It's possible, of course, to sniff out similar themes among the films at this year's NYFF. But what blows my mind in the fest's early days are not the similarities among films, but the gulfs; the elasticity of a medium that embraces works that face in opposite directions and speak separate cinematic languages.
Married Life by
Ira Sachs and
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by
Julian Schnabel could have been beamed in from different planets. The first is a sharp edged sort-of comedy set in the '40s; the second an impressionistic wash of images from the P.O.V. of a stroke victim, and a valentine to the fimmaker's art.
Perhaps the best thing about "Married Life" are the opening credits, a collage of 40's suburbaniana that jitters about and collapses to the sound of
Doris Day singing
I Can't Promise You Anything but Love. Based on a Brit potboiler, it's s a four-hander about Harry (
Chris Cooper) who's fallen for Kay (delectable
Rachel MacAdam as a platinum blonde), and decides to kill his wife
Patricia Clarkson to spare her the miseries of a divorce. Meanwhile Harry's best buddy
Pierce Brosnan decides to scoop up Kay for himself, friendship be damned; and wifey, unbeknownst to Harry, is no slouch in the adultery game.
This snarky roundelay is a layer cake of homages – to
Sirk,
Fassbinder,
Hitchcock, to name a few – but it never quite settles into a tone of its own. Sachs works at such a remove from his material that the film seems a parody of a parody. We're breathing very thin air indeed.
At the press screening, Sachs appeared for the post Q & A . It's risky to stay for the Q & A, because if the filmmaker is a really nice guy, like Sachs, and you didn't love the film, you feel like a jerk. I started thinking, So the film's not perfect. Why must the damn thing – or a novel or play, for that matter -- be perfect anyway? So long as it works on 7 out of 10 levels. Perfect is a closed circle, deathly.
Have you ever noticed how slavishly critic-dependent New Yorkers have become? I hope they don't deprive themselves of
Ang Lee's masterful, risk-taking
Lust, Caution because – are you ready? it
got dumped on by the N.Y. Times. What's gotten lost in the shuffle, even among sophisticates, is individual taste. Everything's gotta be pre-certified. Which reminds me of
Copenhagen some seasons back, the hot ticket play by
Michael Frayn. Guess no one warned the culturati that Frayn assumed a knowledge of quantum mechanics for dummies, or at least basic science literacy, sadly lacking in many of us (don't look at
me, no science requirement at Sarah Lawrence). When the lights came up after the first act curtain, the sight of ¾ of the orchestra startling awake or out cold was something to behold.
Note re the Schnabel: Must remember to ask
Michael Moore if all the disabled are treated so handsomely in France, or just the well connected ones.
Quote of the day:
James Schamus at the opening night party, praising "Lust, Caution" as "our very first two-and-a-half hour Chinese porn movie."
# posted by Erica Abeel @ 10/02/2007 10:12:00 AM
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