Archive for May 2005
You can do one of two things while watching Layer Cake: You can
relax and take in its sleek style, its occasional humor, and the
low-burn loveliness of its leading man, Daniel Craig. Or you can try to
figure out what’s going on. Doing both, unfortunately, is not an option.
But that’s what can happen when a 400-page, seven-hour screenplay is
whittled down to 105 minutes and placed in the hands of a first-time
director—in this case, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels producer
Matthew Vaughn. Britpulp!-anthologized author J.J. Connolly wrote the
script, as well as the crook’s-eye-view novel on which it was based.
His many characters are well-drawn, with intricate histories and
personalities that are strong without being movie-thug clever. But the
concentrated version of Layer Cake’s underworld is so jam-packed with
names and background that you never quite get over feeling like a
stranger at a family reunion.
A bit of the unfamiliarity is intentional. Craig’s character, a
“businessman” whose commodity just happens to be cocaine, is never
named, though you might just be too caught up in getting everyone
else’s story straight to notice. All you really need to know about
XXXX, as he’s referred to in the script, is given in Craig’s opening
voice-over anyway: He’s been very successful, but he wants out. His
immediate boss, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), has asked him to do one
last job. Obviously, disaster won’t be long in coming.
Vaughn’s original intention was to produce Layer Cake for his buddy
Guy Ritchie, as he had Barrels and 2000’s Snatch. Ritchie declined, but
Vaughn reportedly figured he’d watched his friend carefully enough to
give directing a go of his own—after all, Layer Cake even takes place
in the same seedy-London milieu as Ritchie’s popular flicks.
It’s clear Layer Cake wasn’t helmed by the same person who oversaw
Snatch, though the difference isn’t due to a lack of experience. Quite
the opposite, in fact: Vaughn’s debut feels as if it were directed not
by a novice but by a grown-up. There are fewer MTV-furious cuts, more
elegantly slow pans and transitions—one of Vaughn’s favored tricks is
closing in on the details of one scene, then pulling back as another
comes into focus. Energy is provided Danny Boyle–style, with a few
moments here and there—during a chase, say—sped up by a barely
perceptible degree. Not that Vaughn doesn’t get into the violence: One
of Layer Cake’s most compelling scenes angles the camera from the point
of view of an unfortunate bloke getting the crap beaten out of him in a
diner. But instead of topping things off with frenetic electronica,
Vaughn chooses Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World,” subtly adding melancholy
to a situation that Ritchie would have staged with glee.
Still, the film isn’t an indictment of the thug life, exactly, or
even a self-referential lesson in how seductively good looks can
conceal soullessness. Connolly’s characters love what they do, from
XXXX’s cool, confident helper, Gene (Colm Meaney), who finds
disassembling guns “relaxing,” to the Duke (Jamie Foreman), a
status-hungry dumb shit who’s the regrettable holder of the large stash
of Ecstasy XXXX is charged with getting his hands on. Whether the
Duke’s girlfriend, Slasher (Sally Hawkins), is shrieking at the first
sign of stress or Gene is dismissing XXXX’s newfound giddiness over
guns—muttering “Oh, for fuck’s sake” as his friend starts sneaking
around corners with a pistol like a secret agent—Layer Cake offers lots
of small, entertaining moments with its crew. And Craig is an enjoyable
antihero, as likable when he’s being a badass as when he’s drinking,
drugging, and generally agonizing over a situation gone very wrong.
If only Vaughn & Co. got the bigger picture right. Layer Cake’s
title refers to the tiers of power in the criminal world, and it
becomes clear that although XXXX initially seems to be a know-it-all on
top of the game, he’s really at the mercy of quite a few even sharper
people above him. (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’s Michael
Gambon, playing the boss of ’em all, is a highlight.) The main problem
with the movie is that the intricacy of this universe is presented in
apparently unconnected fragments: First something happens with
characters unknown and reasons unclear; then we hear people talking
about the whys afterward—sometimes.
The rest of the time, the whys are probably just an excuse to get
Craig out of his shirt again. At one point, XXXX is dragged out of a
hotel room by a bunch of people he doesn’t know and told a long story
about why the mission he’s on is a setup. He asks questions and listens
intently but eventually admits, “I’m still not with you.” You won’t be,
either, but if you just like looking, you’ll probably be content to nod
along.
Ladies in Lavender suffers from the opposite problem: It requires no
straining whatever to understand its trifle of a plot, which
writer-director Charles Dance has stretched beyond its limit from a
short story by William J. Locke.
The film’s opening forewarns of the drivel to come: Elderly sisters
Ursula (Judi Dench) and Janet (Maggie Smith) are cavorting on a beach
in 1936 Cornwall, with Dance slowing frames and then freezing them at
moments of maximum whimsy. They go back to their large home overlooking
the shore, where they occupy themselves with gardening, knitting,
dining on the suppers provided by their brusque housekeeper, Dorcas
(Miriam Margolyes), and listening to the radio. When night falls, the
sisters take to their twin beds, set up side by side in an upstairs
room.
Ursula and Janet’s routine is upset—but only slightly—when a young
man (Good Bye Lenin!’s Daniel Brühl) washes up on the beach after a
storm. He’s barely alive, so the sisters summon help to move him to
their spare bedroom, where they nurse him back to health. He doesn’t
speak English, but he communicates with Ursula and Janet in German well
enough to tell them that his name is Andrea and he is Polish. They also
find out that Andrea plays the violin, when he responds to Janet’s
impromptu but competent turn at the piano as if hearing nails on a
blackboard.
Of course—don’t all violinists hate the piano? This is just one of
Ladies in Lavender’s more bizarre moments, though the prize goes to the
development on which the story turns: The usually chipper Ursula
becomes petulant and melancholy after the dopey Andrea, who can’t be a
day over 20, stays around for a while. She dreams about rolling around
in the grass with him, her gray hair once again brown; whenever Janet
speaks to him, Ursula pouts.
Needless to say, fans who prefer to see Dench playing strong
characters should look elsewhere. Her Ursula can charitably be
described as childlike, though a dim old fool is a bit more accurate.
Smith’s Janet has a little more edge, unleashing the rare barb in this
strenuously quaint drama. (She responds to the maid’s query of what
Polish people eat for breakfast, for example, with “Probably some awful
kind of sausage.”) But neither of Britain’s great dames is challenged
here—sure, Dench’s character has some serious inner conflict going on,
but she’s not often asked to express it. “He’s up!” “He’s home!” and
“He likes the lunch!” are the biggest developments the actresses are
typically asked to negotiate.
But this isn’t the most infuriating thing about Ladies in Lavender.
Neither is the icky subplot about a borderline stalker—the middle-aged
town doctor (David Warner), who becomes enamored of a young artist
(Natascha McElhone), a bohemian, landscape-painting type who
irritatingly shows up at the sisters’ home whenever Andrea happens to
be playing the violin. No, the worst part of Dance’s film is that its
most dramatic moments are completely contrived, situations that would
have been prevented if only people had passed on some simple
information—why, for example, would anyone tell a friend to drop by
tomorrow for a surprise without mentioning that the surprise is that he
needs to leave town immediately and no, he doesn’t have time to pack?
Details such as how Andrea even ended up on the beach, meanwhile, go
unexplained—the more time to focus on things such as his giving Ursula
a pebble when they go for a stroll. She’s thrilled, Janet’s annoyed,
and you’ll be longing for some real drama—such as having the sisters
shove their guest back into to the sea from which he came.
Copyright 2005 movie-babe.com
Yes, fanboys, it’s better than the last two. It’s pivotal. It’s
menacing. Hell, it’s rated PG-13! But—and anyone who’s been thinking "I have a bad feeling about this" knew there had to be a "but"—a nonswooning evaluation of Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge
of the Sith isn’t likely to hail it as one of the better installments
of George Lucas’ sacred series. Cosmic wisdom suggests keeping in mind
something Anakin Skywalker is told before he finally decides to change
his name and his ‘tude: “’Good’ is a point of view.”
After nearly two decades of anticipation since Lucas announced his
plans for a second Star Wars trilogy, anyone remotely interested in the
way Darth Vader came to be will find gratification in the final
third—not of the trilogy, but of Sith itself. The rest of the movie’s
140 minutes are filled with what Lucas once unsettlingly called
“Hamburger Helper.” The director has even estimated that only 60
percent of his original story is addressed in its last installment.
It’s a more substantial chunk, certainly, than the 40 percent
supposedly split between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones,
though the filler remains a snooze. Battles against alien purple skies
are frequent but too CGI-slick to elicit much excitement. Political
talk is still paramount, only now it’s laced with none-too-subtle
Bushisms such as “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.” At least the
stuff is more tolerable than Lucas’ love talk, woodenly cooed by Anakin
(Hayden Christensen) and his new wife, Padmé (Natalie Portman), in the
subplot that leads to the birth of Luke and Leia. (A typical exchange:
“You are so beautiful.” “It’s only because I’m so in love.” “No, it’s
because I’m so in love with you.”) John Williams’ score swirls
constantly in the background, desperately trying to compensate for
exchanges that sound penned and acted by droids.
The most satisfying part of the Dark Lord’s long-awaited
transformation, then? Good riddance to bad brooding. Christensen’s
Anakin was smackworthy as a petulant teenager in Attack of the Clones,
and his disposition only goes from sulky to stiff in Sith. If it
weren’t for the fact that the character finally stops saying “It’s not
the Jedi way” at about the movie’s midpoint, it’d be pretty difficult
to tell Good Anakin from Bad; once the galaxy’s coolest medical helmet
slips on and the voice of CNN starts coming out, it’s quite a relief
knowing there’s no going back. Even afterward, however, everyone from
Portman and Samuel L. Jackson to all the lesser names in support just
keeps talking. Like. This. The film’s only semipassionate performance
is supplied by Ian McDiarmid, whose Supreme Chancellor Palpatine
continues to show how delicious evil can be.
Ironically, it’s the nonhumans who deliver the most expression here.
Yoda, of course, is back with his ungrammatical singsong, C-3PO still
spews loafer-light eloquence, and R2’s blips, though no longer
sarcastic, at least sound as cheery as usual. But the old-school
characters who helped lend the original trilogy its sense of fun are
given limited screen time in Sith—Lucas keeps even the much-ballyhooed
visit to Kashyyk, home of the Wookiees, brief, the better to deal Very
Seriously with the Very Serious topic of Darth Vader’s birth. (On the
plus side, Jar Jar is momentarily seen but not heard.)
Finding out why Anakin chooses his descent into darkness is, of
course, the only real reason to see Sith, a movie whose conclusion is
so foregone that there are already three other movies about it. So
Lucas can’t really be blamed for presenting the story with generous
heft. But would it kill the guy to write a joke again? Just as in
Menace and Clones, there’s nothing similar to Leia-and-Han bickering
here or a quirky interplanetary dive or, well, anything resembling
three-dimensional life a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. As a
climactic puzzle piece, Sith can’t help being at least somewhat
thrilling. But it’s also a final nail, a signal that the burial of the
playful spirit of Episodes IV through VI is now complete. Somewhere,
Chewie cries.
Back on this planet, Mad Hot Ballroom luxuriates in a milieu so far
from the Dark Side your face may get sore from smiling—depending, of
course, on your tolerance for sweetness. Marilyn Agrelo’s debut
documentary chronicles fifth-graders from three New York City public
schools as they participate in a semester of ballroom-dancing
instruction, a now-mandatory program first introduced 10 years ago and
run by the nonprofit American Ballroom Theater. Many of the kids are
minorities and underprivileged. All are reluctant to take another in
their arms and gaze into each other’s eyes. But, by golly, don’t all of
them turn into tiny Freds and Gingers, shakin’ what their mamas gave
them and driving the adults around them crazy with their
perfect-postured cuteness.
Granted, it is an odd and entertaining sight. Mad Hot Ballroom seems
to begin in the middle of the students’ instruction, when they’ve
already got some basic moves down but are still learning the finer
points of particular dances. (“Mer-en-gue!” one class obediently
repeats.) Agrelo’s camera gives equal time to classes in Washington
Heights, Bensonhurst, and Tribeca as they learn about proper style (“Do
I look good?” teacher Rodney asks as he sloppily untucks his shirt) or
which parts of their bodies should be moving (“Upstairs the people are
sleeping. Downstairs, there’s a party going on!”).
In between classes, Agrelo interviews the kids, soliciting
awww!-inducing quotations about how girls are stupid but the boys kinda
like them anyway, or how infuriating it is that the boys are supposed
to lead but they don’t know what they’re doing. One gigantic-headed
tyke, a boy named Cyrus who could pass for Art Garfunkel’s son, gets a
whole lot of screen time—probably because his fluffy-chick look is made
even more adorable by his very serious and well-spoken personality.
Ballroom doesn’t shy away from some weightier ramifications of the
dance program, such as the distraction it provided after 9/11 or the
behavioral improvements witnessed in students whose lives are otherwise
lacking in structure. But mostly the documentary is all about the big
prize. Agrelo films the classes right up to the citywide competition
that is held at the end of each semester. Only a few students are
selected to participate, and then, obviously, fewer still get to
advance, and the young’uns aren’t always graceful handling the agony of
defeat. Buckets of tears are shed—especially by Allison, a young
teacher who seems to cry pretty much whenever she speaks—but even when
the contests get fierce, Agrelo stays focused on the smiles. And there
are plenty of them: smiles from the instructors, smiles from the
parents, smiles from the kids when they know their school is kicking
butt.
The biggest problem with Mad Hot Ballroom is that it lingers on
these scenes too long, with each of them only showing more of the same.
Yes, the kids are very good. Yes, it’s great to see them accomplish
something that most adults can’t handle. And yes, to be a little
red-state about it, it’s terrific that these preteens seem to care more
about swinging than gunning each other down. Of course, if Agrelo had
bothered to show us her subjects somewhere besides the dance floor,
there’d be no need to make such assessments. As things are, the kids
are all right, the grown-ups are happy, and the rest is unblemished,
unindividuated brightness.
copyright 2005 movie-babe.com
Will Ferrell as a saggy-assed streaker might be a thing of beauty, but
Will Ferrell as a weepy girly man is not a pretty sight. And for much
of Kicking & Screaming, that’s exactly what he is: an ineffectual
suburban dad who just wants his kid to play soccer and his own pops,
Buck (Robert Duvall), to show him a little love. But at least this
PG-rated feel-gooder is no Melinda and Melinda, in which Ferrell’s
Woody Allen–lite schtick was downright emasculating and, worse,
unfunny. It’s still uncomfortable to watch the Cowbell King whine—and
yes, director Jesse Dylan actually has him shed tears—but here Ferrell
manages to eke out a few laughs as his doormat character, Phil,
undergoes a personality change after agreeing to coach his son’s soccer
team.
The nice-guy-to-raging-winaholic metamorphosis isn’t the whole
story, of course—cutthroat competition not being very family-friendly
and all. But Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick’s script does keep the
sugar level down to USDA-approved levels, with a generous number of
jokes at the expense of Buck’s antagonistic neighbor and Phil’s
assistant coach, Mike Ditka (“Have you ever looked into his eyes? Or at
his hair?”), and a few gags that are just self-deprecating enough to
avoid being flat-out racist (the way, for example, Ditka calls an Asian
player “Bing Bong” because he can’t remember the child’s multisyllabic
name). Ditka, who has a surprising knack for comedy, and Duvall, who,
post–Assassination Tango, is finally supposed to be ridiculous, also
add a fair number of plain ol’ meatheaded yuks to Kicking &
Screaming, even if Buck’s constant derision of Phil is a bit too
mean-spirited to be either amusing or believed. But it’s during Phil’s
brief transformation into caffeine-fueled angry dad that the movie
becomes its most entertaining and Ferrell, at long last, seems himself,
putting his whole big-boned body into being shamelessly small-minded
and childish. No other grown-up baits an unsuspecting little angel
better than this: “I can eat a box of cookies for dinner. Can you do
that? No, because you’re a fart-faced kid.”
copyright 2005 movie-babe.com
There’s a gripping story about the dark side coming to a theater
near you, but it’s not the one that takes place in a galaxy far, far
away. Though, at times, it may certainly seem to: Kontroll, the debut
of Hungarian-American writer-director Nimród Antal, is set entirely
underground, in the Budapest subway system. If spending 106 minutes on
a foreign Red Line doesn’t sound all that entertaining to you, rest
assured that Antal makes his vision of the public transit everyone
loves to hate a universe that’s compellingly odd, aggressive, and
lonely—and often even fun.
A clipboard-mounted disclaimer read by a metro agent at the
beginning of Kontroll emphasizes that Antal’s story is in no way
reflective of the actual Budapest Transport Limited and that the
fictional events about to take place are products of the director’s
imagination, created as he indulged his interest in “the struggle
between good and evil.” The subject matter sounds weighty, but
Kontroll’s opening scene neatly establishes the kinda playful, kinda
eerie tone that the movie will actually take: As a barely dressed and
very drunk party girl tries to keep her balance on the escalator down
to a station, she talks to herself and struggles to open a big bottle
of champagne. She finally gets it open—yelling “Ahhh!” as it sprays in
her face—then stumbles to the platform, precariously leaning forward on
her high heels to see if a train’s coming. Seconds later, one whooshes
by without stopping, and the only thing left on the platform is one of
the reveler’s shoes.
On the surface, Kontroll, which was Hungary’s biggest film of 2003,
is about a series of such incidents, which transit management assumes
are suicides but are really the work of a serial killer. But the film
is less murder mystery than peek into a swaggering boys’ club—of
subway-ticket inspectors. The team we’re introduced to is a charmingly
motley one, including the sarcastic, cynical Professor (Zoltán Mucsi),
who tells his crew, “It’s not our fault if people want to jump under
the trains and not ride them”; Muki (Csaba Pindroch), a tightly wound
narcoleptic who passes out in the middle of his rants; and Tibi (Zsolt
Nagy), the puppyish but clueless new guy, who in the American version
of the movie would be played by Seann William Scott. The real focus,
however, is Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), a good-looking hangdog who, for
reasons never explained, has taken to sleeping where he works and
refuses to go aboveground.
Antal loads Kontroll with lots of grime, fluorescent-tinged
darkness, and too-cool atmosphere. The inspectors, dressed in street
clothes and equipped with armbands they whip out when performing their
duties, become increasingly disheveled and even bloodied as they go
about each day as the apparent bane of Budapest. Though Antal
occasionally frames the guys as tough and hip—they walk the tunnels
with the attitudes of Mafiosi as techno music plays—the passengers
obviously don’t hold them in such high regard, regularly ridiculing,
pushing around, or simply ignoring the enforcers who repeatedly mutter,
“Ticket or pass, please.” Some of the movie’s best action scenes, in
fact, come courtesy not of the hooded (and never identified) killer
lurking the system but of an antagonistic free-rider named Bootsie
(Bence Mátyássy), who luges down escalator rails and slides under gates
as the inspectors run after him—again to thumping tracks provided by a
now-defunct Hungarian duo called Neo.
Humor of several varieties permeates Kontroll, from a train
overshooting the platform after the inspectors have smoothly lined up
to board it to the Professor’s reactions to Tibi’s ill-aimed vomiting
when the newbie sees his first victim: “Never mind, you can even piss
on me if you like.” And, yes, there’s also that good-vs.-evil thing
Antal initially set out to parse. This is most evident in Bulcsú, who
witnesses both nightmarish desolation (and the alleged killer), when
the tunnels are quiet, and hope of redemption, in the person of the
lovely female passenger (Eszter Balla) who carefully tries to convince
him to leave his underground purgatory. Bulcsú’s conflict may not have
intergalactic ramifications, but it shows that what goes on under our
feet is often more interesting than what happens up in space.
A killer likewise lurks in Mindhunters, a long-shelved Renny Harlin
film that’s laughable as the psychological thriller it initially seems
to be. As a low-aiming horror movie, though? Well, maybe it’s as worthy
as the Paris Hilton–spearing House of Wax. But one thing’s for certain:
To borrow a line from its curiously British-accented FBI agent, the
grisly, dumb, and just plain nasty Mindhunters is, in contrast to the
slyly spooky Kontroll, “as American as the death penalty.”
The movie takes seven wannabe FBI profilers and strands them on a
desolate island for the last phase of their training. Their shelter is
dark and dingy, and the area is populated only by dummy targets and,
for some reason, cats. When self-doubting agent Sara (Kathryn Morris,
just before Cold Case made her, uh, less obscure) discovers a bloody
kitty hanging in one of the island’s spooky bathrooms with a watch
stuck in its neck, the gang’s search for a fictional—or is it?—murderer
begins. When the agents themselves actually start to die, Mindhunters
turns into a less subtle version of Ten Little Indians. Or, as visiting
investigator Gabe (LL Cool J) so eloquently puts it, “Eeny, meeny,
miney, mo—who’s the next motherfucker to go?”
The dialogue, courtesy of Wayne Kramer and Kevin Brodbin (scripters
of The Cooler and Constantine, respectively), may actually be the
classiest part of this dismal addition to Harlin’s oeuvre. And even
filled with platitudes such as “Now is not the time for fear, people!”
it’s definitely the most colorful. Mindhunters serves up one
interchangeable character after another, with the exception of two who
simply have weird chips on their shoulders: department head Jake Harris
(Val Kilmer), a greasy, rumpled freak who seems too crazy to be in the
FBI, and wheelchair-bound agent Vince (Clifton Collins Jr.), whose
hair-trigger willingness to kill also makes him an unlikely officer.
The cast also includes Christian Slater, Eion Bailey, and the
affectless Jonny Lee Miller, and such meager star power as they offer
doesn’t prevent their characters from getting it good. Well, maybe not
“good.” Even Mindhunters’ deaths are ridiculous, from one agent’s body
shattering (bloodily, of course) from a blast of nitrogen to another’s
head falling clean off, cause unseen.
The rapid narrowing of suspects and their weak alleged motives
(sample: “The FBI didn’t save your sister!”) don’t add up to a
resolution that makes much sense. But for certain bloodthirsty audience
members, logic will be beside the point. And what could be more
American than that?
copyright 2005 movie-babe.com
That Jiminy Glick in La La Wood isn’t opening against Revenge of the
Sith is no surprise. Why a feature on Martin Short’s fat, clueless
alter ego is coming out at all, however, is a real head-scratcher. Are
there still any fans of Jiminy Glick, the character who debuted on the
quickly extinguished Martin Short Show and was the star of a Comedy
Central series canceled in 2003? The release may seem especially
baffling to those who’ve caught only snippets of the Glick schtick:
He’s sloppy, he’s stupid, and so what? But any serious moviegoer who’s
ever caught himself saying, “What the hell am I watching?” will
probably find a surprising number of things to laugh at in La La Wood,
whose story takes the Butte, Mont., entertainment reporter, his
trailer-trash wife, Dixie (Jan Hooks), and their twins, Matthew and
Modine, to the Toronto International Film Festival. That line is
whispered during a screening of Growing Up Gandhi, a ridiculous,
dadaesque bore that one Eurotrash cinéaste (John Michael Higgins)
describes as being akin to “a goose farting in your face.” The
ever-fawning Glick sleeps through it but still gives the movie its
solitary rave review, which scores him an exclusive with Gandhi’s dim,
pretty star, Ben DiCarlo (Corey Pearson).
Screenwriters Short, Paul
Flaherty, and Michael Short actually present La La Wood as a thriller,
narrated by David Lynch (also played by Short, who basically just
repeats the line “I like the idea of a dark road”) and inspired by the
story of Lana Turner’s murdered lover. Not that the story matters much.
La La Wood’s biggest success are small, isolated moments: Glick’s
shouting “Kiefer!” a billion times to get Sutherland’s attention on the
red carpet. Or calling Forest Whitaker “the wonderful Forrest Gump.” Or
kicking off his DiCarlo interview with a singsong, impeccably
enunciated “Let’s talk about all those Hollywood ladies you balled!”
Some real stars, including Steve Martin and Kurt Russell, sit in for
Glick interviews, as well. And though watching Glick emphatically slap
them with his notes or talk about Martin’s full-frontal nudity is
pretty funny in itself, seeing the celebs trying to not crack up at
Short’s thorough absurdity is, well, nothing at all like a goose
farting in your face.
copyright 2005 movie-babe.com
The thrills in The Other Side of the Street have little to do with
the alleged crime that’s at its center. What’s rather more exciting in
Brazilian director Marcos Bernstein’s debut is its portrait of senior
love—and not the faux, Hollywood kind presented in 2003’s Something’s
Gotta Give, which patted itself on the back for daring to show a
then-56-year-old Diane Keaton as an object of desire.
Here, genuine geriatrics get frisky: Raul Cortez, 72, and Fernanda
Montenegro, 75, play Camargo and Regina, neighbors who begin a romance
after the film’s Rear Window–esque setup brings them together. Cortez’s
age may not be remarkable to American audiences accustomed to seeing
the likes of Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery in one not-dead-yet role
after another. But when was the last time you saw a septuagenarian
actress play anything other than a nursing-home patient or a convenient
comic foil?
Perhaps even more surprising, Cortez is only a supporting player.
The Other Side of the Street belongs to Montenegro, whose Regina is a
lonely Rio de Janeiro grandmother who spends more time with her dog
than her family. To keep herself occupied, she volunteers as a police
informant, hanging out in Copacabana clubs and spying on nearby
apartments with binoculars. Some of her tips lead to newsworthy busts,
including the takedown of a child-prostitution ring. But when she
reports seeing Camargo, a former judge, seemingly murder his wife with
an injection, her contact, Officer Alcides (Luiz Carlos Persy),
not-so-gently suggests that Regina go back to looking after her own
life.
The script, co-written by Bernstein and Melanie Dimantas, is spare
to the point of starkness, and the first third of The Other Side of the
Street moves as slowly as a retiree’s day. Regina doesn’t interact with
other people much, speaking only to vendors, her pooch, or,
occasionally, her grandson. She often just sits in her apartment
sighing and saying “Oh, God” a lot, as desperate as we are for
something to engage her. (Guilherme Bernstein Seixas’ mournful,
repetitive piano-and-strings score doesn’t help.)
Clearly, she needs to get out. And when she does, walking around and
witnessing the petty crimes all around her, it becomes clear that this
has always been Regina’s calling. Cinematographer Toca Seabra captures
Rio in all its bustling, beachy sophistication, and Regina never seems
as pathetic outside and on the case, blending into the fast-moving
metropolis outside her door. Things get especially interesting when
Rio’s Miss Marple begins to follow the handsome Camargo around town.
(The judge, in one of the scriptwriters’ less graceful orchestrations,
takes to shading his window only after his wife’s death, forcing some
up-close-and-personal surveillance.) The remainder of The Other Side of
the Street becomes an intriguing cat-and-mouse dance that shifts the
movie’s primary concern from Did he do it? to, well, Will he do her?—an
unsubtle narrative development that Montenegro and Cortez redeem with
surprising deftness.
Yes, both characters gently acknowledge their mileage as things get
more involved—referring to stretch marks, say, or not knowing the finer
points of modern courting. And the interactions between them are indeed
more charged than those of many a rom-com couple half their age. But
it’s the way Regina’s essential isolation and invisibility hover behind
this relationship that makes it interesting. No gray-haired slouch, she
takes care to be fashionably dressed and made-up—even if, giving
herself a kiss in the mirror after she puts on her lipstick, she’s her
own best admirer. And the disapproval she displays for everything from
the domino-playing geezers in the town square to Camargo’s life-goes-on
behavior after his wife’s death reveals more than just a deep cynicism
about her fellow seniors. (“If you prefer to sit at a table waiting to
die…” Regina snaps when another snitch suggests she not take the work
so seriously.)
Montenegro, the star of 1998’s Central Station (which Bernstein also
co-wrote), masterfully reveals her character’s stricken pride in bursts
of pursed lips and stony silences. Cortez’s Camargo, meanwhile, is an
ably played balance of sensitivity (when speaking of his wife) and
brusqueness (when putting the moves on Regina), which helps keep the
question of his guilt constantly up in the air. Add in Regina’s nearly
imperceptible change in attitude toward her widowed neighbor—it’s
difficult to tell when her interest in him turns from investigative to
romantic—as well as her hard-to-maintain lie about where she lives, and
The Other Side of the Street becomes much more fascinating than the
mere whodunit it initially seems headed toward. And, in contrast to
Something’s Gotta Give, the actors’ twilight demographic is not a
gimmick but a simple fact—proving that even on the silver screen, age
ain’t nothin’ but a number.
copyright 2005 movie-babe.com
