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Reviews
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Overblown melodrama
This is one of those films that you start watching hopefully, get through reluctantly, hoping for a saving moment and a proper character or plot development at some point, and then by the time it ends you find yourself cursing at the script writer and director (and actors!) for subjecting you to such a waste of time and hope. At least that's what it felt like for me.
It's not the dreary, depressive quality of it that bothered me; good tragic stories can be the most beautiful stories to tell, but tragedy does need some depth, some grounding in the emotional character of the protagonists, and this character has to come through powerfully to sustain the sadness, otherwise it's just overindulgence in emotions for its own sake, or just to show off how many crying, heartbroken expressions the actors can display.
Tragedy doesn't have to feel plausible, or to 'make sense' rationally; but it has to feel *real*: the film has to build the premises for it, in a honest manner. I felt cheated by this film, because it pretends to be a sophisticated tale but ends up being no more than a melodramatic tearjerker. In fact, because the tragic development feels so fake and so overblown, this was probably the first film I watched that I thought would have benefited from a happier ending, where I usually find myself having the opposite reaction. But the only thing worse than a soppy over the top happy ending is an equally soppy over the top miserable ending.
We do get bits of information in way of 'explanation' of each protagonist' behaviour and emotions, but they are just thrown there superficially, like data in a police report. There's just no nuance in letting them come to the fore.
Each new harrowing development seems to be there only to test our patience - it all escalates from a stupid bureaucratic error into outright war, with the former Iranian colonel turning into a careless speculator and wife abuser, the kind sheriff suddenly turning into a psycho kidnapper who threatens the newcomers with deportation, the woman who lost her husband and her house turning suicidal in the most theatrical way, and the teenage son of the colonel turning into an improvised (and unsuccessful) Bruce Willis, in a moment that is probably the most outrageous injection of pointless distress.
There are also individual elements that are particularly annoying, especially the flatness and rigidity of the character played by Ben Kingsley, more stereotype than really convincing (and his awfully caricatured accent and choice of phrases; no real Iranian would speak English like that, especially not when talking to his own family or much less praying...).
It was not just the presence of Jennifer Connelly that reminded me of Requiem for a Dream - I hated that film too for the same reason. Everything is relentlessly thrown into utter hopelessness and disaster, but without enough psychological and narrative conviction to sustain that kind of development.
It's such a pity, because with a finer, subtler treatment this could have indeed been a good film. You get a glimpse of that possibility at around the middle, before the roller-coaster of despair and destruction begins, so utterly unsubtle the paper thin structure of the film ends up buried under its weight.
A classic case of aiming too high.
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Stunning visual and musical trip
I have to admit I have always found it difficult to watch an Antonioni film from start to finish at the first try, and even for this one, I ended up watching it in three parts on repeated occasions. In the end, I realised perhaps it was better that way, because it forced me to stop thinking in the usual terms of plot and just enjoy the scenes one by one.
The first part seems a lot more fragmentary, which is not a bad thing, it just requires more of an effort to follow. When it gets to the desert scenes, all efforts are repaid in full. The stunning cinematography is only a part of it, what really makes it all unforgettable is how the landscape is made into an overwhelming presence, the silence and vastness of it, the sense of sadness and freedom, the way it fuses and contrasts with the two young characters. The desert is dead, but at the same time it feels less distant and alien than the urban scenes in the first part. The dance between the airplane flying over and the girl's car makes for a series of great shots. The love scenes in the desert are simply beautiful, it is hard to imagine this kind of approach from a film of our times. There is of course something very stylish and studied about them, but at the same time they manage to express a sense of natural, spontaneous innocence that is very rare these days. It all feels loose and unscripted (thanks also to the understated acting), but that is the result of a maniacal attention to detail and form, which comes to its climax in the series of explosions at the end, a really mesmerising spectacle. It just leaves you in awe.
I don't really care for some the usual objections: boring - well, yes, it is, if you want all films to follow a classic plot development and be packed with action twists, but then if all cinema was like that, that would be truly dull and sad; pretentious - maybe, but when that kind of ambitiousness is coupled with actual skills, depth, and style, pretentious is a compliment. The "political" criticisms make the least sense to me, I don't see the point of approaching a film like this with ideological blinders or worse, patriotic requirements. It just defeats the purpose. Perhaps it's true that, like a previous commenter remarked, Antonioni viewed these young 'hippies' and the politics of protests and riots with the police with the fascination of a foreigner, but I think that adds something rather than detracting from the film. It's not true that hippies did not exist in Italy at the time (think of the '68 protests, like in France), although they were obviously different from the American counterpart and in some ways even more militant. But his interest in this film was not narrowly political. The events seem more like a pretext for a film whose appeal has a universal, timeless quality.
A special mention for the fantastic soundtrack. Amongst other things, this film, along with Easy Rider, is probably one of the main earliest precursors of the contemporary 'artsy' music video as well as the concept of a film soundtrack that would stand on its own, but unlike the former, it uses music in a much more subtle way, blending it with the landscape rather than the action.
If you want traditional narrative in a film, then don't bother. If you want to be stunned, be patient and you won't regret it.
Ghost World (2001)
Enjoyable if a bit too heavy on caricature, graced by a fabulous Buscemi
Now that I know the film is based on a comic book, it figures. As I watched it without knowing that, I was reminded of MTV's Daria, especially in the way the main character, Enid, reacts to mostly everything and everyone with a mix of sarcasm and apathy. Thora Birch plays yet another teenage misfit, it's hard to tell if she's so good at it or if you're just used to seeing her in that role. There are times when the clichés and caricatures can become a bit too heavy, but overall it works.
Everything in the film has a sketch-like quality, from the photography and setting to the plot itself, which is more like a series of vignettes. Sketches are also how Enid describes the reality around her, by drawing on her diary. There's a theme of fakeness running through the film and several brief comedy scenes serve to illustrate that - like when Enid and her friend are sitting in a fifties "authentic" diner and 80's music comes through the juke box. It's one of the signs of the uninspiring, suspended surreality they live in.
Enid's friend, Rebecca, played by Scarlet Johansson, is a marginal character, she doesn't get much of a role in the film, other than to serve as contrast for Enid. She ends up adapting more easily, gets a job and a flat, and their relationship grows colder as Enid has more and more difficulty following her friend's example, or even deciding if she wants to follow that route at all. There's a scene where Rebecca, frustrated by Enid's inability to make up her mind, blurts out rather cruelly "good luck living with your father for the rest of your life". That remark, along with the situation it refers to, is one of the things that lead Enid to realize she needs to take some decisions or they'll all be taken for her by others. That is what the whole film basically revolves around.
There are funny bits of social satire, like the misguided controversy over Enid's art piece and the failure of her teacher to stand up for her. For Enid, even good experiences start from unpromising circumstances and her own most careless indifference. The idea of life as a matter of success vs. failure, winners vs. losers is debunked.
Steve Buscemi is, as ever, absolutely brilliant as the "dork" Seymour. His character is also in many ways a caricature, but he gives it real depth. The unlikely affair developing between him and Enid is the most genuine part of the film. What happens to Seymour in the end is dealt with a heavier dose of comedy than perhaps would have been necessary, while Enid's future is more poetically left open-ended. For anyone expecting some sort of definite closure, this is going to be disappointing, but I don't think it is one of the flaws of the film. It just doesn't have a typical plot development so there is no contradiction in the ending being so vague. The final scene makes nice use of a tiny sub-plot that was both comical and loaded with heavier symbolism, the old man sitting on a bench waiting for a bus that never seems to come. When Enid finally catches her own bus we don't know where it leads and what she plans to do or with what money, but, as someone who really cannot stand cheesy happy endings, I thought this was a nice way of closing the film. She finally gets the courage to enact her wish about leaving in exactly the way she had talked of before. It does work as a resolution in an understated way, showing us how, after waiting for something to happen from outside, she finally decided it was up to her to start taking control of her life.
All in all, an enjoyable, lighthearted and bittersweet satirical comedy, with good acting (did I mention Buscemi is fabulous?) and amusing dialogues and situations. Just don't expect too much out of it, and you'll be pleasantly surprised. 7/10
Los amantes del Círculo Polar (1998)
An engaging, beautiful story of passion and tragedy
This is somehow yet another rendition of the Romeo and Juliet story, where fate and passion are the real protagonists. It is decidedly over the top, very stylish looking, very romantic and passionate, full of symbolism and metaphors, with no pretences of realism, yet it does work rather convincingly - unlike Medem's following work, Lucia y el Sexo, which also uses a magical realism style with a circular plot (even more confusing, or rather, with a lot more artificial twists and a far less clear conclusion than this one), but which I found too contrived, annoying and disappointing. Los Amantes is a stronger film, the protagonists are far more believable and engrossing, also because the fated aspect of their relationship is set up clearly from the start and there's a feeling of inevitability that manages to support the whole artifice of the plot structural symmetry.
The lead actors are very good at portraying the fragile, adolescent beauty of their story, and the supporting roles add touches of realism where needed. The settings are carefully chosen to add to the ethereal atmosphere and mythical references in the story. Perhaps it plays too much on symbols and coincidences, but that is after all what great tragic stories have always been made of. It is romantic in the epic sense of romance, managing to be emotional without cheapening emotions. In some ways the theme of fated love stories reminds me a bit of Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs series of films, but it is a lot less heavy and more enjoyable. There may be more style than
substance overall, but it's good style.
Lucía y el sexo (2001)
Slick and clever, but a bit too contrived to be genuinely engaging
Stories told in a so-called "magical realism" style like this film can be very tricky. The story and the characters need to be very strong to sustain all the twists of the plot and I don't think this was pulled off here. I was disappointed, as I'd enjoyed Medem's previous film Los Amantes del Circulo Polar, where the passionate love story seemed a lot more genuine and the tragic ending seemed to fit better with the theme of fate playing with people's lives than Lucia y el sexo's tragic-to-happy contortions.
Also, while the female characters were all charming and sexy, the male roles were really poor and unconvincing. What on earth did Lucia see in Lorenzo? There isn't enough to justify her endurance and patience with him. Their whole love story seems artificial from the inception, it seems there was too much work on the symbolism of their relationship - the tormented writer and storyteller, the reader and savior (Lucia as a ray of sunshine) - rather than on the real intensity of feeling between two people. The sex scenes are too stylish and sleek to be really passionate. Everyone is good looking and well dressed, they live in nice apartments, exist in a bubble where the society around them doesn't seem to affect them, this is obviously purposefully so and ideally you wouldn't mind that lack of realism if the story was engrossing enough, which it isn't.
The entire plot seems to revolve around the concept of the ability to deal with tragic fateful events by rewriting, literally and metaphorically, one's own life story. But the final optimism comes across as too artificial. The plot does not resolve the fate of the child Luna, Lorenzo's daughter. The tragedies seem more like a prop, a trick to demonstrate how love can conquer guilt, remorse and failure. They're not given enough weight. People slash their wrists or throw themselves under buses easier than they cry, then we're supposed to believe they can just forget and forgive and live happily ever after.
The director says he wanted to make everything "light" in this film, after the experience with the previous one. But I think he overdid it! There is a bit too much of the French 'Amelie' in Lucia's character, she is more like a beautiful fairy than a real person. Elena, too, is more a symbol of caring and nurturing (motherhood, cooking, taking care of Lucia) than a real grieving mother. Her lack of anger and bitterness is not very believable. The whole escapist symbol of the floating island becomes annoying after a while. It functions on the characters like a drug inducing apathy and oblivion, more of a way of avoiding pain than confronting it. But it's not that, it's the way in which it's presented and wrapped up at the end that really disappoints - too fancy and too abstract to really work.
It's not a bad film. It's full of eye candy - the spectacularly gorgeous Paz Vegas, the island, the photography - and it is well directed and well acted overall. But without all that, the story itself wouldn't really be worth much.
Superstition (2001)
Patchy, inconsistent and inconclusive
The only good thing about this film is the presence of well known acting legends like Charlotte Rampling and less famous actors whose average to good talents cannot rescue a rather poor script. The whole thing feels more like an afternoon TV series than a proper film. The plot is messy and inconclusive. Fires happen around the girl - we are given different suggestions on how to interpret that, but none of those are actually explored at all. Is it deliberate arson, was she acting out of jealousy, was it paranormal activity, or was she in denial? We don't know. The contradictory conclusion of the trial doesn't explain a thing either.
Another thing that doesn't get any sort of proper development is the relationship between the girl and her lawyer. It seems clear a mutual attraction is developing, and the flashbacks (definitely far too many!) he is having of his deceased wife suggest he is struggling to let go of his grief and start a new life, possibly with the girl he is defending, but that's only hinted at very weakly. While Mark Strong manages to add some personality to the lawyer character, the lukewarm performance by the actress playing the girl doesn't give any real clues about her feelings for him. The hints of romance could have turned out all the better for being underplayed, but the acting is not convincing enough even for that.
Finally, the inconsistencies in the plot. I don't expect a lot of realism from a story that exploits some undefined "paranormal" occurrences, but the film can't make up its mind between a pragmatic and a supernatural interpretation. Again, that ambiguity could have been a winning factor, if it had been real, purposeful ambiguity rather than flaws in the plot and character development. During the trial, a dubious expert on the paranormal is brought in to try and support a "fires start around her because she's upset" line of defense that incidentally leads nowhere. How likely is it that any court would accept that as a valid testimony? Charlotte Rampling's character, the nun who was introduced as psychiatrist (why? it's never explained), seems to have no precise role in the story either, except as improvised grief counselor for the defending lawyer.
Even more glaringly inconsistent bits: in Italy a case for murder would never have a trial by jury. The most hilarious logic-defying bit has to be the shot of a double-decker red bus in the English countryside.
This film is a half-baked production that can't even properly explore its main theme - the supersitions about witchcraft could have been brought in a lot more forcefully, whether to debunk them or reinforce them or leave a well-crafted ambiguity, but the script doesn't do any of that, it just starts down all of those paths at the same time without convincingly following any of them. It's a pity, because the original real story this is based on was definitely fascinating material.
When Brendan Met Trudy (2000)
Warm, enjoyable and genuinely funny
This is one of those little gems that remind you what enjoying a romantic story is all about, at the simplest level - no stars, no special effects, no more silliness and twists than tolerable and most of all no soppy rhetoric of broken hearts followed by happily ever after. Yes, hearts are broken and happiness finally reconquered but it's all underscored with such a tongue in cheek light touch that it just makes it more credible, even more so, ironically, because of its declared self-referentiality and meta-cinematic approach - in the quotes and references to classics scattered throughout, the tribute opening and ending scenes (along with the hilarious closing titles sequence - "this character was purely fictional and stopped existing after the movie").
The whole movie is like suspended in this old-fashioned dream of a love story that's too quirky and cute to be true, yet it manages to be somehow realistic, especially by offering a lot of views of Dublin city and often humorous references to contemporary events or popular culture - the spoofs of the TV news with the police advising young men to stay home for safety ("there's a good film with Clint Eastwood on the telly") being most notable, along with the school headmaster's secret punk passion.
It's both drawing on those timeless stories that made cinema history (the plot having more than one obvious reference to A Bout De Soufflé) and playing on modern stereotypes about relationships. The game of diffidence and seduction between the sexes is amusingly explored, with the sexy, extrovert, volcanic and unpredictable female protagonist overwhelming the male protagonist with her charm, turning him from a shy creature of habit into a more daring, vital character. It may have all been seen before, but that's precisely (one of) the points of this movie.
It's a light-hearted tribute to cinema in the first place, and a truly enjoyable breezy comedy, smart and simple at the same time. The Roddy Doyle touch does show - that feel-good factor balanced with genuine wit and humour. The cast is really good, also in the secondary roles. It's not the most amazing romance (or comedy) ever filmed and it's not the best Doyle can do - but it's genuinely fun, and enchanting, and sexy. What more can you ask from a real romantic comedy?