Parallel Mothers: Deeply moving character drama

Parallel Mothers (2021) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, and perhaps too harshly, for sexuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Pedro Almodóvar’s films always are characterized by two things: strong, if sometimes psychologically damaged female characters, with men little more than sidebar distractions; and a socio-political subtext that deeply influences the relationship dynamics.

 

Ana (Milena Smitt, center) and Janis (Penélope Cruz), having met by chance in the
hospital delivery ward, are about to give birth on the same day.

Parallel Mothers is one of Almodóvar’s most deeply moving films, and it’s fueled by a powerhouse performance from his frequent amanuensis, Penélope Cruz: arguably her finest, most subtly shaded work yet. (This is their seventh collaboration, which began with 1997’s Live Flesh.) 

Although superficially described as a chance encounter — which leads to a deep friendship — between two women who give birth on the same day, at the same hospital, that barely scratches the surface of what eventually becomes a fascinating, at times painful emotional roller coaster.

 

Both pregnancies are unintended, both women becoming single parents.

 

Janis (Cruz), a middle-aged fashion photographer, is jubilant; she has experienced the joy of establishing a successful career, and now is prepared for the challenges of motherhood. She’s ready. 

 

The withdrawn, mousy Ana (Milena Smit), still adolescent, is repentant, traumatized and absolutely terrified. She gets no support from her self-absorbed mother, Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), who focuses solely on her own acting career. In contrast, Janis is visited by her best friend and agent, Elena (Rossy de Palma), a cheerful, effervescent force of nature who swoops into the hospital room like an ambulatory rainbow.

 

Janis notes the disparity. Later, after the visitors have left, she tries to compensate with kindness and encouraging words, while she and Ana slowly pace the hospital corridors, awaiting delivery like exhausted sleepwalkers.

 

The babies arrive; the two women part. But not for long.

 

Janis’ initial au pair proves hopeless, particularly when the new mother decides to revive her photography career. A chance encounter with Ana — now a bit more relaxed and self-assured — proves inspirational; Janis knows that she’d make an excellent au pair, and the younger woman gratefully accepts the offer.

 

But she does so, under a cloud.

 

That makes them an excellent match, because Janis has long struggled with her own ghosts.

The 355: Bad-ass women to the rescue!

The 355 (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence, brief profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Not until very late in this film does a key character explain that “The 355” was the code name of a female spy — identity unknown — who was part of the Culper Ring, during the American Revolution.

 

Having completed their mission (or so they assum), the improvised espionage team —
from left, Graciela (Penélope Cruz), Mace (Jessica Chastain), Khadijah (Lupita Nyong'o)
and Marie (Diane Kruger) — report their results to Marks (John Douglas Thompson).

Which makes it a needlessly vague title for director Simon Kinberg’s fast-paced espionage thriller. (Honestly, I’m surprised Universal let the title slide; it’s utterly unmarketable.)

For starters, this story — by Kinberg, Theresa Beck and Bek Smith — concerns four (five?) “clandestine heroines who risk their lives in a fight for freedom against all odds.” (Ya gotta love studio publicity sheets.)

 

Kinberg’s globe-trotting romp is a well-crafted popcorn flick: an intriguing premise that’s short on logic, long on momentum, and highlighted by some inventively staged — and frequently ballsy — stunt work.

 

Events kick off in a palatial estate near Bogota, Colombia, where what appears to be a high-profile drug deal actually concerns a small external hard drive that contains a nasty program: one capable of wirelessly interfering with any computer — from navigational systems on a plane, to a phone in your pocket — anywhere in the world.

 

The deal goes awry, much to the dismay of The Unpleasant Man In Charge (Jason Flemyng). In the confusion, Luis (Edgar Ramírez) escapes with the drive.

 

Knowing it’s a hot commodity, Luis solicits bids from various international spy agencies, including the CIA; the case goes to impetuous agent Mason “Mace” Brown (Jessica Chastain) and her longtime partner/best friend, Nick Fowler (Sebastian Stan). The exchange, scheduled at a café in Paris, short-circuits when one of the valises is snatched by a bad-ass interloper (Diane Kruger).

 

Cue the first audacious scuffle/chase choreographed by stunt/fight coordinators James O’Donnell and James Embree, as Nick goes after Luis, and Mace follows the uninvited gate-crasher. The latter gets away, only to discover that she grabbed the valise with the CIA’s $3 million payoff.

 

On top of which, Luis’ valise — which should have contained the hard drive — has nothing but wadded-up paper: a double-cross. (The first of many, in this oblique story.)

Murder on the Orient Express: A misdemeanor offense

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief violence and mild dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Many actors long to play Hamlet.

Others look forward to taking a crack at Hercule Poirot.

When an avalanche delays the London-bound Orient Express, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth
Branagh) is in the perfect position to solve a heinous murder ... because the killer still
must be somewhere on the train.

Kenneth Branagh is a marvelous Poirot. He nails Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian private detective: from the meticulous OCD tendencies — stroking his perfectly coifed mustache, sizing up the comparative height of his twin breakfast soft-boiled eggs — to the narrowed gaze and waspish tone that indicate crime scene analysis undertaken by his “little grey cells.”

Branagh definitely deserves placement alongside David Suchet and Albert Finney, as cinema’s greatest Poirots.

Alas, the same cannot be said for the vehicle in which Branagh’s Poirot inhabits. Screenwriter Michael Green’s attempt to turn Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express “relevant” for modern viewers makes a shambles of her ingeniously plotted 1934 novel. His adaptation commits the cardinal sin of telegraphing the twist so early, that he gives away the game before we’re even halfway through the film.

Green was an odd choice for this assignment. He’s into excess and exploitation: a sci-fi/horror guy whose credits include Green Lantern, Logan, Alien: Covenant and television’s Gotham and American Gods. He obviously lacks the subtlety and sly British wit required of a Christie mystery, which demands the touch of somebody like Peter Morgan (The Queen, television’s The Crown) or Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey and his own marvelous Christie pastiche, 2001’s Gosford Park).

Green struggles mightily to transform this story into an action-oriented adventure akin to director Guy Ritchie’s recent re-boots of Sherlock Holmes, and it simply doesn’t work. Murder on the Orient Express is a mostly tranquil drawing-room mystery ... except that it takes place aboard a train.

Branagh also directs, and succumbs overmuch to long tracking shots and other visual flourishes, which further diminish the story at hand. One sequence, inexplicably shot from above the characters’ heads as they enter a train compartment, is incredibly distracting.

Branagh seems to love the camera trickery made possible by contemporary CGI effects, and misses no opportunity for stunning vistas of the eponymous train, as it navigates the mountainous regions from Here to There: undeniably gorgeous, as is Haris Zambarloukos’ cinematography ... but rather beside the point.

The story takes place in 1934. Green opens the film with a droll prologue that hasn’t a thing to do with Christie, but nonetheless deftly establishes everything we need to know about Poirot. A last-minute change of plans interrupts an intended vacation in Istanbul, and prompts him to board the lavish Orient Express en route to London via Italy, Switzerland and France.

The Counselor: Guilty as charged

The Counselor (2013) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rating: R, for graphic violence, grisly images, profanity and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.25.13

Cormac McCarthy apparently felt that 2009’s big-screen adaptation of his novel The Road wasn’t sufficiently bleak, violent or morally depraved, so he upped his game with the original screenplay for this glossy bit of rubbish.

Despite repeated, protracted and viciously descriptive warnings from Westray (Brad Pitt,
left), our imbecilic title character (Michael Fassbender) stubbornly insists on getting
involved with a massive shipment of illegal drugs. After all, what could go wrong?

Rarely have so many A-list stars been involved in such a lamentable waste of time.

The Counselor isn’t merely set in a world of abominable behavior; McCarthy’s characters are cheerfully pragmatic about it. No act too vile to contemplate? They don’t merely contemplate; they discuss barbarism with the thoughtful ease of two fellows comparing cigar brands in a gentlemen’s club. Then, having laboriously exhausted the subject, director Ridley Scott ensures that we’ll eventually get to watch each degenerate act.

McCarthy has a Pulitzer Prize to his credit, for the aforementioned The Road, and rumor suggests that he’s under consideration for a Nobel Prize for literature. The characters in his novels often struggle with moral ambiguity in an increasingly cynical world, although we’re generally able to sympathize with a well-meaning protagonist, whether John Grady Cole in All the Pretty Horses, or Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in the grimmer No Country for Old Men (adapted into a sensational 2007 film by Joel and Ethan Coen).

But there’s nobody to like in The Counselor; indeed, it’s difficult to even understand most of the characters who populate this deadly dull study of ill-advised acts and their horrible consequences. Everybody is morally compromised at best, or sociopathic, or indifferently brutal. Everybody except the token innocent, that is, who may as well be wearing a sign that reads “Sacrificial Lamb.”

Mind you, a roster of degenerates isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself; Quentin Tarantino has a way of extracting wonderfully dark entertainment from the vicious swine who inhabit, say, Pulp Fiction or Inglourious Basterds. But that’s precisely the point: Tarantino characters are engaging for the way they revel in their bad behavior, whereas the increasingly tiresome players in this drama give new meaning to the word “boring.”

I'm So Excited: Not by a long shot

I'm So Excited (2013) • View trailer 
One star. Rating: R, for strong crude and sexual content (all verbal), and drug use
By Derrick Bang

I’m still struggling to believe that Pedro Almodóvar had anything to do with this flimsy waste of celluloid.

In an effort to distract their passengers from the dire circumstances that are preventing
the plane from landing, three flight attendants — from left, Fajas (Carlos Areces),
Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo) and Joserra (Javier Cámara) — break into a hilariously
choreographed rendition of the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited." This three-minute
sequence is absolutely the only thing worth watching in this bewildering bomb.

Almodóvar, the acclaimed Spanish filmmaker who brought us Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and Volver?

That Pedro Almodóvar? Seriously?

Hard to imagine.

Almodóvar knows better than most that cheeky, exaggerated sensuality is a magical blend of setting, sharp dialogue, camera-friendly actors who radiate lust and, yes, artful nudity (the less expected and more inappropriate, the better).

I’m So Excited contains none of the above. Worse yet, Almodóvar has abandoned his (usually) progressive Western European sensibilities in favor of stale and vulgar homoerotic jokes: the sort of tiresome one-liners currently viewed as the height of sex humor by arrested American adolescents such as Seth Rogen and the rest of Judd Apatow’s repertory company.

I’ll give Almodóvar the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he deliberately spoofs timeworn gay male stereotypes here ... but that’s not apt to mollify viewers who will recoil from his mincing portrayal of three flight attendants. Not even Liberace was this swish.

On top of which, if Almodóvar removed every dialogue reference to fellatio — spoken by men, women and genders hard to determine — I suspect his entire script would clock in at fewer than 25 words. Never have so many men, some of them defiantly heterosexual, claimed to so thoroughly enjoy wrapping their mouths around ... um, you get the idea.

This might be amusing — even hilarious — under better circumstances. But absent context or back-story, it’s just a bunch of ill-defined characters with potty mouths and overcooked libidos. Never has polymorphous perversity sounded so ... well ... dull.

This film also looks cheap, with almost all of its “action” restricted to the cramped, obviously fake-set interior of an airplane. Brief detours are taken to a) an apartment; and b) a city street. Also not what you’d call budget-busters. Production costs couldn’t have topped $1.78.

The cast looks and sounds under-rehearsed, and the dialogue is forced, unpersuasive and (from the sound of things) frequently improvised. I’m amazed Almodóvar had the audacity to claim scripting credit; I see scant evidence of actual writing.

He also opens with a tease: a quick scene between Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, leading us to hope that we’ll see more of them. No such luck. Their radiant faces — their naturalistic performances, and their obvious chemistry — vanish after a quick prologue. After that, we’re stuck with the B-Team. No, wait ... more like the P-Team.

The story then, such as it is:

Banderas and Cruz make their cameos as León and Jessica, members of the ground crew for Peninsula Airlines Flight 2549; thanks to a brief interruption, León fails to properly remove the large wheel chocks, prior to take-off.

We then join Flight 2549 during take-off, as the flight crew preps all passengers with the usual lecture about oxygen masks and seat flotation devices; this is our first glimpse of flight attendants Fajas (Carlos Areces), Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo) and Joserra (Javier Cámara).

Then, whoosh, time passes. The plane is quiet, which is no surprise; everybody in coach is fast asleep, having been doped with muscle relaxants (!). For some reason, the business class passengers have been allowed to remain awake. (I guess we’d have no movie otherwise, which I’d argue would have been a good thing.)

The reason for the doping, and for the worried expressions shared by pilot Alex Acero (Antonio De La Torre) and co-pilot Benito Morón (Hugo Silva), is that Flight 2549 is in trouble. It can’t land because the aforementioned chocks have interfered with the deployment of landing gear. The intended flight to Mexico City has been canceled; the plane just keeps circling, waiting for ground-based Folks In Charge to find and then prepare a runway for an emergency landing.

We now pause, for a moment of topicality.

Almodóvar can’t be blamed for bad timing; he certainly didn’t know that his film would gain its U.S. opening mere weeks after the Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco. I’d like to think, however, that the folks at Sony Pictures Classics might have deemed release a wee bit tasteless, and elected to postpone. Absent that bit of prudence, we’re left with a low-rent sex comedy that would have been dreadful under the best of circumstances, but becomes even worse by attempting to mine humor from a situation that is seriously un-funny at this particular moment.

(Disney “waited” six months, until April 2002, to release Big Trouble — with its tasteless bomb-in-a-plane climax — in the wake of 9/11. That didn’t work either.)

Anyway...

With death a very real possibility, the business class passengers eventually confess the reasons for their trips: revelations apparently intended to be provocative and/or amusing.

Hardly.

Bruna (Lola Duenas), a self-proclaim psychic, frets that she may die a virgin; she can’t stop eyeing the impressive pants bulge of one fellow snoozing away in coach. A newlywed groom (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), actually a drug mule with a baggy of mescaline shoved up his fundament, pops pills into the mouth of his bride (Laya Martí) so that she’ll sleep through whatever happens next.

Gossip queen Norma (Cecilia Roth), actually a dominatrix who boasts of having slept with her country’s 600 most powerful men — while taping said encounters, for blackmail leverage — worries that this calamity is a rather ostentatious plot to kill her. Infante (José María Yazpik), a somewhat sinister fellow, keeps close counsel.

Corrupt businessman Mas (José Luis Torrijo), having fled just ahead of arrest back home, laments the ongoing estrangement from his daughter, who has embraced a provocative sexual lifestyle. Finally, soap opera star Ricardo Galán (Guillermo Toledo) has abandoned his most recent lover, while contrived circumstances bring a former lover (Blanca Suárez, as Ruth) back into his life.

Our brief sojourn with Ruth takes us back to the ground, for a subplot that appears to have been dragged in from another film. A better one, too, from what we see of it.

Back in the air, everybody gets drunk — including the pilots — in some cases will past the point of acute alcohol poisoning. That’s not funny; it’s just dumb. Inhibitions disappear, particularly after the application of mescaline-laced punch. Confessions emerge, none the slightest bit interesting. The bride demonstrates a talent for having sex in her sleep. Bruna has sex with the well-hung fellow in coach, while he sleeps.

Nobody undresses, not even a little. As Joe Bob Briggs might have groused, back in the day, we don’t even get a flash of side-boob during any of these couplings.

The film’s sole saving grace comes when the three gay caballeros — ah, flight attendants — wriggle and jiggle their way through a lively lip-synched and hilariously choreographed rendition of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” (hence the film’s title).

No doubt this scene soon will be extracted as a YouTube video, saving everybody the trouble of enduring the rest of this tawdry turkey.

Actually, I’m So Excited has one more virtue: It’s short. At 90 minutes, it’s only 87 minutes too long.

I don’t care how much you admire Almodóvar; this one must be skipped.

You’ve been warned.

To Rome with Love: Woody Lite

To Rome with Love (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, and much too harshly, for some sexual candor and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Having conquered France — and re-ignited his career, not to mention securing yet another Academy Award, for scripting last year’s Midnight in Paris — Woody Allen continues his European tour with an intermittently charming visit to Italy.

To the mounting horror of Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi, far left), his
stuffy older relatives mistakenly assume that professional call girl
Anna (Penélope Cruz) is his new wife .. and then he's forced to
continue the charade — with Anna's amused assistance — lest the
cat be let out of the bag.

The good news is that, while nowhere near as fresh and clever as Midnight in Paris, To Rome with Love nonetheless continues Allen’s pleasantly droll examinations of continental love, and the pursuit of same. His goal isn’t nearly as lofty this time; one gets the sense that these four vignettes — connected solely by location — are modest little pieces that Allen knew couldn’t be expanded into full-length films.

As a result, we have a quartet of short stories, much like his piece (“Oedipus Wrecks”) in the 1989 anthology film, New York Stories. The results here are a bit uneven, ranging from hilarious and sharply observed, to overly talky and mannered in the way that sounds so uniquely “Woody Allen” ... the latter an affectation that may have been extended beyond its sell-by date.

At 112 minutes, To Rome with Love also feels overlong, with two of the segments suffering from visible bloat: not terribly so, but enough to prompt viewer restlessness.

Allen signals his disparate intentions by having the film introduced by a somewhat careless traffic policeman (Pierluigi Marchionne), who proudly extols the virtues of his city, and its many stories. We then meet four different sets of characters, each faced with a crisis of circumstance, existential angst or celestial manipulation.

Newlyweds Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) have arrived in Rome to begin life together, and so that he can impress his boorish, straight-laced relatives and — through their contacts — secure an upscale job in the big city. But with only hours to spare, Milly sets off to get her hair done, and becomes lost; meanwhile, Antonio is confronted by a prostitute (Penélope Cruz) who shows up at his hotel room by mistake, and then is forced to play his wife when the condescending relations arrive.

To make matters worse, the impressionable Milly wanders onto a film set and finds herself the target of a legendary movie star (Antonio Albanese), who hopes to enjoy her as afternoon delight. And she’s not wholly adverse to the notion; is it so awful, to want to bed a famous film actor?

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides -- Back to basics

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) • View trailer
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for action violence and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.11


Johnny Depp hasn't lost his mincing swagger, and that's great news for fans of this loopy series.

Depp's impeccably timed comic performance remains the best part of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. To watch him is to laugh helplessly: the hilariously trashy pirate's garb; the bemused double-takes; the gently slurred speech and overly precise movements of somebody who drained one too many tankards of rum; the marvelous little bits of physical business, as when he constantly brushes away imaginary lint (as if he could tell, with such filthy apparel?).

Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) manages an impressive escape from the
clutches of King George and his Royal Guards, by leaping from one moving
carriage to another, as scores of men pursue. Unfortunately, he's merely
running from the frying pan and directly into the fire: a reunion with an even
more dangerous figure from his past.

Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow — along with all the other characters in these films — may have forever corrupted my vision of a classic pirate. Not even this film's hissably malevolent villain — Ian McShane's Blackbeard — is a figure of genuine dread; he's too idiosyncratically amusing.

But if Depp's constancy is a blessing, the change-up behind the camera is a welcome relief. Director Gore Verbinski has departed for different shores, and I couldn't be happier; his three earlier films in this series suffered from unnecessary bloat. At just shy of three hours, the previous installment (At World's End) was ludicrously self-indulgent, thanks also to a scattershot script that made no sense whatsoever.

Series screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio are back, but this film's new sheriff — replacement director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) — obviously brought some much-needed discipline to the process. The story is tighter, the ancillary characters are better defined, and the pacing and editing (David Brenner, Michael Kahn and Wyatt Smith) are vastly superior.

Mind you, we still never completely abandon the cheeky fact that this entire series is based on a Disneyland theme ride, and those who've ridden the boats past the Blue Bayou diners will recognize one more tableau lifted from that attraction's soggy depths. Which is as it should be.

Marshall's approach also is a bit different. He front-loads the film's two best action sequences into the first act, one of which — a swordfight between Jack and an as-yet-unidentified adversary, in the bowels of a tavern's storage room— is a real corker. The superbly staged skirmish reminded me of the two Richard Lester Three Musketeers movies, back in the 1970s: the same inventive choreography, the same hell-for-leather passion by the combatants.

Unfortunately, we don't get anything to equal these sequences, in acts two and three; that's somewhat disappointing.

As the story begins, Capt. Jack's fortunes have dwindled again; he lacks funds, a crew and a ship, his beloved Black Pearl having suffered an unknown fate. It's all he can do to prevent his loyal comrade, Gibbs (Kevin McNally), from getting his neck stretched ... and that rescue concludes with a fresh set of problems. A chance encounter with the woman Jack once loved and cheerfully corrupted — Penélope Cruz's Angelica — results in his being shanghaied onto a scary ship commandeered by no less than Blackbeard himself: not a man to be trifled with.

Angelica is First Mate on this vessel. And she also happens to be Blackbeard's daughter. Which Jack didn't know, back in the day.

Broken Embraces: Doomed love

Broken Embraces (2010) • View trailer for Broken Embraces
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for nudity, sexual candor, profanity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.11.10
Buy DVD: Broken Embraces • Buy Blu-Ray: Broken Embraces [Blu-ray]


Federico Fellini had his 8-1/2 — recently transformed into the stage and screen musical Nine — Franois Truffaut gave us Day for Night, and Bob Fosse indulged in All That Jazz.

Sooner or later, big-screen impresarios can't resist making a movie about the movie-making process ... and, simultaneously, about their own involvement with cinema.

While watching an old movie on TV, Lena (Penelope Cruz) identifies so
strongly with one scene that she dissolves into tears. Mateo (Lluis Homar),
instinctively understanding her mood, immortalizes their love -- at that
precise moment -- by setting his camera on automatic and photographing them
in firm embrace, as they cuddle on the couch.

And with women. Always with women.

Now Pedro Almodovar has succumbed to the temptation (although it could be argued that every one of this writer/director's movies is intensely personal and semi-autobiographical in some way). The well-titled Broken Embraces is the saga of a filmmaker who fashions his newest movie around the leading lady with whom he falls in love at first sight; she, in turn, desperately wishes to abandon the aging, wealthy and quite powerful man who has kept her as the most prized bird in his gilded cage.

In true Almodovar fashion, though, the story unfolds in elliptical fashion, beginning with an extended prologue that introduces Harry Caine (Llu’s Homar, quite persuasive as a man in great pain), a blind writer who has "become" his former pseudonym. He is cared for by two "handlers": Judit (Blanca Portillo, displaying impressively layered depths), an agent of sorts; and Diego (Tamar Novas), her grown son, who acts as the writer's secretary, typist and guide.

Harry and Diego have a comfortable working relationship, and Homar and Novas share many warm scenes together. Indeed, theirs may be the strongest emotional bond in a film laden with interpersonal dynamics.

The initial information dump is swift. We meet Harry one morning as he indulges in an unlikely quickie with an all-too-willing blonde stranger. (This is, after all, a European film.) Judit arrives shortly thereafter, disapproval etched all over her face, behaving more like a long-suffering wife than a working colleague.

Diego has a second job as DJ at a sexually ambiguous nightclub, where drugs and alcohol flow freely. Harry is visited by a creepy young man who calls himself "Ray X" (Ruben Ochandiano), claims to be a filmmaker — on the basis of a single documentary he made "14 years ago" — and wishes to collaborate with Caine on a new project.

Harry, suspicious for reasons we're not yet able to guess, rebuffs Ray.

Elegy: Love among the ruins

Elegy (2008) • View trailer for Elegy
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.5.08
Buy DVD: Elegy


His 1997 Pulitzer Prize and 2001 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal notwithstanding, Philip Roth seems doomed — in certain circles, anyway — to be remembered for his scandalous third novel, 1969's Portnoy's Complaint, and for his ongoing obsessions with promiscuity and Jewish angst.

Mindful of sexual harassment issues, college professor David Kepesh (Ben
Kingsley) always waits until the end of term before throwing a party for his
students. He always hopes to find at least one who will be properly intoxicated
by his worldly presence, but gets more than he bargained for with Consuela
Castillo (Penélope Cruz), who, during their initial conversation, reduces him to
schoolboy clumsiness. Fortunately, things will improve from here...

And, more recently, for succumbing to a perfectly natural desire to explore tales of aging men indulging in affairs with much younger women, which puts Roth in the equally excellent literary company of, say, John Updike. One cannot really fault a male literary lion who, upon reaching "a certain age," worries about his increasing obsolescence. Eventually (with luck), we all will.

Elegy, exquisitely adapted by screenwriter Nicholas Meyer from Roth's short novel, 2001's The Dying Animal, is the saga of a celebrated man of letters and cultural observer who, thanks to the proximity to young people granted by his day job as a college professor, embarks on a passionate affair with a former student.

The encounter proves revealing in many respects: some anticipated, others quite surprising.

But branding this film as nothing more than an "old guy beds Penélope Cruz" fantasy is an unjust snub that overlooks some phenomenal acting, the core truths of Roth's story and director Isabel Coixet's obviously sincere desire to respect both halves of this May/December romance.

David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is, as he constantly reminds Consuela Castillo (Cruz), 30 years her senior. This seems all the explanation required to describe the apparent folly of allowing a pleasant one-night encounter to blossom into a relationship, but he's merely lying to himself; the truth of the matter — and we see this in Cruz's luminously expressive gaze — is that Consuela loves him and couldn't care less about the age gap.

He's the one with the hang-up, but the whole "age thing" is just an excuse.

Following an unsuccessful youthful marriage, Kepesh has spent the rest of his life trolling for deliberately short-term affairs, due — we're quickly led to believe — to his desire to live according to the sybaritic lifestyle that he believes is mankind's "normal" predilection. He repeatedly espouses this theory when interviewed, and during debates with his longtime best friend, poet George O'Hearn (Dennis Hopper).

In a film laden with revealing exchanges of dialogue, by the way, none are better than these comradely encounters between David and George. Kingsley and Hopper share a relaxed comfort that feels completely natural; we can't help wondering if this scripted familiarity is equally strong off-camera.

George obviously has David's number, and David knows it ... but puts up with it.

David fears intimacy and actual human contact, and believes himself incapable of both, because he intellectually insists mankind isn't wired for it. He admires early American hedonist Thomas Morton and has, in fact, over-analyzed the art of lovemaking to such an absurd degree that he has stripped love itself from the equation.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Erotic fantasy

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) • View trailer for Vicky Cristina Barcelona
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for earthy sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.4.08
Buy DVD: Vicky Cristina Barcelona • Buy Blu-Ray: Vicky Cristina Barcelona [Blu-ray]


I've often lamented about the utter inability of American directors to wrap their brains around European sexual sensibilities, whether remaking French sex comedies or simply navigating the terrain on their own.

Too often, the results lack the necessary je ne sais quoi that (for example) French or Spanish directors so perfectly capture in romantic comedies that invariably come populated with a huskily handsome fellow and not one, but two or three nubile cuties who seem perfectly content to share their man ... or even other.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall, left) and best friend Cristina (Scarlett Johansson),
vacationing in Barcelona, have just received an eye-opening offer from an
attractive Spanish artist, to spend a weekend with him; he promises good food,
good art and plenty of lovemaking. With, he optimistically hopes, both of his
guests. How Vicky and Cristina react to this offer, and what subsequently
happens, fuels this film's earthy eroticism (which, alas, remains rather
subdued, thanks to the PG-13 rating).

This isn't a problem with Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a film so thoroughly drenched in Spanish atmosphere and sexual laissez-faire that one would swear it had been made by Pedro Almodovar ... all the way down to that director's by now familiar fixation on star Penélope Cruz.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is — for the most part — a thoroughly charming and playfully erotic study of two young American women who get far more than they bargained for, when accepting an invitation to spend the summer in the deliriously romantic city of Barcelona.

But, much as we'd prefer not to be troubled by real-world issues, this film is, in fact, written and directed by Woody Allen, a cinematic artist whose fondness for very young women has become just as notorious as that displayed by Roman Polanski. In both cases, their fixation on gals barely out of their teens — or even younger — casts an unsettling pall over a project of this nature.

In order to better appreciate this film, I therefore had to willfully forget that it came from Allen's obviously lecherous sensibilities; who could forget Scarlett Johansson's breathtaking bathing suit "reveal" during a key moment of Allen's Scoop?

With Vicky Cristina Barcelona being Johansson's third Woody Allen film in four years, it's definitely safe to say that the filmmaker has found his newest muse — after Dianne Keaton and Mia Farrow — while Johansson has found her current mentor. Nothing wrong with that, except that Allen's various excuses to parade his young star in various levels of undress feels a bit like ... well ... stalking from behind a camera.

OK then, the obvious solution is to overlook Allen's involvement, and simply appreciate the film for its own languidly sensuous atmosphere. Trouble is, that's utterly impossible, because Vicky Cristina Barcelona is narrated throughout, and quite extensively ... by Christopher Even Welch, who most certainly is not Woody Allen.

And yet the often lengthy narrative monologues "read" just like Allen. It's profoundly distracting to keep hearing quintessential Woody Allen commentary emerging from somebody else's mouth. Why he'd have selected somebody else for all this narrative "fill" is utterly beyond me, but it's an intrusive distraction throughout the entire picture.

So now we have two things to overlook ... but, in fairness, those able to do so will be rewarded with a frequently charming, sexy and romantic interlude of the sort for which Eric Rohmer has remained so famous.