Crazy Stupid Love

This review first appeared in the Sunday Star Times, 21st August 2011

Having married his soulmate at age 17 and raised three children, Cal (Steve Carell) is an uncommunicative, New Balance-wearing shadow of the man he once thought he was.

When wife Emily (Julianne Moore) requests a divorce, “Cal the Cuckold” finds himself propping up a local bar until ladies’ man Jacob offers him some tips, bemoaning: “I don’t know if I should help you or euthanase you.” Ryan Gosling is something of a poster boy for love stories, from The Notebook to the recent, and far superior, Blue Valentine.

Despite his shallow womanising as Jacob, he really should run a course in Break-Up 101 for every sartorially-challenged male, with his impressive portfolio of chat-up lines and photo-shopped physique. But, of course, he too has an itch that can only be scratched by the elusive Hannah (Emma Stone).

The film unfolds into a love hexagram, with everyone who’s fancied, in turn fancying someone else. As a plot this could be tiresome, but thanks to engaging performances from the whole cast, it’s a happyish ride, with a few tender moments. Cameos from Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei and singer Josh Groban go for laughs, but the core relationships manage to be sexy, as well as cute.

Due Date, The Kids are All Right, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest

The Final Countdown

As 2010 drew to a close, I managed to sneak in three more films.  Herewith, for the sake of completeness, my musings:

Due Date

I wasn’t going to bother. I mean, I enjoyed The Hangover, and will see pretty much anything Robert Downey Jr. turns his hand to, but the trailer did look rather full of slapstick and base humour, the type (dare I say it – yes I do) that boys like. And when you’re hanging out for 2011′s release of The King’s Speech, Due Date is like the Turkish Delight chocolate in the bottom of the box.

I do wonder when Hollywood scriptwriters and their audiences are going to tire of the “I’ve never taken drugs in my life” Downey in-jokes. And when Zach Galifianakis is going to finally get sick of the typecasting and demand a dramatic/romantic lead. But until that day comes, we are destined to see many more buddy-comedies with mismatched leading men getting themselves into predicaments and then bonding (think Paul Rudd and Jason Segel in I Love You, Man, Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell in Dinner for Schmucks, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen in Knocked Up… hang on a minute).

To be fair, Downey plays a good straight man, his character sufficiently fleshed out to justify the oscillation between bursts of anger and chastened warmth for the idiot who got him kicked off his flight home, and with whom he must drive across America.  Although Galifianakis feels somewhat exploited for his ability to abandon his dignity for the sake of a laugh, I can’t help but side with the playground bully who first forced him to perform.  From his mincing walk and flamboyant scarves to his naively ridiculous responses to some genuinely emotional situations revolving around paternal loss, Ethan Tremblay steals every scene, and Downey’s Peter graciously abets him.

There is plenty of silly physical humour, peppered with some laugh-out-loud lines that still render this a 3-star (out of 5) film. But it’s no Hangover, and it will soon be time for the filmmakers to observe their talents’ real talent and start using them for something better.

The Kids are All Right

A wonderfully original premise: the children of a lesbian couple seek out their biological father and the family starts a relationship with him – is played out surprisingly and beautifully by acting heavyweights Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.

The women in particular bring terrific characterisation to the dinner table (and bedroom) as Nic and Jules, happily married for 20 or so years, with two well-adjusted teenagers who call them “Moms”.  When Paul (Ruffalo playing his oft-seen slacker, a role he seems designed for) enters their mix, the moms take to him in different ways – Nic perturbed by and Jules attracted to his laid-back, dope-smoking, attitude; daughter Joni excited and son Laser more skeptical. The family dynamics shift slightly, and lessons are learned along the way.

If anything, Paul’s response to having two ready-made children pop up in his commitment-phobe life is the only slightly untrue note in the film; however, Ruffalo plays this as if meaning every word.  Across town, Nic and Jules feel the impact on their own relationship as much as theirs with their children, and the effects on their expanding family are enlightening as well as painful.  The story doesn’t seek to propagate big ideas, but is nonetheless heartwarming and well-performed.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest

Yes, I saw the others.  So you’ll have gathered that, so unimpressed was I with the second film, I didn’t bother to review it in these pages.  Having now completed the trilogy, I think it’s worth a few words.

I didn’t read the books, but I understand the filmmakers left out some of the key thriller moments in their final film.  Why, given the 147- minute story which is overstuffed with padding, unnecessary dialogue and sub-plots that in no way advance the main narrative, I do not know.  What the filmmakers did not shy away from, however, is the extreme violence in each of the books.  I do get that our protaganist, Lisbeth Salander, needed to have been treated badly (which is putting it mildly) in order to justify the intense revenge story that followed.  I also appreciate that often people who are hellbent on such a course of action need to shut themselves off from emotion, and appear cold, unfeeling and impermeable.  They might even want to wear dark clothing and have tattoos.  Perhaps a piercing or two.  Often they will have sought solace in the restriction-free, impersonal world of the internet and may be IT whizzes.  I suppose it’s plausible, if a little gratuitous, that they might be lesbian (or at least bisexual).

But rather like in a serial killer movie where the screenwriter has done a spot of research online before writing a character ridden with cliches, to me Lisbeth Salander is a cobble-together of every supposedly antisocial (or “hardcore”) trait imaginable.  On top of this, she isn’t even very likeable.  We feel sorry for her, sure! (she is put through extraordinary ordeals in flashbacks and in the present, to ensure we forgive any resulting murderous deeds).  But overall the films are so grim, and the conclusion so muted and joyless, that even leaving the cinema after 2 1/2 exhausting hours of it, I found it hard to care.

Hornets Nest brings us to the end of Lisbeth’s story (the author, Stieg Larsson, having died before the success of his books, will not be bringing us any more).  I enjoy a good courtroom drama more than most people, and there was sufficient opportunity for there to have been shock and awe on the faces of the prosecution in the denouement.  But alas, as the Swedish film meandered along, the key evidence was leaked to the audience early on, and subsequently lost all impact by the time it was played in court.  Meanwhile, back at the offices of Millenium where journalist/knight-in-shining-armour Mikael Blomkvist is sending the whistleblowing issue to press, we sit through irrelevant backstories about the danger their editor is in, while Lisbeth languishes in jail, spiking her hair and applying eyeliner in preparation for another day refusing to answer questions.

David Fincher is making the inevitable Hollywood remakes as we speak. Normally I wouldn’t give you tuppence for an American version (I gather vampire movie Let Me In adds nothing to its Swedish precursor) but in this instance, I’m going to give Fincher’s a go, simply because he knows how to craft a good movie, and I want my story served rare, without garnish and chutney.

See you in 2011 to discuss whether he managed it.

The Ice-Queen cometh

I Am Love (Io sono l’amore)

I Am Love is a beautiful-looking film, with marvellous performances and an engaging story, that allows you to live vicariously the splendid life of a Milanese textile dynasty for two hours.

On myriad levels, it seems to steal themes and styles from some of the best films of the last half century.  The opening titles plunge you back to the classics of the 1940s and ’50s, and set the scene with terrific anticipation.  Much of the cinematography evokes the 1970s in its use of long shots as we find ourselves spying on our heroine as she stalks her young lover-to-be.   The art direction is particularly Visconti (interestingly, the source material for I Am Love is a Thomas Mann novel, just as Death in Venice was), and in the opening scenes there are shades of Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven (and by extension, therefore, Douglas Sirk’s oeuvre), in which another talented, beautiful and considerably warmer redhead, Julianne Moore, plays a frustrated housewife who has an affair with the “help”.

There are touches of Gosford Park in the intricately observed meals, table settings and interior decoration (as well as the inter-class philandering).  The central love affair itself evokes Kristin Scott Thomas’ performance in Leaving (Partir) which also descends into melodrama and tragedy as the affair is revealed.

But above all, this film rests on two things: extravagant beauty of objects, food and people – and a phenomenal central performance by Tilda Swinton, as Emma.  Swinton often plays cold characters (the White Witch in the Narnia movies is an unintentional pun), but in I Am Love she shows real warmth, at least towards her children and her devoted and maternal maid, Ida.  Initially Emma is immaculate in appearance and conduct, befitting the wife of a textile mogul.  It is notable that she warms up (as does the film’s lighting and colour at the same instant) the very moment she samples a dish prepared by young chef Antonio.  They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,  but in this instance it is Emma who falls in love with the man she’s hardly met, via a (sumptuously photographed) plate of prawns.  Before long she is making two-hour trips to Antonio’s house in San Remo, cutting off her lustrous hair, and rolling about meadows in the throes of sexual ecstasy.

The central romance, however, is the one thing that didn’t convince me.  Emma’s obsession with Antonio is perhaps understandable (though for me it stretched the justification for her eventual behaviour), but Antonio’s part is underwritten such that it’s not clear what attracts him to her.  As a result, I found the sex scenes (unusually!) neither exciting nor compelling, despite the full-frontal nudity and no-holds-barred close-ups.  To that end, once tragedy strikes and Emma’s world spirals out of control, she lost my sympathy or understanding.

I liken this film to the experience of eating at a very fine restaurant and gorging oneself on exquisite dishes, then overdoing it at the end of the night by having coffee and dessert.  They should have quit while they were ahead, and left us wanting more.