The Siren writes up her brief impressions of five movies she has seen so far at the New York Film Festival 2011. In the order viewed:
Woman With Red Hair (1979, Tatsumi Kumashiro). A so-called pink film; the Siren had seen some of these before but hadn't been aware that they constituted a genre, still less that this genre was what she was going to be confronted with on Day 1, Film 1 of the New York Film Festival's press screenings. You could say the Siren was ill-prepared; the last Japanese film she watched was 24 Eyes. Woman With Red Hair isn't something the Siren particularly wants to analyze at great length, or even short length, but it reminded her a bit of The Devil in Miss Jones, only with much less nudity and much better framing. The lead actress (Junko Miyashita) is gorgeous.
The Loneliest Planet (2011, Julia Loktev). Contempt Goes Backpacking. We spend a long while watching the well-scrubbed couple (Hani Furstenberg and Gael Garcia Bernal) have well-scrubbed sex, in between trekking the wild spaces of the Republic of Georgia, and we await an Event. Then the Event happens and…All right, no spoilers here, so the Siren puts it this way. Martin Amis, in his 1984 article on Brian De Palma, remarks that Body Double (which the Siren loves) "could be exploded by a telephone call." This movie explodes if one character turns to the other on one of many arduous hikes and says, "What the hell…?" Has definite rewards, like the lovely score by Richard Skelton, and some enthralling moments, like a long-distance look at the couple and their guide walking along a riverbank after the Event, and a graceful, deeply emotional shot that zooms in on Furstenberg's hair coiled at her neck. But overall, a frustrating travelogue.
You Are Not I (1981, Sara Driver). Based on a Paul Bowles short story; the film's negative was destroyed in a warehouse flood and recently restored from a print discovered in the writer's own collection. It is the pleasingly spooky tale of a woman incarcerated in an insane asylum, who uses a fiery car accident outside the asylum's gates to escape and return to her sister's house. The Siren loved the black-and-white, bare-trees-in-late-fall ambience, via Jim Jarmusch as cinematographer. Very much of its 1980s New Wave time, including the humor. "Just don't let her get excited," is the advice proffered on how to handle the patient (Suzanne Fletcher), who scarcely moves and is given to thousand-yard stares that would scare the wits out of Nurse Ratched. Didn't seem to be much of an audience favorite, but this is the Siren's kind of Halloween movie.
Le Havre (2011, Aki Kaurismaki) Marcel, a shoeshine man (André Wilms) in the port city of the title, has scant income and a devoted but ailing wife, Arletty (Kati Outinen). He winds up sheltering a Gabonese refugee boy (Blondin Miguel), with the help of a bottomless supply of kindhearted neighbors, one seriously lovable dog, and one cop (Jean-Pierre Daroussin) who says "I don't much like people," but doesn't mean it. A fairy tale about real-world problems that is blissfully unmoored to reality of any kind. Contains a Mickey-and-Judy plot twist, a shot that echoes a Susan Hayward movie (you'll know it when you see it), and a deplorable French pun. The squarest movie the Siren has seen all year, and she's including her TCM viewing here. She was crazy about it, and would have been even if the main couple weren't named Marcel and Arletty.
We Can't Go Home Again (1976, Nicholas Ray). A major restoration of the director's last film, a labor of love by his widow, Susan, and an important piece of film history. The Siren is grateful that it's available, and grateful to have seen it. She only wishes she had actually liked it. Many of the images have power, but the movie itself does not, weighed down as it is by dorm-room philosophizing and students who are painfully unnatural on screen, even though they are evidently playing variations on themselves. Ray's beautiful voice provides the narration, and the movie perks up when he's in the frame. At times it resembles an oddball, self-valorizing version of To Sir With Love, only this "Sir" is preaching psychosexual and political liberation instead of clean clothes and good manners. It's an opportunity to see a celebrated auteur wrestling his demons to the end, but in terms of cinema, the Siren got a lot more out of Born to Be Bad.
And the plus one, such as it is:
I Don't Know How She Does It (2011, Douglas McGrath). The Siren has loathed few novels to the degree that she loathed Allison Pearson's 2002 book about the problems of a hedge-fund manager trying to balance work and the demands of her husband and two kids. The character of Kate Reddy was so spoiled and abrasive that even when she voiced a complaint the Siren has made herself, the Siren's response was, "Oh, go soak your head." The good news is that Sarah Jessica Parker gives Kate some urgently needed warmth, and Aline Brosh Mckenna once again turns in a screenplay that's much better than the book it's based on (the other being The Devil Wears Prada). The bad news is that the movie is slackly plotted, offers nothing to much to look at except Christina Hendricks and Pierce Brosnan (who are wasted with prodigal carelessness), and despite the occasional wry chuckle (mostly via Olivia Munn's Momo), the film has no actual wit. The actors all deserved better, but this is probably the best job that could have been done with the source material.
Woman With Red Hair (1979, Tatsumi Kumashiro). A so-called pink film; the Siren had seen some of these before but hadn't been aware that they constituted a genre, still less that this genre was what she was going to be confronted with on Day 1, Film 1 of the New York Film Festival's press screenings. You could say the Siren was ill-prepared; the last Japanese film she watched was 24 Eyes. Woman With Red Hair isn't something the Siren particularly wants to analyze at great length, or even short length, but it reminded her a bit of The Devil in Miss Jones, only with much less nudity and much better framing. The lead actress (Junko Miyashita) is gorgeous.
The Loneliest Planet (2011, Julia Loktev). Contempt Goes Backpacking. We spend a long while watching the well-scrubbed couple (Hani Furstenberg and Gael Garcia Bernal) have well-scrubbed sex, in between trekking the wild spaces of the Republic of Georgia, and we await an Event. Then the Event happens and…All right, no spoilers here, so the Siren puts it this way. Martin Amis, in his 1984 article on Brian De Palma, remarks that Body Double (which the Siren loves) "could be exploded by a telephone call." This movie explodes if one character turns to the other on one of many arduous hikes and says, "What the hell…?" Has definite rewards, like the lovely score by Richard Skelton, and some enthralling moments, like a long-distance look at the couple and their guide walking along a riverbank after the Event, and a graceful, deeply emotional shot that zooms in on Furstenberg's hair coiled at her neck. But overall, a frustrating travelogue.
You Are Not I (1981, Sara Driver). Based on a Paul Bowles short story; the film's negative was destroyed in a warehouse flood and recently restored from a print discovered in the writer's own collection. It is the pleasingly spooky tale of a woman incarcerated in an insane asylum, who uses a fiery car accident outside the asylum's gates to escape and return to her sister's house. The Siren loved the black-and-white, bare-trees-in-late-fall ambience, via Jim Jarmusch as cinematographer. Very much of its 1980s New Wave time, including the humor. "Just don't let her get excited," is the advice proffered on how to handle the patient (Suzanne Fletcher), who scarcely moves and is given to thousand-yard stares that would scare the wits out of Nurse Ratched. Didn't seem to be much of an audience favorite, but this is the Siren's kind of Halloween movie.
Le Havre (2011, Aki Kaurismaki) Marcel, a shoeshine man (André Wilms) in the port city of the title, has scant income and a devoted but ailing wife, Arletty (Kati Outinen). He winds up sheltering a Gabonese refugee boy (Blondin Miguel), with the help of a bottomless supply of kindhearted neighbors, one seriously lovable dog, and one cop (Jean-Pierre Daroussin) who says "I don't much like people," but doesn't mean it. A fairy tale about real-world problems that is blissfully unmoored to reality of any kind. Contains a Mickey-and-Judy plot twist, a shot that echoes a Susan Hayward movie (you'll know it when you see it), and a deplorable French pun. The squarest movie the Siren has seen all year, and she's including her TCM viewing here. She was crazy about it, and would have been even if the main couple weren't named Marcel and Arletty.
We Can't Go Home Again (1976, Nicholas Ray). A major restoration of the director's last film, a labor of love by his widow, Susan, and an important piece of film history. The Siren is grateful that it's available, and grateful to have seen it. She only wishes she had actually liked it. Many of the images have power, but the movie itself does not, weighed down as it is by dorm-room philosophizing and students who are painfully unnatural on screen, even though they are evidently playing variations on themselves. Ray's beautiful voice provides the narration, and the movie perks up when he's in the frame. At times it resembles an oddball, self-valorizing version of To Sir With Love, only this "Sir" is preaching psychosexual and political liberation instead of clean clothes and good manners. It's an opportunity to see a celebrated auteur wrestling his demons to the end, but in terms of cinema, the Siren got a lot more out of Born to Be Bad.
And the plus one, such as it is:
I Don't Know How She Does It (2011, Douglas McGrath). The Siren has loathed few novels to the degree that she loathed Allison Pearson's 2002 book about the problems of a hedge-fund manager trying to balance work and the demands of her husband and two kids. The character of Kate Reddy was so spoiled and abrasive that even when she voiced a complaint the Siren has made herself, the Siren's response was, "Oh, go soak your head." The good news is that Sarah Jessica Parker gives Kate some urgently needed warmth, and Aline Brosh Mckenna once again turns in a screenplay that's much better than the book it's based on (the other being The Devil Wears Prada). The bad news is that the movie is slackly plotted, offers nothing to much to look at except Christina Hendricks and Pierce Brosnan (who are wasted with prodigal carelessness), and despite the occasional wry chuckle (mostly via Olivia Munn's Momo), the film has no actual wit. The actors all deserved better, but this is probably the best job that could have been done with the source material.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
Drive (2011)
(Please note: A movie like Drive is best seen cold. The Siren doesn’t discuss the ending, but when she writes up a movie she does so in detail. If you plan to see Drive, she suggests you come back and read this later, if you are so inclined. It will still be here.)
Sometime around May 19 the Siren's Twitter feed started filling up with ordinarily temperate movie writers made dancing machines by the Cannes screening of Drive, the new heist thriller from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Three months later, the word of mouth is more like a bellow, so the Siren was happy to go see for herself, through the kindness of Danny Bowes of Movies by Bowes.
It all begins so well, with Gosling's voice providing what seems like film noir narrative, until you realize he's on the phone setting up a heist. He visits his crusty sidekick, Shannon (Bryan Cranston) to get his souped-up Impala, and waits outside a grim warehouse for two robbers he's never met, like a limo driver picking up some slumming clients. The pursuit sequence that follows made the Siren almost weepy with gratitude for a director who lets her get good and comfortable with a shot, who's got rhythm, damn it, and the nerve to lace the frantic motion of a car chase with pauses that play out just long enough.
Then Gosling meets Carey Mulligan, and suspense strips its gears. Thus the Siren is in the somewhat unexpected position of stating thatDrive would be a fine genre picture, if it weren't for all that gooey girl stuff.
We’ll have to call Gosling's character Driver, because he has no name, just like Joan Fontaine in Rebecca. (Wait--isn't that what all the guys at the press screenings said? No? Damn.) He drives getaway cars for a living, when he isn't risking his neck as a stunt driver. Down the hall from him lives Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos, utterly natural and unirritating). Benicio's father (Oscar Isaac) is in prison just long enough for Driver to form a bond with Irene and yearn for All the Things He Will Never Have, and yes, that's the goo the Siren is complaining about. Then the father is sprung from jail, but he owes money to men he met inside. To protect Irene, Driver agrees to help out her husband in a pawnshop robbery. And of course that goes the way of all heists, and flesh…
Gosling is handsome, in his senior-class-ring sort of way; CGI him into the crowd of overage teens in Rebel Without a Cause and nobody'd know the difference. His perfectly muscled body seems made for intimidating the shit out of people. Oddly, however, especially given his recent Youtube exploit, he's not that impressive until he starts whaling away. Take a moment when a former client proposes another heist. Driver growls, "Shut your mouth or I'll kick your teeth down your throat." Two problems, aside from the line's being a bit flavorless, as action-movie threats go; one is that Gosling's voice sounds more breathy than vicious. It could be that the instrument's just too naturally thin and boyish, but his register is in the same neighborhood as Clint Eastwood's, and the voice still isn't doing the job. Second, his exaggerated demeanor is that of a small-time tough, not someone confident he can kick ass wherever, whenever. (***)
And this driver has to remember all the 100,000 roads of Los Angeles, but Gosling shows only one thing at one time. When he's mooning after Irene, that's all he's doing. His blue eyes swim and whatever ruthlessness, torment, demons or scorpions he'd been trying to show are drowned. That's a big problem for a movie that depends on its main character's capacity for violence. Where there's no coil, you don't believe the spring.
Albert Brooks, whose performance as a producer gone psychopath is as good as you’ve heard, gets that in a way Gosling doesn't. He's scary just ordering Chinese food. The waiter forgets the fortune cookies, for a fractional instant all emotion flees Brooks' face, and the Siren feared the waiter might face the same fate as Spider inGoodfellas. It's that instant that shows how dangerous the character is, and not his "Where are my fucking cookies?"
But Brooks isn't around much until the final act. Instead, the movie spends an ungodly amount of time with an unconsummated love story between Driver and Irene. The Siren doesn't begrudge Refn this classic conceit: the interlude where it's established what the hero is fighting for. It's deeply unfortunate, however, that Gosling is fighting for the tapioca presence of Carey Mulligan, diligently overacting her underacting. She plays one note, that note being wounded innocence: eyes wide and slightly damp, lips pouted and slightly bruised. Gosling does his best to convince us that this constitutes irresistible allure, but that's a tall order, asking an actor to play convincing romance with a woman who's avoiding charm like the Spanish flu. Far more arresting are Gosling's scenes with the little boy, who manages a variety of emotion and reaction that Mulligan does not. Infuriating as the Siren found Mulligan's performance, she hesitates to blame the actress entirely; this may well be the way she was told to play it. When Irene lets out a laugh during a nature ramble with Driver, Refn cuts away like she just flashed us.
The critics who loved Drive either seem to find wounded innocence as endlessly fascinating as Refn does, or they shrug it off. But this isn’t something brief enough to ignore, like the Roberta Flack forest-sex inPlay Misty for Me. Driver's scenes with Irene make up a good chunk of the movie, and she's around a lot even later. One lengthy shot has Irene at a mirror, in profile, putting a baby clip in her hair, then staring at her reflection. Is she afraid for herself, for her son? Is she melancholy at the thought of a man she can't have? Is she thinking, "Goddamn it, why can't I just hook up with a nice dentist for once?" The Siren can't tell you. Mulligan just looks mad at her hair. And when Driver's true nature is finally revealed to her, she lets fly with a slap that's the least believable moment in the movie, and that's saying something considering that we also see Christina Hendricks rob a pawnshop in five-inch stilettos.
By the end of the Irene section, the Siren was ready to inform Drive's partisans that they've got some nerve promising the return of Bullittwhen after the opening credits roll most of what you get is a listless-white-people riff on In the Mood for Love. Then Hendricks showed up in those stilettos, and the goo was gone. (Good god, why couldn't sheplay Irene?) And from here on out the Siren was much happier, despite her occasional yelps. Once Gosling started acting deranged, the Siren starting believing the tough act a lot more. It's hard not to, when he stalks into a strip joint's dressing room carrying a hammer. Which he proceeds to use. Enthusiastically. While the strippers sit immobile and, I don't know, let their breasts air out. It's a great way to spice up the evergreen tough-guy-busts-up-a-massage-parlor episode, like setting a kneecapping in the Musée Rodin.
Brooks returns to show he had plenty of leftover pathology after Out of Sight, Ron Perlman hulks around complaining about anti-Semitism in the Mob, and Gosling stomps the everloving bejesus out of a bad guy in an elevator, in a scene the Siren found as effective as everyone else did. (Well, almost as effective. The kiss Gosling gives Mulligan just before going Full Metal Joe Pesci on the henchman's face lasts a lot longer than it would from the 4th floor down to the basement.)
Other niggles include the music which, while contemporary, sounds so 80s the Siren was mouthing at her notebook, "And people say I'mretro." The synth-soaked instrumentals aren't bad, and they certainly fit with Drive's dogged determination to cite everything from Thief toTo Live and Die in L.A. to, according to Refn himself, Sixteen Candles. But there's also songs playing under some scenes with lyrics like "a real human being and a real hero" and "oh my love, look and see the sun rising through the river." Maybe it's supposed to be ironic counterpoint, but put that kind of stuff in a woman's picture and they'd call it camp.
Speaking of memories--the Siren has seldom encountered a movie so jam-packed with references, and she supposes part of the fun for filmheads is spotting them all, and trying to determine which are intentional and which are inadvertent. The Siren herself is still trying to figure out whether a scene of Driver entertaining Irene and her son by zipping down a freeway culvert was actually supposed to remind anyone of the drag race in Grease. But overall she wishes Refn had either studied the thematically freighted heroines of movies likeShane and Witness a little more, or stuck with what Danny Bowes calls “the ownage.”
(***) Corrected 9/18/11, per Mat and Tony Dayoub. Thanks for following my blog!
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