Reviews

My first impression going in to see "Brokeback Mountain" when that one came out, was; "How boringly common gay love seem to be". And i thought of it being boringly common in a cinematic sense. Only rule broken in that movie was to make it possible for a large audience to have empathy with it characters without hiding the gayness of them. It worked. I salute that. And i still think that was the performance that earned Ledger his Oscar.

But Arakki does not stay within content when making his movies great (when they are). His style is widely overlooked by his "controversial" content. Even though the two are matched as should be in good art craft.

Let me just give you one example to look for. One scene, in the beginning of the movie, we see the character of Luke, who's been hustling another man, back at that mans place. Suddenly the john's wife or girlfriend appears and the acting style changes to that of badly made porn. But not only the style of acting, also the cutting. The woman and Luke never appear in the same frame and the shots of him reacting to her, could have been taken weeks apart (a common use in porn to make models appear in the same scene, although they were never on set). The woman is acting so badly, that it can only be a parody of the clichés of porn too, since, Arraki surely knows how to get good actors and know how to direct them.

Lots of other good stuff could be commented on, but let me just get back to my pronouncing it the best gay LOVE story told on screen; Even thought the character of Luke can be seen as only a projection of Jon's diagnosis as HIV positive (His way of coping with it as Scottie has to invent Madelaine in "Vertigo" facing death).... it still is a love story, sick as it may seem. And a hell of a lot closer to fulfilling what we look for in love stories, than the ones with either happy or weepy ends. This one has both and rings truer.

You might find this a good movie if you don't get a bad taste in your mouth watching a rather typical old fashioned love story in exotic settings, being played out among relief workers having real life tragedy all around them. If this movie pretends to really care for the unfortunate background characters, that really seems to be there to make our protagonists look heroic, it even does so in a very bad way. At no point are these people introduced to us as other than set pieces, colorful background. They are there to make you forget, that the Jolie character actually seems like an extremely selfish woman. She leaves her husband and later one, then again later two children, to run round the world seeking for true love (not that she cares much for the dying around her either, she's there for her man). And my argument for the romance being cliché? Well have the man first detest the woman (but hey, they are the stars, so we know where they'll end up) and her fighting for his respect (the only time Jolie seems to care for other people is till she gets his attention - again even the character use these unfortunate like props). Then changes of location, one more exotic and strange than the other (By the way, how does Africa look like, is that not something like earth tone color? And Tjetjenia is rather blue and it snows of course and you hear gun fighting every single second. We know the Jungle from Apocalypse Now, so we'll remake that).

All in all boring, but worse distasteful. Only reason for this entry is that i read that Jolie is actually an ambassador for UN and these cases and wonder however she could agree to do this? The film does show some aspects of corruption and politics standing in the way of real aid, and that may be new to many? But far more interesting movies could be made on that subject, we don't need a love story as sugarcoating.

Too often people are reacting to adaptations as if they should follow the mind of a reader, or rather ANY reader of the novel, although any film enthusiast know that a so-called faithful adaptation almost always will make a lousy movie.

Hitchcock was one of the first directors to point this out, and he had in fact some experience with Patricia Highsmiths material (Strangers on a Train (1951) and an episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" called "Annabel", although the latter not directed by him, but by Paul Henreid). Hitch was actually famous for stating that he never read the base material more than one time before beginning to think the film.

For people arguing that Minghella's adaptation is closer to the source material than Clement's I have to say that You are missing the point. Both are pretty good psycho-thrillers, but both only borrows parts of Highsmith to prove their own point, which I, as Hitch would have, believe is the sane way of adapting.

Actually what is called "The homo-erotic Overtones" in comments are blown up in the latest version more than they are toned down in the first one. Highsmith is quite aware of the "frigthning" aspect of a male villain that seem to be too much interested in another male character - and she used that very well in "Strangers on a Train". But she used it as Hitchcock did, not only when he was adapting her stories, but in much of his work. The Hero/Villain would in his film often be sexually "weak" (think "Rear Window", "Rope", "Psycho") but more that making these characters gay - which some of them obviously was - he used this as conveying a strangeness to the character. Some might say, that he would have made his characters more obviously gay, had he lived in a time, where it is possible to do so (the same might be said of Clement), but again we're then missing the point.

We should never object to elements in a movie, suspecting it would have been different (better) were it made today. It's a fog blinding the real qualities of the movie itself.

Now what about "Plein Soleil" You'd might ask. It's no masterpiece but a nearly forgotten gem that should be seen on as big a screen as you can get it to play on. Nino Rota (credited as Rotta) has made a compelling score, the cinematography is excellent and the acting is from very good to outstanding.

And should we compare the two versions, Minghella has surely ripped of the best of the scenes from the original adaptation. Not that stealing isn't allowed in the arts - but it IS a bit funny, that a movie about a con-artist, that can imitate whoever he want, is itself a sort of an impersonator.

See them both. Enjoy Highsmiths novel too. Don't let the comparisons You're bound to make, make You judge-mental to any of the three.

8/10

The muse is played by Bodil Kjer, at a time when her beauty peaked. The story involves a muse sent to Copenhagen to help a composer write a musical show. She falls in love with a man from the airforce and is soon haunted by her father Zeus, who want's her back and cannot allow the daughter of a god to mingle too closely with humans. This storyline is filled out with funny side-caracters and musical-shows that are clearly not American, but inhere lies the films charm. The acting is very good in all roles.

The plotline from the film Xanadu, seems nearly to be a ripoff (or can you call it a remake?).