Cloud Atlas

I will not be subject to criminal abuse

I have a single question about Cloud Atlas, the near-three-hour epic by the Wachowski siblings, and it’s a question I hoped I would not have to ask: what’s the point of it?  I know what it’s going for, but I’m not sure it ever gets there.  The film, despite being independently produced, is exactly the kind of problem-film crowding every marquee and raking in the cash, and in that sense, it’s doing Hollywood’s work free of charge.  It’s high on spectacle, short on depth (and take “depth” as every kind of depth – character, moral, story, philosophy).

Cloud Atlas is a successful genre-sampler; that is to say, it gives its audience a taste of a few different kinds of generic film-genres without actually delivering an entire movie of any type.  To its credit, it interweaves the narratives of six small stories and remains impressively easy to follow, and it’s emotionally gripping when it really wants to be, but in the end, our engagement, attention, and (perhaps) tears reward us with little more than exhaustion.  This is not to say that any of the widely diverse cast of actors do a bad job with what they have (quite the contrary), but recognizing so many missed opportunities and narrative dead-ends in a movie so long is a bit frustrating.

The actors – Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae, Hugo Weaving, James D’Arcy, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Zhou Xun, Keith David, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, and David Gyasi – each play five or six characters in different ages of the world, perhaps with the intention of a “shared souls” type of connection that we’re never made consciously aware of.  Some of these transformations lead to the film’s greatest pleasures: Hugo Weaving as a brutish female nurse, Tom Hanks as a psychotic Scottish (?) author who responds to critics by murdering them, Jim Sturgess as a Korean secret agent, Halle Berry as a male surgeon, and so on.  While I’m not completely comfortable with actors playing other races, none of these race/gender transformations are done with the intention of humor, and the Wachowskis (mercifully) understand that blackface (i.e. a white person portraying a black character) isn’t acceptable, and dodge a bullet.

The main stories/roles are as follows, in a chronology not completely obvious at the outset: a lawyer (Sturgess) travels home from a slave plantation while being poisoned by a greedy doctor (Hanks) and befriending a stowaway slave (Gyasi); a 1930s love affair between a young composer (Whishaw) and a scientist (D’Arcy) is conducted by letter as the former attempts to write his masterpiece in the company of a hubristic musician (Broadbent); a 1970s investigative journalist (Berry) sabotages an oil company determined to halt nuclear energy progress while being stalked by a deadly assassin (Weaving); a present-day (2012) publishing mogul (Broadbent) deals with the consequences of his hackneyed business decisions and attempts to escape a home for the elderly in a comic counterpart to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a cloned “fabricant” in 2044 “Neo-Seoul” (Bae) makes a Plato-esque exodus from her life of servitude and sparks a failed revolution that will eventually lead to her being revered as a goddess, and finally, in post-apocalyptic Hawaii,  a mumbling would-be warrior (Hanks) attempts a mutually beneficial partnership with one of the last members of a dead technologically-advanced society (Berry) while seeing hallucinations/visions of Old Georgie (Weaving), an incarnation of the devil, who tries relentlessly to convince the former that this partnership will result in the ultimate collapse of society, and not salvation.

These stories in and of themselves are imaginative, tense, and fun to experience.  The most rewarding part of the film is imagining that the characters who share faces also share souls – look at the evolution of each actor’s various characters in the timeline.  Look at where they end up.  This also raises some questions, however, such as why every single one of Weaving’s characters is pure evil.  Most of the actors play both good characters and also those who start out on the “wrong” path but are redeemed in some way.  Weaving plays a violent assassin, an unsympathetic slave owner, an unfeeling corporate board member in charge of ordering executions, the aforementioned brutish Nurse Ratched clone, and finally, the devil.  Is the idea that the devil makes his way into every story, reinforced by the fact that he has the same face?  The film is populated with these types of religious overtones, and the straightforward idea that “Our lives are not our own; from womb to tomb, we are bound to each other, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future” is shopworn, unsatisfactory payoff for such an ambitious narrative, and more or less turns the film into 160 minutes of buildup.  The most satisfying bit of connection in the film occurs when we see how different cultural fragments, including phrases, lend different meanings to different peoples and settings.  Cavendish (Broadbent) shouts to a clerk in the nursing home, “I will not be subject to criminal abuse!”  We laugh as he huffs and puffs his way out the door.  Later, Tom Hanks plays an actor playing Cavendish in a movie based upon his life, and delivers the same line in a posh-looking mockup of the nursing home, and when Yoona (Xun) watches the film and shouts the very same line to a real-life diner customer who abuses her, the line finally achieves the meaning and impact Cavendish intended for it.

There are two gay characters, and both end up with guns going off in their mouths.  There are egregiously derivative sub-narratives, including concepts from Soilent Green and Blade Runner.  The made-up dialect of the post-apocalypse Hawaiians is corny and shows a very fundamental lack of knowledge about the evolution and digression of language (whether this is the fault of writer David Mitchell or the screenwriters, I couldn’t tell you).   There are two attempts at image patterning (one is teeth, and the other is a birthmark shared by several characters through the ages), but they are abandoned for hours of reel and hurriedly scraped together later for the illusion of plenitude or meaning.  Payoff would have been the prevention of Frobisher’s suicide after wondering for three hours whether he’d go through with it.  Payoff would have been a real revelation about why Berry’s character in the 70s recognizes a symphony composed by Whishaw’s character in the 30s.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a thousand times before I die: you cannot write with the intention of having an audience interpret what you mean.  Deliberate ambiguity is cheap and irresponsible.  It appears as though the Wachowskis haven’t grown out of that since the final Matrix film.  Additionally, Cloud Atlas is excessively violent, which strips away much of the film’s wonder and fantasy.  I’m not particularly squeamish (I’ve continuously named True Romance as my favorite movie), but I’m averse to gratuity, and plenty of the more grisly moments here could have been depicted off-screen for the same (or arguably more impactful) effect.  This, along with the unrealistic portrayal of sex (both dangerous in a movie teenagers will be sure to flock to), is a trap the Wachowskis are known to fall into, but they’ve avoided it before – look at Speed Racer.

Such an ambitious project, occasionally rewarding and entirely captivating in the moment, deserves better.  Did I enjoy seeing it?  Yes, very much.  But films should seek to achieve more than spectacle and the simple enjoyment of experiencing it the first time.  You get far more out of a book the second, third, and fourth time you read it, and if films want to be considered “art,” their creators should set aside their own self-importance and give this concept some thought.  I know, I know.

Cloud Atlas (2012); written and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tim Twyker; adapted from the novel by David Mitchell; starring Halle Berry, Tom Hanks, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Doona Bae, and Hugo Weaving.

Sound of My Voice

Why do I like being lame?

Zal Batmanglij’s Sound of My Voice wastes no time in presenting a concept, three potentially combustible personalities, and a dozen questions, the most important of which is this: is Maggie telling the truth?  It’s the most important question because if she’s not, the lion’s share of this film’s narrative is for nothing.  This is a problem that generates a compelling motivation, or “viewing style” if you will, for an audience: we’re rooting for the character presented at the outset as a charlatan.  Why?  Partly because she radiates honesty, partly because we don’t really care about the dual protagonists’ motivations, and thirdly because we don’t want any of the characters, even the ones we don’t like, to have wasted their time.

The story places us in the presence of Lorna (Nicole Vicius) and her boyfriend, Peter (Christopher Denham), late-twenties layabouts seeking to make a living in L.A. by doing what everyone who goes to L.A. hopes to make a living doing: making films.  Their film is a documentary about cults, and they’ve somehow come across a group led by a mysterious, white-veiled basement dweller named Maggie (Brit Marling), who claims to have traveled back in time from 2054, where a civil war is tearing the world apart, and she has returned in order to “save” the people she loves.  How will she accomplish this?  We don’t know.  What does her plan have to do with this group of strangers who worship her?  She doesn’t say.  All we know is that Peter and Lorna think of the whole thing as a joke, and are willing to play along with Maggie’s rituals until they can find a way to expose her on film.  They infiltrate the group, pretending to be members, not knowing what they’re getting themselves into.

Of course, as Peter and Lorna attend several months’ worth of group rituals, the things Maggie says begin to make more sense, even to the arrogant and skeptical Peter, who is emotionally gutted by Maggie in one of the film’s most effective dramatic scenes.  “She knew things about you,” Lorna says to him over a meal the next day.  Peter stone-facedly denies this and says he was just making things up, but we know he wasn’t, which presents two solid conflicts: Lorna, after a three-year relationship with Peter, doesn’t know much about him and is jealous that the beautiful and enigmatic Maggie has this effect on him; and Peter, who may have developed a fixation on Maggie similar to that of the other followers (of whom he made a terrible mockery before), hasn’t bothered with his documentary work in weeks.

During the day, Peter teaches at an all-girls elementary school, which he considers sedentary and a waste of his twenties.  The film lends particular focus to a certain student, Abigail (Avery Pohl), an eight year-old who shows symptoms of Asperger’s (indicated by her insistence on never removing her red hat and the fact that she spends the entirety of her free time building with black Lego pieces).  We know she has some connection to Maggie before it’s even revealed, but the trouble that brews is well worth the wait: Maggie, still claiming to be from the future, believes Abigail to be her mother, and “needs” to meet with her.  The guy who can make this happen?  Peter, the one teacher Abigail tolerates.  Peter’s decision whether to do this pops the bubble that has expanded between Lorna and himself throughout the story, and the payoff delivered when Maggie and Abigail finally meet rivals most films from this year – but what do you expect?  Sound of My Voice was co-scripted by Brit Marling, who is absolutely convincing as Maggie, and who wrote the best screenplay of 2011, Another Earth.  Her next film, also in tandem with Batmanglij, is The East, starring Brit alongside Ellen Page.

For better or worse, the film deprives us of the denouement that most films would drag us through.  This works if you don’t mind not having every single question answered – what will the nature of Lorna and Peter’s relationship be in the future?  What do the feds looking for Maggie think she wants the child for?  Can they legally convict her of anything?  The film makes no absolute statements about any of it (exemplified by Peter’s final line: “I don’t know”), but I think we know in our hearts, just as we do when watching election coverage, who’s telling the truth and who is perpetually full of it.

Sound of My Voice (2012); written by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij; directed by Zal Batmanglij; starring Brit Marling, Christopher Denham, and Nicole Vicius.

Seven Psychopaths

It’s very emotional

It never occurred to me that Martin McDonagh, a renowned Irish playwright and director of In Bruges, might end up making the quintessential Guy Movie, or that the latter might be a movie about dognapping.  Seven Psychopaths, the newest from the Oscar-winning director of Six Shooter, had me saying “Jesus Christ” aloud quite a few times in the theatre.

Funnily enough, the film immediately reminded me of Charlie Kaufman’s masterwork, Adaptation., which was also about a struggling screenwriter attempting to find a good movie in a slough of terrible ideas.  In both films, the protagonist is named after the screenwriter. Kaufman’s assignment was to adapt a movie from a book; unable to accomplish this, he wrote a screenplay about himself trying to adapt a screenplay from a book.  I wonder, then, if McDonagh was wrestling with a concept and finally settled on writing about himself wrestling with a concept.  The tone of the film, ill-tempered and seemingly aggravated with its characters, may suggest this.

Marty (Colin Farrell), sits on his porch, enjoys the breeze, drinks heavily, and scribbles ideas for his screenplay, “Seven Psychopaths,” on a yellow pad.  His best friend and roommate, Billy Bickle (Sam Rockwell) wants to help Marty with his screenplay by any means necessary, and to an obsessive degree: he not only offers to co-write the story, but he even puts an ad in the paper calling for criminals with crazy life stories to come to Marty’s house and share their experiences.  Ultimately, he resorts to an unbelievable, too-good-to-spoil solution, which involves a madman called the Jack O’Diamonds Killer – a serial killer who specializes in killing members of organized crime syndicates, shown in action in the film’s opening, which features brilliant banter between Boardwalk Empire‘s Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg.  Billy is unpredictable, sexist, and gratingly annoying, and takes his surname from Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle.  You might think this is a coincidence until you see Billy in front of a mirror rehearsing a conversation.

Here’s the trouble – Billy has no success in his acting career, so he makes ends meet by teaming with his other roommate, the aging Hans (Christopher Walken), in a scam that involves stealing dogs and later returning them to their owners in order to collect the reward money.  Hans’ wife, hospitalized with cancer, does not approve, but Hans, a steadfast pacifist, believes he’s doing the right this as long as he gives the money to her.  The duo, of course, steal the one dog they should not steal: a Shih Tzu belonging to the most psycho of the film’s psychopaths.  This is Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson), a gang leader with incredible love for his dog and absolute disdain for humanity.  Costello ruthlessly hunts down anyone remotely involved with the dognapping in scenes that would normally fit into harrowing, violent drama like No Country For Old Men, but due to McDonagh’s decision to make the film exceeding self-conscious, result in raucous laughs – I was a tad ashamed of laughing at some of the film’s humor, but dammit if I could keep from cackling at Woody Harrelson popping wheelies in a wheelchair while interrogating a hospital patient.

Marty’s problem is that he begins with a concept instead of characters.  He names the film “Seven Psychopaths” before he even comes up with one psychopath.  His first character idea?  A Buddhist psychopath who does not believe in violence.  Thinking aloud on this, Marty says, with a hint of resignation, “I don’t know what the fuck he’s gonna do in the movie.”  This is one of the ongoing themes: the movie we’re watching, parts of which may or may not be happening in Marty’s jumbled thoughts, continuously seeks to find a place for its characters, and the colorful weirdos orbiting Marty (namely Billy and Hans, who make it all too clear that they know they’re in a movie), offer rolling feedback.  Billy recognizes Costello as the “chief villain,” constantly tries to set up a “final shootout” between himself and Costello’s gang, and balks when Marty suggests that the film should ultimately be about love and not shootouts.  Hans, portrayed by the eclectic Walken as buckled-down and cavalier, takes the opposite approach: he tells Marty that his women characters are all either hookers or unintelligent, and are killed within five minutes of being introduced.  This comment comes a few scenes after Olga Kurylenko’s character, Angela, is introduced and immediately killed, and after Marty’s girlfriend, Kaya (Abbie Cornish) breaks up with him and is killed (albeit in what amounts to a dream sequence, but it’s the last time she’s seen).  This provides another funny, self-conscious loop, but doesn’t change the fact that in McDonagh’s film, the actual film released in real-life theatres, the women are minimally seen and either naked or dead.

As was the case with In Bruges, the seemingly minor tidbits piece together to form a brilliant conclusion.  While Marty claims that he wants his film to have “no payoffs, just a bunch of guys sitting in the desert and talking,” Billy insists that the movie will end his way.  As such, we must remember Billy’s rules for movies, which include never showing sympathy for the villain, and never killing animals (Wes Anderson might disagree).  If he acknowledges this as a movie, then he knows he must follow his own rules, and Billy’s moments of hesitation are where Rockwell’s performance shines (a supreme achievement in a film that contains way too much of him).

The film also contains a short appearance by Tom Waits as one of the serial killers who answers Marty and Billy’s ad.  He’s a red herring for the Jack O’Diamonds Killer, but provides one of the movie’s many alternate-movies, which play like Marty’s rough drafts (or, more likely, McDonagh’s rough drafts for the real movie).  Luckily, these sequences all hold a special significance revealed later (yes, even Marty’s idea about a Quaker psychopath).

Seven Psychopaths is showy about its violence, and despite its humor, is one of the bloodier movies of the year (imagine Lawless as a comedy).  I wonder if McDonagh was going through a funk when he scripted/made this film, considering the amount of unpunished racial slurs and woman-bashing happening onscreen.  Whether McDonagh is taking a dig at the notion of being truly literary in Hollywood or was as frustrated as Marty when making this, there blooms an undeniable sense of exhaustion (and a big hint at McDonagh’s view on the less-than-fulfilling life of a screenwriter) once the action is over: sitting in his room, Marty receives a phone call from Waits’ character, to whom he broke a promise, and who calmly tells Marty he’ll kill him on Tuesday.  “That’s fine,” Marty says, distracted, his eyes glazed over.  “I’m not doing anything on Tuesday.”

Seven Psychopaths (2012); written and directed by Martin McDonagh; starring Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, and Christopher Walken.

Argo

A great American what?

The unfortunate part of Argo is its timing.  The suspicion and mistreatment with which the film’s American characters are met in Iranian airports is the exact treatment Middle-Eastern folks receive in American airports now.  Additionally, the Iranians are portrayed as bloodthirsty animals just waiting to unleash gunfire on anyone revealed to be American “spies.”  Their well-documented fascination with American movies and culture is touched upon; however, these scenes are brief and stylistically backwards, making a group of Iranian soldiers seem like, for lack of a better term, dummies.  There’s also an added dramatization in which armed revolutionaries chase an escaping airplane down a runway, which sounds worse than it is.

As a film, Argo is drama 101.  Its structure is simple and effective, and its narrative is complete.  There is a stigma revolving around Ben Affleck, as though he’s somehow the successful hack of the current Hollywood generation; sure, his acting is sometimes pretty flat, but he’s a good filmmaker.  He knows the ropes of a realistic drama.  Argo is a movie that is allowed to be two hours – it vibrates with a sort of quiet that renders its scenes tense and thrilling without the contrived insertion of fight scenes and villains.

The narrative, based on a true story, follows Tony Mendez (Affleck) as he is pressured by the CIA to come up with a solution to a problem: Islamic “extremists” have taken over the U.S. embassy in retaliation for the country’s support of the recently deposed Shah Pahlavi.  Six of the embassy staff escape capture, however, and end up virtual hostages of Iran as they are housed in the home of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber) with little hope of escape.  Mendez and his supervisor, Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston) will team with renowned Hollywood makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and fictional movie producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), and together they will create extensive marketing for a fake Star Wars knockoff.  The six hostages will take on the identities of the movie crew after Mendez makes contact with them in Tehran, and with the CIA’s help, will board a commercial aircraft out of Iranian airspace.

As this is a film, the plan must not be an instant success, but Affleck’s dramatic license is not as egregious as it may have been in other hands. Immediate problems include the fact that the extremists are re-piecing the shredded documents from the abandoned embassy, which means they’ll soon discover the identities of the six missing staff and be able to recognize them on sight.  Additionally, Taylor’s housekeeper, Sahar (Sheila Vand), who does not speak English, may be onto the identities of Taylor’s six “house guests,” and Taylor and Mendez fear who she might tell.

The film’s action, though evenly paced and quiet, is climactic, particularly when the plan is put into motion and the six hostages plus Mendez are out in the open, attempting to make their way through the airport.  A slew of real footage from the crisis is used, particularly in the beginning, almost in an attempt to say, “Look how close to real life we made this movie look!” but which doesn’t distract from the story for long.  In the end, we see some photos of the real people next to the actors who played them, voiced over by a speech from the real-life Jimmy Carter (whom Affleck wisely decided not to have appear as a character in the film), all except Mendez, since Affleck seems to have been rightfully embarrassed/ashamed about casting himself, rather than a Latino actor, in the role of the hero.

In fact, Mendez is really the only character we don’t get to know very well.  Carter refers to him as a “great American” for what he sacrifices to get his people out of Iran.  Why does he go so far to do this?  The mission is classified, so he’s not doing it to impress his estranged fiance’ (Taylor Schilling) and son.  He’s (thankfully) not a staunch patriot, as we see him sleeping through the morning news reports and wrestling with his supervisors (mainly Cranston’s character) about which technique they should use to stage the escape.  As a bad acting instructor would ask, what’s his motivation?  Affleck’s Mendez reaches Boring Hero status by the time the mission begins.  As author Clint McCown would tell you, “it happened in real life” is no excuse in fiction.

Goodman and Arkin play the most enjoyable characters and provide some truly funny moments, including industry-savvy-yet-accessible Hollywood banter, in a film so awash in its own seriousness.  Goodman’s character at one point quotes Karl Marx’s line about tragic history repeating itself as farce, and cites this quote as belonging to “Marx,” after which Arkin replies, “Groucho said that?”

The would-be breakthrough character in the film is Sahar, who despite the paranoia of Mendez and Taylor, actually protects the hostages and the mission at the risk of being killed by interrogators who fanatically support the Ayatollah.  Of course, since this is a Hollywood movie, the misunderstood foreigner with a heart of gold must, as a rule, be played by a beautiful girl in her early twenties, but the inclusion of a sympathetic Iranian character (with her own ambitions, despite how little they may be touched upon) is a positive gesture.

Best Picture buzz already surrounds Argo.  It won the Toronto Film Festival, which has predicted BP at the Oscars for the past five years.  Due to its (in)convenient timing, the film may slide into home, beating out Lincoln and Les Miserables, the other shoo-in nominees, and it may deserve it (over the other nominees, that is – not over every film that came out this year).  Argo may be a bullet-for-bullet example of what a screenplay is supposed to look like, but there’s also a heart there.  I’d have appreciated it if the heart wasn’t so glowingly red-white-and-blue, but it’s there all the same.

Argo (2012); written by Chris Terrio; directed by Ben Affleck; starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, and Alan Arkin.

Farewell, My Queen

Wake up, Sidonie

Marie Antoinette was in some ways the Marilyn Monroe of her time.  Hearsay about her sexuality, relationships, and social exploits was as important to the general public as politics or war.  It made no difference that she was running France (alongside Louis XVI) and not starring in glitzy rom-coms; her life, misconstrued and misunderstood by her audience, may as well have been one.

Benoit Jacquot’s biopic, Les Adieux à la reine (Farewell, My Queen), however, does not reflect the formula tale of romantic dithering and sexual deviance so many love to attach to Antoinette.  Based upon a historical novel by Chantal Thomas, who co-wrote the screenplay, the film is not so much a plotted movie as it is a fascinating character study.  This intimate narrative centers around Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux), the Queen’s reader, who observes the ongoing routine of the royal family before, during, and after the storming of the Bastille.  The most mesmerizing element of this routine is that the higher Sidonie seems to climb in the castle, the less it seems to change: on the ground, people scuttle about, nobles abandon the Queen, citizens desert.  Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), though, despairs because she knows she’ll soon be separated from her lover, Gabrielle de Polastron (Virgine Ledoyen), duchesse de Polignac.  In the novel, the protagonist plays a sort of fly-on-the-wall (not dissimilar from the role of Ishmael in Melville’s Moby Dick), but in the film, we tend to care about her a bit more than anyone else.  She gets involved, she feels, she loves, she hurts.

The film’s transitions are accomplished via an effective motif: Sidonie is repeatedly awakened from dreamless sleep, and rarely by natural causes.  She is shaken to life by fellow servants, especially Louison (Lolita Chammah), her excitable friend who insists she’ll die an old maid if she doesn’t start seeing men.  Louison goes so far as suggesting Paolo (Vladimir Consigny), a snarky gondola driver who knows some Italian and acts like a bit of a lecher.  Sidonie’s single tryst with Paolo, however, is cut short, and her heart isn’t truly in it.  Instead, she dwells upon an earlier meeting with the Queen – in the scene, Sidonie instinctively scratches some mosquito bites on her arm, and the Queen personally rubs a home remedy into the bites while the two share bounteous eye contact.  Seydoux’s expression here (ingeniously focused upon for longer than it might be in the nonexistent Hollywood version of this film) reveals multitudes: we instantly know that Sidonie is falling for the Queen – no definite statements about sexuality are needed; in fact, the Queen’s own affair with Gabrielle is not even given a sideways look by her ladies in waiting – but we also know that her heart must eventually be broken.  She pledges to stay by the Queen’s side forever, and Marie Antoinette soon uses her meetings with Sidonie to vent about her love for Gabrielle, and it’s evident (without use of so much as one flashback) that Sidonie is thinking the same thoughts about her Queen, wondering if she can once again achieve the same smile she had after leaving the Queen’s chambers that day.  Nicolas Moreau (Michel Robin), an old-timer who works in the library and befriends Sidonie, sees right through the latter’s claims of loyalty and recognizes the love she harbors for one who is absolutely off-limits.  Our feelings for Sidonie, a protagonist who truly deserves the best, make it all the more difficult to witness Antoinette’s histrionic monologues about Gabrielle, whose motivations and feelings about the affair are left (perhaps wisely) ambiguous (note, however, that she never once cries for the Queen).

Diane Kruger and Léa Seydoux, two of the best actresses (bilingual and otherwise) working today, make a great pair, and the sparsity of their encounters makes their scenes together all the more tense and desperate.  We know their time together is limited and we know the Queen is becoming unstable; we need Sidonie to make the most of every conversation, and Léa (who oddly enough appeared as the primary villain in Hollywood’s Mission: Impossible 4 earlier this year) spares absolutely nothing.  She glows with a sort of anti-Hollywood beauty, showing off what they’d tell her to hide over here (I’m thinking in terms of what can be seen on her face).  Kruger, the standout in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds a few years ago, plays Marie Antoinette without stylizing, glamorizing, exploiting, or judging her, and that’s something I’m not sure we’ve yet seen onscreen.  In fact, the whole package has a vibe similar to last year’s My Week With Marilyn in terms of its treatment of the subject and the eyes through which we see her.  You could not have asked for a better pair of actresses to fill these roles.

Because the film is a character study and not one of the climactic biopics to which some of us are accustomed, the story feels unfinished in the end, if only because the action ends where the action of most of these types of films begins.  In a brash act of selfishness, the Queen asks (or perhaps commands) Sidonie, with whom she now shares a great trust, to dress as Gabrielle and accompany the real Gabrielle (who will dress as a servant) on her exeunt from the capital.  The intention: if any of the numerous folks calling for Gabrielle’s head discover her, they’ll kill Sidonie instead, and Gabrielle will be spared.  Despite Madame Campan’s (Noémie Lvovsky) rather bold instructions not to accept this proposition, Sidonie realizes that this is the one way she can show her devotion (not necessarily as a romantic partner, but as a friend, follower, and keeper of a precious trust).

Here is where the film’s other motif (an image pattern consisting of only two occurrences) closes: there are two “undressings” in the story, the first of which occurs when Sidonie is sent by the Queen to wake Gabrielle.  Instead, Sidonie compulsively removes the single bedsheet from Gabrielle’s body and beholds her naked form flung haphazardly across the bed.  Later, the Queen instructs Sidonie, who has worn the same outfit (rather, been stuffed into the same corset and gown) throughout the entire film, to undress and get into Gabrielle’s clothing.  As her clothes crumple onto the floor and she stands nude before the Queen, Sidonie lifts her hands to cover herself, assuming a position similar to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.  While she’s being sized up and transformed, tears stream from her eyes, though she makes no sound and her face remains solid and straight.  Does she cry because she’s afraid she’ll be killed?  Does she feel betrayed by the Queen?  Or is it the crippling knowledge that she’ll never see this woman, who never truly knew her but may have loved her in another life, again?  When the Queen finally touches her lips to Sidonie’s (and I’ll leave it up to you as to why it happens), Sidonie does not kiss back.

As the entrancing look at these characters ends, Sidonie introduces herself to us.  “Soon,” she says, “I will be no one.”  Little does she know, the hearts of patient film-goers will disagree.  Sidonie, where are you now?

Les Adieux à la reine (Farewell, My Queen) (2012); written by Chantal Thomas and Benoit Jacquot; directed by Benoit Jacquot; starring Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger, and Virgine Ledoyen.

Taken 2

What I do best

One or two good action pictures make it to the top of the pile each year.  Only once or twice a century, however, does a film sequel outshine its predecessor, especially when the original idea was as thin as a film like Taken.  Don’t be mistaken: the idea is still “any excuse for Liam Neeson to beat up non-Americans” (despite the fact that Neeson himself is Irish), but Taken 2 is better than the original for two reasons: it gives Neeson’s character an emotion or two, and it makes better use of its supporting cast.  The secret?  Acknowledging that they’re people.  Even if they hopelessly revolve around a male action hero, it’s nice that they seem important to him, and Taken 2 focuses more on the theme of fatherhood and responsibility (even if it does so mostly with action) than the first film, which only sought to find new ways of piling bodies as quickly as possible.

The story follows Bryan Mills (Neeson) and his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace) as they try to resume their lives after the events of the first film, in which Mills saved Kim from a ragtag group of Albanian criminals and sex traffickers.  The biggest conflict in Mills’ life is now whether he can train Kim to ace her driver’s test.  He’s also spending more time with his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), whose new boyfriend happens to be a Spiteful Sleaze.  Before the charming family scenes, though, we witness Murad (Rade Šerbedžija), father of Marko, a goon who met a particularly unsettling demise at Mills’ hands in the first film, making plans with his own goons to take revenge upon Mills.  Considering the fact that Mills killed this man’s son in order to save his daughter, I think there must be a circular logic meme in there somewhere.  Long story short, Murad’s men kidnap not Kim, but (surprise!) Mills and Lenore, who are just beginning to reconcile their relationship.

This is where it gets good: in a very nice role reversal, teenaged Kim must save her parents from the bad guys.  It doesn’t happen instantly, either.  A lot of time is spent alone with Kim, who takes some direction from her father over the phone and improvises the rest.  It takes some suspension of disbelief concerning law enforcement and witnesses, considering a few of the things Kim does might render her an international terrorist in real life, but it’s wonderful to see her evolve into a breathing organism as opposed to the cardboard “teenage girl” stock character she played in the original.  And of course, Maggie Grace, who shone as Shannon on TV’s Lost, is second-to-none when it comes to crying convincingly on screen.  Best of all, she gets to play a person with real concerns and genuine bravery – and she gets to do most of it while fully clothed!

Once freed from prison, Mills teams with Kim to rescue Lenore, who is still in the clutches of Murad and his dedicated team of bloodthirsty fighting machines.  The film then becomes a somewhat formulaic two-way cat-and-mouse game between Murad and Mills, who must fight his way through legions of enemies before he, Murad, Kim, and Lenore are the only remaining players.  Refreshingly, Murad’s henchmen are in limited supply, and it’s pretty easy to keep track of roughly how many he has left because the same faces repeatedly show up throughout the chase.  Additionally, it’s easy to sympathize with the mostly one-note Murad, thanks to Šerbedžija’s dependably dedicated acting: he lost his son; why wouldn’t he want some resolution?  But he makes one too many villainous decisions to escape this film alive.  On the other hand, his followers are viciously devoted to torturing and killing Mills.  Marko (Murad’s son) must really have been the toast of Albania for these guys to be so convicted.

Like this year’s The Bourne Legacy, Taken 2 opens the possibility of a sequel, but does not promise, require, or guarantee it.  It’s a good action film with some subtlety and a fair attempt at character.  While it does include the unfortunate trope of non-American villains who could be any race to an American audience (just look at Šerbedžija, a Serbian actor who constantly plays Russian and Bulgarian characters), it doesn’t involve the obligatory sexual objectification of white women that was heavily featured in the original Taken, nor is Mills as much of a ruthless brute as he once was.  Nearly every bad vibe is gone, stripping the film down to a likeable action flick wisely contained in its own drama.  It’s not the highest film art of the year, but you don’t go into something like this expecting Rob Roy, do you?

Taken 2 (2012); written by Luc Besson; directed by Olivier Megaton; starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Jensson, and Rade Šerbedžija. 

About Cherry

They’re all a good catch until they’re caught

Movies concerning the adult film industry are often heartbreakingly bad, because the subject inherently requires the filmmakers to come down on one side or the other.  2003’s This Girl’s Life gave an exaggerated look at the horrors of getting into an industry that looks like all sorts of fun from the outside, and what it can quickly turn into.  2012’s About Cherry, written and helmed by first-time director Stephen Elliott (alongside screenwriter Lorelei Lee, who evidently has experience in the adult film industry), falls victim to the opposite issue: porn actresses, the film seems to say, are just professionals doing their jobs, and like any of us, can gain income, empowerment, and happiness from their careers.  What both films fail to state is that the porn industry is exploitative, sexist, and the most prime example of regulated prostitution we have.  As seen here, the industry even includes eighteen year-old girls, who are dismissively thrown into scenes with men and women twice their age.

My own feelings aside, the quality of the film itself doesn’t do much to make me absolve it of its message.  The story follows Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw), a teenager who decides to run away from her alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) and her possibly-abusive father, which also requires her to essentially abandon her younger sister (Maya Raines).  Her best friend comes with her – this is Andrew (Dev Patel, star of the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire), from whom she seems to be inseparable.  They even share a bed and snuggle together, but it’s apparently nonsexual.  One’s first thought might be that Andrew is gay, which is supported by the fact that he hangs out at gay bars and dances with men, but apparently, he’s in love with Angelina (what a surprise!).  Angelina and Andrew make it to San Francisco using the money from a photoshoot that the former does reluctantly, which involves some spicy poses in revealing clothes.  She doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, the screenwriters do not allow her to have many feelings about it at all.  Once she reaches her destination, she gets a job as a waitress in a gentleman’s club.  Why?  Is this really the only job she could get?  Even so, it’s not as if these places outwardly advertise for help (do they?); it seems as though a person would have to be seriously drawn to a place like this, which would require her to be fine with its degrading entertainment and to actively seek it out.  We never get to know Angelina well enough to know why she would take this job; the film’s confusing jump-cuts kick us forward to scenes it deems important without allowing us to see how and why the characters got there.

At the club, Angelina meets Francis (James Franco, who appears in this film for reasons I cannot fathom), a wealthy lawyer who seeks her affections and seems to be an okay guy in spite of his tendency to frequent strip clubs.  He gets Angelina into cocaine, which in any other film would be a big deal, but apparently it’s a fictional type of cocaine that isn’t addictive and doesn’t harm you.  Why, then, is it included?

Through one thing and another, Angelina ends up seeking work in the San Francisco adult film industry.  In the interview, they ask her if she’s eighteen and if she enjoys sex.  She answers as though she’s twelve, absentmindedly giggling and maybe not quite understanding the questions.  The director in charge of her shoots, Margaret (Heather Graham, of Boogie Nights fame) puts Angelina in a solo scene, then girl-girl scenes, and finally, a “boy-girl” scene, which pays more (thankfully, we are spared from actually seeing these scenes).  Money seems to be Angelina’s only concern – when the people in her life ask her why she would want to have sex with a strange man twice her age on camera, she answers, “Well, it pays more.”  Hinshaw’s lines are delivered without any sense of irony, and really, without any sense of whether we are supposed to be on her side about it – until later, that is.  There are all sorts of apparent betrayals – a confusing scene with Francis hints that he might be a criminal, and he eventually tells Angelina, now his girlfriend, that her job repulses him.  Are we supposed to disagree?  Are we meant to think he’s being unfair about this?  In a scene with a similar tone (and the film’s best performances), she chastises and alienates Andrew, the film’s single sympathetic character, for watching one of her porn movies on the internet.  His logic: “Why does everyone get to see you naked but me?”  But really, he’s upset that she goes out all the time and no longer hangs out with him.  Again, this is completely understandable; why are we encouraged to agree with Angelina?  Is it so bad that her best friend is interested in her work, or at the very least, that he’d like a way to see her since she’s not around anymore?

There’s a side plot featuring Margaret, who is left by her girlfriend of eight years, again over an argument about the industry.  Her partner, Jillian (Diane Farr) sees a still shot from Angelina’s first shoot, and expresses distaste at the fact that someone so young is involved in porn.  “That girl is a child,” she says.  Margaret responds incredulously (and we’re supposed to be on her side), which results in the movie-magic scenario in which a character gathers their every belonging and vanishes while their romantic partner is asleep.  Eventually, Angelina scraps her living arrangement and ends up in a relationship with Margaret after the two share a drunken kiss and the film jump-cuts again.  To repeat the question that seems to be the theme of this review, why?  Furthermore, how?  There’s no prior indication that Angelina is even attracted to women.  No mention is given to the fact that Margaret is probably twice her age.  If not for the film’s other assorted flaws, this would have been a great opportunity to actually explore the characters, but it seems too wrapped up in its “porn is fair to women” hubris to allow us to care about anyone.

The vilification of the men also mixes the film’s message: porn is okay, but the people who enjoy it are selfish, deceitful perverts?  At least the ones watching the porn aren’t, y’know, faking it.

About Cherry (2012); written and directed by Stephen Elliott; starring Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Dev Patel, and Heather Graham.