jeannine1980 Reviews

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

No pact with the devil here

[9/10 · 22 March 2005]

My scalp still smarts from the burning coals heaped on it when I vowed I love this film. Bring on the coals; I'll walk over them as well to say again that I love "Bend it Like Beckham." Granted, there's a lot of "in spite of" in that confession. It's a bit movie-of-the-week; the screenplay is on the paint-by-numbers side. And, most troublingly, the director's commentary implies that in this film beauty can be found primarily amongst the white of skin.

The film's genius is not in what's obvious to the Syd Field-doctored eye: character arcs, themes, construction. It's in both the surface and what lurks deep beneath, but not in those layers of artistic topsoil that reviewers seem most often to scratch at. Powerful, sometimes semi-clad female bodies not simply on display but kicking the crap out of a football do a better job of naturalizing female strength and agility than Lara Croft or Zhang Ziyi will ever do. These are real bodies (Keira Knightley's excepted) whose work is not to look great first and kick butt later. They are working bodies whose beauty is in their movement and self-determination. And, in my book, lead actress Parminder Nagra is one of the most gorgeous creatures ever captured on screen – not only because she can lay claim to that hackneyed adjective, "luminous," but because her performance has an honesty and un-bookish intelligence that's utterly compelling.

The result is a film women can enjoy without feeling like they're making a pact with the devil to do so. As in Chadha's "Bride and Prejudice," the relationships amongst women sizzle with a chemistry that can't be neatly slotted into the stodgy, Sweet Valley High categories of "best friends" or "sisters." Perhaps Chadha is even right in her commentary to disavow the film's flirtation with lesbianism. "Bend it Like Beckham" has an electricity that can't be reduced to the simple hetero/homosexual love triangle its conventionally structured script would suggest. The precise nature of its pleasure is, ultimately, a bit of a mystery – and is all the more seductive for it.

Oh yes, and did I mention that it's hilarious?

Valmont (1989)

Slightly bloated blandness

[5/10 · 21 March 2005]

I heard somewhere that Milos Forman didn't reread "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" before writing the screenplay for Valmont, but worked instead from his memory of its sex-positive, good-natured blasphemy (my adjectives). I don't know if that's true, but it's a useful origin myth – and yet, it renders the slightly bloated blandness of "Valmont" all the sadder. If its lurking turgidity could be blamed on fidelity to a well-padded book, the case would be unfortunate but not unusual. But the truth is that even the mush-mouthed Meg Tilly isn't entirely to blame for the film's lack of luster (although she does have a lot to answer for). No, the problem with "Valmont" is that there are no stakes. No character takes anything seriously, and it is therefore hard for a viewer to do so. Madame de Merteuil's constant, pretty smiles are those of the life of a fairly good party. The Vicomte de Valmont is a sweetie, really, and if he hurts a fly or two along the way, since the flies don't mind much, why should we? Of course, "Valmont" is supposed to be a satire on upper class hypocrisy - I get that. But it paints its portraits with such temperate clarity that it's impossible to miss this point and therefore there is nothing for a viewer to do, to root out, to think. "Valmont" is not a bad film – it's just not a good one either. And yet, that is exactly why I have taken the time to write this comment, for I can think of few other films that are so puzzlingly not quite good in their consummate inoffensiveness.

Edward II (1991)

Thoroughly brilliant

[10/10 · 20 March 2005]

Edward II makes a brilliant hodge-podge of history by vaulting a sixteenth century play about a fourteenth century English king onto a dark, abstract twentieth century stage. Iconoclastic, yes; anachronistic, yes; imbecilic, no. While on the page Marlowe's poetry speaks for itself, in director Derek Jarman's hands it provides a counterpoint to the film's daring, elegant, eloquent visuals. King Edward and his lover, Piers Gaveston, are attacked by the raving heteronormative toffs for their homosexuality and Gaveston's less-than-aristocratic background. Great moments include a cameo by Annie Lennox and a bull's-eye by Tilda Swinton.