Change Your Image
Stephen Groenewegen
Reviews
Beau travail (1999)
Desert Budd that never blooms
Beau Travail ("Good Work") is loosely based on Herman Melville's classic novella Billy Budd. Billy Budd was a tragedy brought about partly by the strictures of military discipline, but was really a story of masculinity and power; a powerful psychological study of three characters and personalities unable to coexist without damaging or destroying each other.
French director Claire Denis transfers the story from the eighteenth century British navy to a unit of the French Foreign Legion in an African outpost. The exotic backdrop of the Foreign legion - with its all-male bonding and strict discipline - is inspired. Having the film narrated by Galoup, the film's Claggart character, is not. Claggart was fascinating to Melville because he could discern no real reason for his hatred of Budd; it was ascribed to his nature and essentially unfathomable. Denis and the actor playing Galoup (Denis Lavant) seem to lack insight into his motives as well, so he's a poor choice to carry the story. Equally frustrating is Denis' lack of focus on Sentain (Gregoire Colin), the charismatic Budd who's supposed to drive the action. Instead, there's a lot of empty posing in the desert. The climax - the first real incident in an overlong film - is over too quickly to be satisfying.
Jesus' Son (1999)
Tripping
Jesus' Son, directed by New Zealander Alison Maclean, is based on the short stories of Denis Johnson. The short story origins go a long way to explaining the movie's patchy feel. Billy Crudup is christened FH (F*** Head) by his mates because he fouls up everything and everyone he comes across. The common link in most of FH's otherwise random misadventures is Michelle (Samantha Morton), a junkie he meets at a party and falls in love with. It's a bare thread to hang the film on, but Morton manages to centre things for a while. She gives the film's liveliest performance, making Michelle a lot more interesting than FH and the other eccentrics he meets (played by the likes of Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper and Holly Hunter in cameo roles).
Drug taking is not a spectator sport, and watching the semi-dazed FH wander wintry America in the early 1970s quickly becomes tiresome. We've seen this sort of material too often in independent American features for it to be fresh, and Maclean's fluid direction and ability with actors cannot disguise the episodic nature of the material. FH veers from boring to downright unlikeable, and I didn't care much about him or his potential redemption. Not helping was my failure to connect with the grotesque humour. There's only so many laughs you can wring from squashed animal foetuses and a man with a hunting knife stuck in his eye.
Me Myself I (1999)
Glowing
Me, Myself, I combines two genres of romantic comedy: the "body swap" with the "what if?" story (you know, Dating the Enemy meets Sliding Doors). The film flounders a little in the first twenty minutes or so as it establishes Pamela (Rachel Griffiths), single and luckless in love. Pamela is a journalist, and has just met a fellow writer (Sandy Winton) who seems to be the perfect mate. Until she sees him with his kids... Pamela is wondering what her life would have been like if she'd married high school sweetheart Robert Dickson (David Roberts) when WHAM! she's hit by a car. She comes to in the arms of married Pamela (also Rachel Griffiths) who takes her home to her suburban house, three kids and married life with Robert.
This is writer-director Pip Karmel's first feature (she received an Oscar nomination for editing Shine). Karmel is obviously close to her material, but she's not overly protective of it - she wants us to enjoy her conception. She has the perfect star in Rachel Griffiths, who we're more used to seeing in supporting roles (most famously, Muriel's Wedding and Hilary and Jackie). She carried a film in Amy, but she played a glum, washed-out single mum. Here, she's a lot of fun. You want to know more about Pamela, and the subtle differences between the single and married Pamelas are simply, but impressively, conceived. She's well supported by David Roberts and Sandy Winton, as husband and potential boyfriend. Refreshingly for a romantic comedy, the men aren't thoroughly likeable or dislikeable. I found it easy to suspend my disbelief with Me, Myself, I. It's that rare beast: an Australian romantic comedy that's funny, and leaves you with a warm glow inside when it's over.
The Perfect Storm (2000)
Disasters
The Perfect Storm is a well-intentioned, escapist entertainment based around a true-life natural disaster. In 1991, a fishing trawler (the Andrea Gail) was caught in a freak collision of three storms off the coast of Massachusetts. Wolfgang Petersen's film focuses on the six-man crew of the Gail, drawing on Sebastian Junger's speculative account of events. The film's highlights are the action sequences set during the storms. Filmed in a giant water tank, enhanced by digital effects, some of the set pieces are jaw-clenchingly awesome. Unfortunately, the backstory of this drama - rooted as it is in real life - is reproduced on screen as Hollywood cliche.
Mark Wahlberg has a wonderful, relaxed presence in some of his early scenes as rookie fisherman Bobby, but even his enthusiasm can't make the lame dialogue convincing. Besides George Clooney as the stoic Captain Tyne, the other fisherman are stock characters, with simplified home lives or dilemmas to resolve (and the non-white typically gets less focus than his white co-workers). This is standard fare in a film like Twister, but especially disheartening here since these characters are real people.
Gladiator (2000)
Spectacle
Gladiator is a thrilling spectacle. It's also a "sword and sandal" Roman epic; the revival of a genre that expired from excess in the early 1960s. Fictional general Maximus (Russell Crowe) is serving under emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). After witnessing another of Maximus' impressive victories (the opening battle-scenes are among the best in the movie), the ailing Aurelius appoints Maximus successor, confident he can restore Rome to a republic. Aurelius underestimates his ambitious son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and self-serving daughter Lucilla (Connie Nielson). Commodus is soon emperor, Maximus a slave fighting for his life as a gladiator.
Russell Crowe can make virtually any character convincing and he heads a fine cast. But their efforts are frequently hampered by the simple screenplay (credited to David H Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson). But let's face it, you don't see a film like Gladiator for its script. Director Ridley Scott has put all the money into the computer-enhanced vistas and the action sequences - the impressive battle at the beginning, the gladiatorial fights. These are exhilarating and, thanks to Scott's blurring and whirring camerawork (cinematographer John Mathieson does a fine job), they don't seem as gratuitously violent as Braveheart. Nevertheless, I still feel uncomfortable praising a film which only really comes alive during brutal scenes of human slaughter.
Tumbleweeds (1999)
Dazzling
Tumbleweeds features a dazzling performance from British stage actress Janet McTeer. Her Mary Jo is a love junkie - she lives for that first honeymoon stage of a relationship. But when she and her partner no longer need to spend every moment together, when they begin to fight, she leaves - the man, the relationship, the state. Until her daughter Ava (Kimberley Brown) - who's sick of being dragged around - puts her foot down.
Kimberley Brown is terrific, and director/co-writer Gavin O'Connor delivers a truthful performance as Jack, Jo's latest flame. He also handles the material well from behind the camera. But it's McTeer's film. To his credit, O'Connor recognises the star in his sights and stands back to let her shine. Tumbleweeds feels a little long, but it's exuberant and triumphant and a lot of fun.
American Psycho (2000)
Restraint
American Psycho is Mary Harron's restrained directorial adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel about 1980s excess, seen through the eyes of a yuppie serial killer. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) works on Wall Street, but he's so bland in appearance that his fiancee (Reese Witherspoon) calls him the "boy next door" and most of his colleagues continually mistake him for someone else. Bateman is rich enough not to work, and receives an exorbitant salary for doing very little. His devoted secretary (Chloe Sevigny) is kept busy booking lunch and dinner reservations for him and his fiancee, mistress (Samantha Mathis) or misogynist buddies at the trendiest restaurants. Always dressed in designer clothing, he spends the rest of the time at his health and fitness club or at the laundrette - trying to get the bloodstains off his sheets.
American Psycho is about Bateman's psychopathic urges spiralling out of control, but the clever screenplay (by Harron and Guinevere Turner) makes it clear he doesn't kill indiscriminately. Bateman is a metaphor for privileged male elites raping and murdering America's homeless, gays, non-whites and women. Harron's film is a lot more audience-friendly than Ellis's book. Christian Bale introduces some welcome goofy mannerisms to his characterisation of the title role. And most of the violence is toned down or takes place out of shot. But Harron is too genteel with her direction; unwilling to have much fun satirising 1980s America. The expensive apartments and restaurants don't look glamorous, they look washed-out. Was this deliberate or a lack of money? More significantly, the dialogue often feels truncated (it doesn't get a chance to flow), so the film isn't as funny as the book. In its favour, it builds to more of a crescendo than the book, and you're not left wondering what the point of it all was.
My Mother Frank (2000)
Life-Affirming
My Mother Frank begins as a warm, amiable comedy about a middle-aged Catholic woman (Frank, short for Francis, played by Sinead Cusack) who shakes herself out of the doldrums by enrolling as a student in her son's university. Most of her friends and family are horrified, not least her son (Matthew Newton), who is busy falling in love with his best mate's girlfriend (Rose Byrne). Meanwhile Frank has raised the ire of her disapproving English tutor (Sam Neill).
Matthew Newton is utterly disarming as David; relaxed and natural in the role, even when the character's uptight. He generates valuable goodwill, steering the audience through some of the film's more awkward, broad comedy moments. Not long after the half-way point, first-time writer-director Mark Lamprell expertly steers his film into darker emotional territory and gives Cusack a real chance to shine.
The supporting cast is full of familiar and welcome faces (Lynette Curran, Sacha Horler, Nicholas Bishop) and all the principals (including a more animated than usual Sam Neill) are excellent. While it meanders a little towards the end, My Mother Frank delivers more than it promises and is a genuine Australian crowd-pleaser.
High Fidelity (2000)
Pop Classic
In High Fidelity, John Cusack plays Rob - the 35-ish owner of Championship Vinyl, a second-hand record store in Chicago. He's just been dumped by his girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), and proceeds to recount to us his Top 5 hardest-to-get-over breakups to try and understand where he's going wrong. But first he poses a conundrum - do I listen to pop songs (which are mostly about heartbreak) because of my failure in love, or am I failing at love because I listen to too many pop songs?
Like the Nick Hornby novel it's faithfully based on, High Fidelity is smart and funny, and gives an intelligent insight into how men think and feel when it comes to love. It's full of sharp characterisations, with a perfect Jack Black and Todd Louiso as Rob's obsessive and opinionated store employees, Lisa Bonet playing singer Marie DeSalle, appearances by Tim Robbins, Catherine Zeta-Jones (uncredited) and Joan Cusack (NOT playing Rob's sister!), and a cameo by Bruce Springsteen. The writers (and four are credited, including Cusack) took a risk transplanting (what seemed to be) a quintessentially British book from London to Chicago, but they've done it with care and carried it off.
This is a labour of love for Cusack (who also co-produced) and it's the best work I've ever seen him do. He talks straight to camera a lot of the time and he's so earnest, so enthusiastic that I found his incarnation of Rob impossible to resist. Thanks to Cusack, most of the audience will recognise even Rob's most deplorable behaviour; hell, some of us will even relate to it.