audience hungry for the filmmaker's return to the gangster movie.
"Outrage" satisfies that craving with its bevy of grisly setpieces, each carefully designed to bring the genre another step closer to horror.
Suffice to say the film isn't for the squeamish. The yakuzas' weapons of choice include not only pistols and machine guns but chopsticks, a coiled snake, dental equipment and, most spectacularly, a dastardly combination of rope and automobile.
The borderline farcical severity of bodily perforation here would be irredeemable if not for the finesse with which these moments are, um, executed by the director, who wields his own tools with the darkest glee.
The pic's savage mayhem is set in motion by a simple conversation, wherein it's revealed that the Chairman (Soichiro Kitamura), boss of the ruling Sanno-kai family, has become
upset over the Ikemoto clan's connections to Murase (Renji Ishibashi) and his crew.
Needing help, Ikemoto (Jun Kunimura) asks the all-knowing and super-cool Otomo (Kitano, billed per usual as Beat Takeshi) to keep the peace by stirring up trouble.
Incrementally, petty humiliations across the clans give way to brutally aggressive displays of power. After one yakuza has been slashed with an "X" across the face and another has been beaten to death, Otomo agrees to take care of the situation, promising Ikemoto he'll rough up old Murase a "little."
This he does in an act of rogue dentistry far exceeding that in "Marathon Man."
The philosophical explorations of violence and its consequences, distinguishing features of Kitano's '90s work in the yakuza genre, are essentially nowhere to be found here. Still, the director's control over the narrative is drum-tight in a film whose intertwined incidents demand -- and reward -- one's close attention.
Halfway through, the violence temporarily subsides, only to resume with even greater force. By the final reels, it's all-out yakuza war. The film's large ensemble of actors takes palpable enjoyment in playing these toughs and their victims.
As Otomo, the generally deadpan Kitano even cracks a faint smile or two. Playing Ozawa, Tetta Sugimoto flaunts an evil grin worthy of Richard Widmark in "Kiss of Death." As Otomo's loyal underling Ishihara, Ryo Kase, in brown-tinted shades, is rivetingly implacable.
Women, naturally, are scarce in the picture, although Otomo's g.f. appears long enough to be chastised viciously by her beau -- for disliking his new car. (Obviously, much worse is to follow for her.)
Tech credits are superlative, particularly Katsumi Yanagijima's gliding, richly dark cinematography, Keiichi Suzuki's playfully synth-laden score, and a sound design that sends bullet casings hurling to the surround speakers while keeping the punches squarely in one's face.
Running time: 110 MIN. (Japanese, English dialogue)
Camera (color, widescreen), Katsumi Yanagijima; editors, Kitano, Yoshinori Ota; music, Keiichi Suzuki; production designer, Norihiro Isoda; set decorator, Tatsuo Ozeki; costume designer, Kazuko Kurosawa, Yohji Yamamoto; sound (Dolby Digital), Senji Horiuchi; supervising sound effects editor, Kenji Shibasaki; line producers, Shinji Komiya, Makoto Kakurai; associate producers, Katsuji Umezawa, Tadao Hanashi, Yoshinori Takeda; assistant director, Hirofumi Inaba; casting, Takefumi Yoshikawa.
MORE cast: Tetta Sugimoto, Takashi Tsukamoto, Hideo Nakano, Fumiyo Kohinata, and Soichiro Kitamura
A Warner Bros. (international) release of a Bandai Visual, TV Tokyo, Omnibus Japan, Office Kitano production. (International sales: Celluloid Dreams, Paris.) Produced by Masayuki Mori, Takio Yoshida.
Reviewed By Rob Nelson at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 16, 2010.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Dreams of Jinsha
Meng hui jinsha cheng
(Animated -- China)
Directed by Chen Deming
Screenplay, Su Xiaohong, Wang Fang; story, Su.
Either a cautionary tale on the dangers of being a curious kid or an innocent escapist fantasy, or both, "The Dreams of Jinsha" marks mainland China's stride into bigtime animation.
Neither as ambitious nor as impressive as early buzz indicated, this childhood adventure by director Chen Deming and screenwriters Su Xiaohong and Wang Fang cannily blends gentle beauty, spooky mysticism and violent (even apocalyptic) action.
Those who hoped the long-gestating "Jinsha" would be an alternative to Japan's anime style will have to wait. Chen, like other mainland filmmakers working in hand-drawn animation, displays an affinity for the anime form, while dipping into mythical Chinese history for a bit of cultural specificity.
Raised in a loving Beijing household, young, rambunctious Xiao Long (voiced by Xu Gang) fixates on the local museum's show, about the 3,000-year-old Jinsha kingdom, the way other boys obsess about dinosaurs. Although his father relates his own past adventure in a magical land (during a stint as a field anthropologist), Long isn't able to make the connection until his dad's gift of a beloved jade pendant (wrongly translated in subtitles as "tablet") becomes the key that unlocks an icon in the museum's Jinsha exhibit.
Zap! Long finds himself in a lush forest, where he's soon guided to the imposing palace of the Jinsha king (Xie Tiantian) by pretty Princess Hua'er (Zhan Jia) and the general of the Jinsha army (Wang Xiaobing). The King and his wife consult the Minister (Hu Pingzhi), who recognizes that Long's arrival echoes an ancient messianic prophecy.
While Long and Hua'er develop a light form of puppy love in paradise, the General talks himself into a paranoid lather with the Minister that the "miracle" is really a nightmare. "The Dreams of Jinsha" thus becomes a moral yarn on the uses and abuses of power, themes that this kid-oriented fable ably carries on its slim shoulders.
Smaller children may tremble at the conflagration unleashed by the General's actions, and there's no mistaking the film's allusions to the mass destruction of past wars, from Nanking to Hiroshima. The contrast with the film's lighter, goofier moments is fairly extreme, though nothing here matches the visual and imaginative audacity of anime's crowning achievements.
Hand-drawn work leans toward an old-school style that predates the graphic-novel wave, in line with the film's rather nostalgic tone. Animation fans will bathe in the warm and fuzzy glow of the technically classy project, though anime buffs, expecting innovations that never transpire, may be disappointed.
Running time: 84 MIN. (Mandarin dialogue)
Camera (color, DV), Zhao Bin; editor, Chen Xiaohong; music, Shi Jiayang; art director, Zhang Minfang; scene designers, Shen Ye, Qu Qiang; sound (Dolby Digital), Xue Wu, Zhang Yilong; sound designers, Wang Xiaojun, Hu Weiming; re-recording mixers, Mao Xiandong, Liu Baosen; digital effects supervisors, Wu Di, Pan Yun; animation designer, Chen Jian; assistant directors, Zhang Jiangsha, Xue Feng.
Voice actors: Xu Gang, Zhan Jia, Cheng Yuzhu, Zhang Xin, Xie Tiantian, Jiang Yuling, Wang Xiaobing, Hu Pingzhi, and Wu Lei
A Hangzhou C&L Digital Prod. Co. release of a Hangzhou C&L Digital Prod. Co. production. Produced by Su Xiaohong, Gu Guoqing. Executive producer, Su.
Reviewed By Robert Koehler at Laemmle Sunset 5, Los Angeles, Nov. 23, 2010.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Lung Boonmee raluek chat
(U.K.-Thailand-France-Germany-Spain)
With: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee, and Natthakarn Aphaiwonk
Animism, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, sex with a catfish -- there's all that and more in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's wonderfully nutty "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives."
More readily accessible than his previous films in its dreamlike vignette structure, yet even more resistant to concrete interpretation, this latest deadpan enigma is unlikely to significantly broaden the singular Thai filmmaker's commercial following.
But critics, cinephiles and programmers will be enraptured, as will viewers adventurous enough to surrender to the film's Buddhist rhythms, mythical underpinnings and mesmeric images, ensuring a narrow but rich future life for "Uncle Boonmee."
Pic was loosely drawn from a book of stories by a Buddhist abbot in Weerasethakul's hometown, the northeast Thai city of Khon Kaen, where the film was shot; it also reps a feature-length companion-piece to Weerasethakul's 17-minute short "A Letter to Uncle Boonmee," which screened as part of his 2009 "Primitive" art installation.
The film's mouthful of a title amusingly suggests the helmer's own willingness to meander, but it also establishes his preoccupation with overt themes of spiritualism and reincarnation, in a way that's uncharacteristically direct and strangely inviting. There's a matter-of-factness to the magic here, as "Uncle Boonmee" plays freely with all manner of talking animals and otherworldly visitors without ever feeling the need to rationalize their existence.
After a gentle prologue in which a buffalo runs across a broad plain, we meet Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar, a roof-welder making his feature acting debut), who's undergoing dialysis treatments for kidney failure, and his caretaker sister-in-law, Jen (Weerasethakul regular Jenjira Pongpas).
With Boonmee nearing the end of his life, his veranda becomes a meeting place for spirits from his past: first the ectoplasm of his beloved wife, Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk), then his long-lost son, now a "monkey ghost" (in darkness, he appears as a pair of red eyes; in the light, he resembles Bigfoot). These beings have come to watch over Boonmee and presumably usher him onward, at which point the film becomes (if it wasn't already) a meditation on his many past lives.
Weerasethakul's prior two features, "Tropical Malady" and "Syndromes and a Century," were both radically bisected in such a way that each half provided a subliminal commentary on the other. "Uncle Boonmee" departs from that mold, leapfrogging without explanation from one serene reverie to the next. While the result is pretty much the definition of a film that should be experienced, not explained, there's no sense here that Weerasethakul is being difficult for difficult's sake, or even attempting to conceal his mysteries.
One sequence finds a beautiful princess borne in a glittering carriage to a waterfall, where she strikes up a conversation with an amorous catfish, culminating in what's sure to be the film's most talked-about image, yet one that in no way seems calculated to shock. More opaque is a series of still photographs of young men in army fatigues, a reminder of Thailand's compulsory military service and painful legacy of war violence.
Even with its sad moments, the film continually mines a rich vein of oddball humor, whether it's a shot of a monk (Sakda Kaewbuadee) checking his cell phone or a line of dialogue ("Why did you grow your hair so long?" someone asks the monkey god). Late passages transition from the first half's various rural idylls into more clinical interiors, setting up the film's final fillip.
Pic is framed mostly in long and medium shots by a trio of cinematographers (led by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom) whose nighttime sequences are their forte. Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr's sound design and Lee Chatametikool's editing provide abrupt aural disjunctions, cutting from overpowering jungle sounds to restive silence.
Running time: 113 MIN. (Thai, French dialogue)
Camera (color, widescreen), Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Yukontorn Mingmongkon, Charin Pengpanich; music, Koichi Shimizu; editor, Lee Chatametikool; production designer, Akekarat Homlaor; costume designer, Chatchai Chaiyon; sound designer, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr; line producer, Suchada Sirithanawuddhi; associate producers, Caroleen Feeney, Joslyn Barnes, Danny Glover, Holger Stern; assistant director, Sirithanawuddhi; casting, Panjai Sirisuvan, Sakda Kaewbuadee.
MORE cast: Geerasak Kulhong, Kanokporn Thongaram, Samud Kugasang, Wallapa Mongkolprasert, Sumit Suebsee, and Vien Pimdee
An Illuminations Films presentation of a Kick the Machine Films and Illuminations Films Past Lives production in co-production with Anna Sanders Films, the Match Factory, GFF Geissendoerfer Film-und Fernsehproduktion, Eddie Saeta, with the participation of Fonds Sud Cinema, Ministere de la Culture de la Communication CNC, Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres et Europeennes, with the support of World Cinema Fund, the Hubert Bals Fund, Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam, Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture (Thailand), in association with ZDF/Arte, Louverture Films, Haus der Kunst, Fact, Animate Projects. (International sales: The Match Factory, Cologne.) Produced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Simon Field, Keith Griffiths, Charles de Meaux. Co-producers, Hans W. Geissendoerfer, Luis Minarro, Michael Weber. Directed, written by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Reviewed By Justin Chang at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 20, 2010.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fair Game
Directed by Doug Liman
Screenplay, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Sources: from the books "The Politics of Truth" by Joseph Wilson and "Fair Game" by Valerie Plame Wilson
Valerie Plame - Naomi Watts
Joseph Wilson - Sean Penn
Sam Plame - Sam Shepard
Bill - Noah Emmerich
Jack - Michael Kelly
Jim Pavitt - Bruce McGill
Following "Green Zone" as another slightly dated attack on the Bush administration's mishandling of Iraq, "Fair Game" serves up impeccable politics with a bit too much righteous outrage and not quite enough solid drama. Doug Liman's film does a respectably intelligent job of spinning the Valerie Plame affair into a sleek mainstream entertainment that means to rouse one's patriotic ire and at times stirringly succeeds. But the overall conception feels too streamlined to maximize the impact of leads Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, spelling an uncertain fall B.O. reception by a public that's proven none too game for topical fare.
"Fair Game" was adapted by brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth from books written by the saga's two central figures, former CIA operative Plame and her husband, retired ambassador Joe Wilson. Pitched at the intersection of international and domestic affairs, it's the story of a D.C. marriage thrust into the spotlight when, in 2003, high-placed White House officials leaked Plame's covert status to the media -- a spiteful act of betrayal intended to discredit Wilson and his dissenting opinion on the presence of WMD in Iraq.
A low-key spy-thriller opening set in 2001 Kuala Lumpur -- presumably fictitious, though it's hard to tell from Plame's heavily redacted memoir -- introduces Valerie (Watts) as a skilled CIA operative who, when not running missions overseas, has a busy but happy home life with older husband Joe (Penn) and their twin children.
With President Bush making the case for war from every TV screen, the CIA is working overtime to confirm the existence of Saddam Hussein's nuclear (pronounced "nucular" by one overzealous agent, echoing a real-life Bushism) program -- something Joe, an outspoken Democrat, regards with the utmost skepticism.
When the agency hears that Iraq may be buying yellowcake uranium from Niger, Joe, an expert on the Western African nation, is sent to investigate. He concludes there's no basis to the assertion -- not that it matters to the White House, which deliberately misconstrues his report as one more pretext for war. Furious, Joe pens a New York Times op-ed piece pointing out Bush's misstatement of the facts.
Eight days later, the Times publishes a devastating rebuttal in the form of Robert Novak's column, which blows Valerie's cover and effectively ends her career -- a leak the film traces back to Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby (a poisonous, spot-on comic turn by David Andrews). Valerie's blown cover has major repercussions for an Iraqi source who soon finds himself in the path of Bush's shock-and-awe campaign, a subplot that feels both apocryphal and manipulative.
From there, pic becomes a simmering portrait of a marriage under intense strain not only from the outside world -- as the media charge the Wilsons with nepotism and treachery -- but also from within: Valerie, her professional and personal life in ruins, wants to move on, but Joe refuses to let the matter rest and lashes back via the TV news circuit (Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews and Fox News are among those referenced).
Necessarily condensed for the screen, the marital drama as presented is clear, effective and emotionally precise; even before disaster strikes, Watts and Penn (in their third screen pairing, after "21 Grams" and "The Assassination of Richard Nixon") realize some strong, moving moments as a couple trying to balance family and career obligations.
But at 105 minutes, "Fair Game" is almost too smooth and clean-burning an engine, short-changing key details and relegating juicy incidents (such as a Vanity Fair photo shoot) to mere exposition. One can admire Liman's economy, as well as his return to form after the lamentable "Jumper," but all the elements seem in place for a longer, denser and even more excoriating expose of political corruption at the expense of middle-class Americans. (Such a film would certainly have made a bigger target of Karl Rove, who was eventually identified as a source of the leak but, unlike Libby, never prosecuted.)
Watts has no trouble conveying Valerie's supreme competence, something the agent's peers are often quick to underestimate based on her looks, but the material doesn't allow her to convey the full magnitude of her character's devastation at what she's lost.
Penn, his brow so lined that even his furrows have furrows, is almost cast too much in line with his offscreen persona, and there are a handful of sanctimonious moments here -- particularly in the final stretch, in which the film becomes a straight-up lecture on civic duty -- when one senses not Wilson but Penn wagging his finger at the audience.
For the first time since "Go," Liman has opted to handle lensing duties himself, and the result has a slightly chilly, washed-out look, visually evoking the gray zone between private truths and public lies.
Tech credits are pro all the way, with impressive but unobtrusive location shooting in Jordan, Egypt and Malaysia. John Powell's music supports the action with an admirable lack of bombast.
MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 105 MIN. (English, French dialogue)
Camera (color, widescreen), Liman; editor, Christopher Tellefsen; music, John Powell; music supervisor, Julianne Jordan; production designer, Jess Gonchor; art director, Kevin Bird; set decorator, Sara Parks; costume designer, Cindy Evans; sound (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), Drew Kunin; supervising sound editor, Paul Urmson; visual effects supervisor, Joe DiValerio; visual effects, Space Monkey, Dive; stunt coordinators, George Aguilar, Peter Bucosi; assistant director, Kim Winther; casting, Joseph Middleton.
With: David Andrews and Tim Griffin
A Summit Entertainment release of a River Road Entertainment and Participant Media presentation in association with Imagenation Abu Dhabi of a River Road/Zucker Pictures/Weed Road Pictures/Hypnotic production. Produced by Bill Pohlad, Janet Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Akiva Goldsman, Doug Liman, Jez Butterworth. Executive producers, Jeff Skoll, David Bartis, Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda, Kerry Foster, Mohammed Khalaf. Co-producers, Kim Winther, Avram Ludwig, David Sigal.
Reviewed By JUSTIN CHANG at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 20, 2010.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
(Spain-U.K.)
Directed, written by Woody Allen
Greg - Antonio Banderas
Roy - Josh Brolin
Alfie - Anthony Hopkins
Helena - Gemma Jones
Dia - Freida Pinto
Sally - Naomi Watts
By now it's clear Woody Allen doesn't much believe in God, destiny or the notion that life has any larger meaning, a message he tubthumps to increasingly feeble and unpersuasive effect in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger."
Fitfully amusing and nearly saved by its distinguished cast, this London-set ensembler is another of Allen's patented ironic ruminations on marital angst, vocational discontent and the overall pointlessness of human existence, so why not sit back and laugh at the futility of it all? Auds just might, though overall mild impact should keep B.O. spirits from smiling too warmly on "Stranger."
Fittingly, the song chosen to play over the writer-director's trademark white-on-black, Windsor-type opening credits is "When You Wish Upon a Star." Along with the film's title, it's a choice that immediately establishes the theme of supernatural wish-fulfillment driving this rueful yet emotionally detached dramedy, whose many characters are always looking to greener pastures to satisfy romantic needs, fulfill dreams and avoid having to reckon with their shortcomings.
First up to bat is weepy, overbearing basket-case Helena Shepridge (Gemma Jones), visits a psychic, Cristal Delgiorno (Pauline Collins), seeking solace and good tidings after having been abandoned by Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), her husband of 40 years. Helena is inspired by her brush with the spiritual realm and frequently drops in on her daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts), to report Cristal's uniformly upbeat predictions, much to the annoyance of Sally's American husband, Roy (Josh Brolin).
Naturally, Sally and Roy have problems of their own; he's a blocked writer unable to capitalize on the promise of his first novel, while she's been forced to put off her dreams of having a family and opening her own art gallery in order to support them both. Their mutual dissatisfaction leads them each to look elsewhere for love;
Roy begins a flirtation with Dia (Freida Pinto), the fetching young thing in the flat across the street, while Sally entertains notions of running away with her handsome boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas), who happens to be unhappily married himself.
Compounding the general atmosphere of desperation and poor romantic decisions, Alfie, who lost a son years ago and has always wanted another, begins a May-December fling with prostitute/aspiring actress Charmaine (Lucy Punch), to whom he eventually proposes marriage. Meanwhile, Helena warms to fellow occult nut Jonathan (Roger Ashton-Griffiths), who's obsessed with trying to contact the spirit of his recently dead wife.
This being an Allen picture, it's set in a privileged fantasy world where characters pursue artistic-literary aspirations, go to the opera and make casual reference to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Consequently, tacky, tarted-up Charmaine comes in for some of the film's worst knocks, her unrefined accent and painful lack of sophistication (she doesn't get Ibsen!) providing an endless source of cheap laughs, as does Helena's obsessive conviction that she has had past lives.
It's that curdled blend of cynicism and superiority -- the safe retreat from any sort of earnest engagement or inquiry into a pseudo-intellectual cocoon -- that gives "Stranger," for all its incidental amusements and visual pleasures, such a sour aftertaste.
The characters and their various emotional/occupational complications are continually updated by a Shakespeare-referencing narrator who sounds awfully close to the flat, American-accented voice deployed in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."
But where that recent Allen standout ultimately showed as much as it told and had the good grace to invest its characters' yearning with an ardent, searching romanticism, the v.o. here merely serves to amplify the smug distance between the people onscreen and the audience.
The actors do their best to reduce that distance, and succeed quite well at times, despite the pervasive sense that they're as trapped, performance-wise, as their characters. As the unhappy young marrieds and the meddlesome mother-in-law, Brolin, Watts and Jones make a crack comic trio, and their bitter three-way arguments -- captured in an impressive series of handheld long takes -- constitute the film's strongest scenes.
Pinto ("Slumdog Millionaire") is lovely in a part that gives her little to do, other than to perhaps flatter the men in the audience that a beautiful woman who learns her neighbor is a peeping tom will be turned on rather than creeped out beyond belief.
Lensed by the great Vilmos Zsigmond (who also served as d.p. on Allen's "Cassandra's Dream" and "Melinda and Melinda") in lovely, light-infused textures that convey a warmth of feeling otherwise lacking throughout, this Spain-U.K. co-production is the filmmaker's fourth feature to be shot in London, making effective, unshowy use of the city's locations.
Helmer's trademark jazz is used to gently punch up the comedy in a few scenes.
Running time: 98 MIN.
Camera (Deluxe color), Vilmos Zsigmond; editor, Alisa Lepselter; production designer, Jim Clay; art director, Dominic Masters; costume designer, Beatrix Aruna Pasztor; sound, Peter Glossop; assistant director, Ben Howarth; casting, Juliet Taylor, Patricia DiCerto, Gail Stevens.
With: Pauline Collins, Ewen Bremner, Lucy Punch, Celia Imrie, Jim Piddock, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Alex Macqueen, Anna Friel, Neil Jackson, and Fenella Woolgar
A Sony Pictures Classics (in U.S.) release of a Mediapro, Versatil Cinema and Gravier Prods. presentation in association with Antena 3 Films and Antena 3 TV of a Dippermouth production. Produced by Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Jaume Roures. Executive producer, Javier Mendez. Co-producers, Helen Robin, Nicky Kentish Barnes. Co-executive producer, Jack Rollins.
Reviewed By JUSTIN CHANG at Cannes Film Festival (noncompeting), May 15, 2010.
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