Coco Before Chanel: Dress rehearsal

Coco Before Chanel (2009) • View trailer for Coco Before Chanel
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.5.09
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Modern women vexed by the gender divide should make a point to see Coco Before Chanel, just to be reminded how much worse life was a single century ago.

This autumn season has brought us biographical studies of two extremely impressive women — Amelia Earhart and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel — in flawed films that nonetheless boast strong work from their respective lead actresses.

Having insisted on accompanying her lover and his condescending, aristocratic
friends to the racetrack, Gabrielle (Audrey Tautou, center) is delighted to bump
into her sister, Adrienne (Marie Gillain, right), who is beginning to realize
that her lover probably never will marry her.

The results, in both cases, are frustrating: Just as Hilary Swank's resolute and chameleon-like performance as Earhart couldn't rise above that film's flat execution, Audrey Tautou's equally persuasive interpretation of Chanel can't disguise director Anne Fontaine's leaden pacing in Coco before Chanel.

This film is so slow, that at times it appears to stop.

That's ridiculous, given real-life events that read like something out of Charles Dickens. Not even David Copperfield rose as high, given his humble origins, as the little orphan girl who grew up to become the very emblem of 20th century womanhood.

I don't believe the screenplay is at fault, although Fontaine and collaborator Camille Fontaine (no relation, believe it or not) should have encouraged co-scripter Christopher Hampton to insert more of the snarky tone he brought to his adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons.

No, the problem is dull, listless direction: boring camera angles, tedious two-shots and a sloppy approach toward structure. Anne Fontaine simply doesn't present this story with any degree of passion ... which is pretty ironic, considering the passionate nature of Chanel herself.

Things begin with a brief prologue in the late 19th century, as a stoic man in a horse-drawn carriage abandons his two young daughters at a convent orphanage. His wife having died, he has no reason to keep the girls around. Despite the coldness of this act, young Gabrielle waits in vain every Sunday, hoping for a visit from the father who dumped her.

When next we see Gabrielle (now played by Tautou) and her sister, Adrienne (Marie Gillain), they've matured into young women who work as seamstresses in a tailor's shop by day, and by night sing mildly saucy little ditties in the crowded, smoke-filled confines of local cafés. (The miraculous fact that these two sisters have been able to stay together passes without comment.)

One of these songs, "Coco," gives Gabrielle the nickname that would follow her through life.

Cirque du Freak, The Vampire's Assistant: Bloody good

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009) • View trailer for The Vampire's Assistant
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence and fantasy mayhem
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.30.09
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Bang's 17th law of cinema:

The opening credits will give a strong indication of the quality and entertainment value of the entire film.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant has a great set of opening credits.

And, indeed, the film is a lot of fun.

Darren (Chris Massoglia, right) resists drinking blood, even though the much
wiser Laren Crepsley (John C. Reilly) explains that the boy eventually will die
without sustenance. The problem is that Darren hasn't yet been properly
motivated ... but that'll change soon.

This debut screen adaptation of Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak series cherry-picks key events from the first several books, and that may be the film's only major flaw: It tries to cover too much ground.

Too many characters are introduced too quickly, and the unrelenting pace never really pauses for breath.

At the same time, that certainly immerses us quickly in director Paul Weitz's enthusiastic depiction of these adventures. Production designer William Arnold and visual effects supervisor Todd Shifflett really go to town: Every scene is chockablock with captivating things to see, hear and absorb.

In that respect, this film is very much like an actual three-ring circus: It's impossible to watch everything at once, and repeat viewings will be necessary, in order to pick up little details scurrying about at the corners of many scenes.

Another round wouldn't bother me in the slightest ... and that's the only detail that matters, when judging a film. Do you want to see it again?

Absolutely.

Many have tried for the "sweet spot" that perfectly blends thrills and chills in a horror comedy; many have failed. The Lost Boys, back in 1987, got it right; so did Once Bitten and Fright Night (both 1985), Shaun of the Dead and this year's Zombieland.

Weitz's handling of The Vampire's Assistant deserves its place on that list, and it's also more kid-friendly than some: a good, reasonably safe fright flick that can be viewed by all ages.

(An endorsement that'll be regarded as the kiss of death, of course, for the gore crowd more at home with the likes of Saw VI. To each his own.)

Darren (Chris Massoglia) and Steve (Josh Hutcherson, recently seen in the remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth) have been best friends for years. Sadly, high school hasn't been good for this relationship; Darren's preference for integrity and good behavior are viewed with scorn by Steve, who definitely heads in the "bad seed" direction.

Both boys remain steadfast more out of habit, despite being increasingly dismayed by the ever-widening chasm separating their values.

Amelia: Stalled flight

Amelia (2009) • View trailer for Amelia
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.29.09
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As long as this film is in the air, it positively soars.

Hilary Swank delivers an all-embracing performance, playing the legendary pilot in director Mira Nair's crisply paced but oddly flat Amelia. With her tousled and "mannish" hair cut, not to mention an eerily similar frame, Swank looks for all the world like the actual Amelia Earhart.

Immediately prior to beginning her ambitious, around-the-world trip, Amelia
Earhart (Hilary Swank) poses for photographers along with husband George P.
Putnam (Richard Gere, center) and navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher
Eccleston).

She also captures Earhart's polite but feisty manner, her eyes flashing at the very suggestion that a woman might not be capable of anything a man could do. It was a rare attitude in the 1930s, and it got Earhart into trouble more than once; Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan's script — based on two Earhart biographies — touches on this vexing aspect of the aviator's public image.

One might argue that Earhart was born 50 years too soon, but that's wrong; if not placed firmly in her own era, her accomplishments — both as a woman, and also as a flier — wouldn't have been nearly as impressive.

The trouble is, Nair's film stalls every time it returns to earth, as we spend considerable time with Earhart's unconventional relationship with promoter and publishing magnate George P. Putnam, played with his usual wooden anti-acting by Richard Gere. Given Earhart's free-spirited, wild and untamable nature — so well captured by Swank — it's simply impossible to imagine her falling for the sort of one-dimensional stick portrayed here by Gere.

Mind you, Earhart and Putnam were quite the item in real life, and I've no doubt that the actual gentleman must've been one helluva persuasive charmer. But Gere can't sell that act; given that his entire thespic range revolves around his signature smirk, he never makes Putnam look anything but insufferably smug.

Nothing would have turned Earhart off faster.

So we go with the flow, grind our teeth every time Gere pops up, and wait for the next transcendent flying sequence, when Swank once again conveys, with such sparkling, wide-eyed wonder, the sense of oneness Earhart must've felt every time she was in the air.

A Serious Man: Seriously odd

A Serious Man  (2009) • View trailer for A Serious Man
Two stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, drug use and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.09
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As a goy, I feel hopelessly ill-equipped to analyze this film.

A Serious Man would be served far better by a synagogue discussion group, and I've no doubt that'll happen a few times, during the next several months.

Mark this man's expression: It's how Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg)
responds to a building series of calamities, while receiving not the slightest bit
of sympathy or assistance from his nearest and dearest. Son Danny (Aaron
Wolff), for example, couldn't care less about his father's happiness; the kid only
wants dad to fix the TV, so he can watch F Troop.

Writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen have uncorked a baby-boomer riff on the biblical plight of Job: an unrelenting assault on the dignity of a hopelessly overmatched schlimazel with no means of fighting back. And the story itself is as wincingly stiff a parody of the Jewish culture as we've seen in awhile, with a savage streak that probably wouldn't be tolerated if the Coens weren't themselves Jewish.

They claim, in the press notes, that this film is "reminiscent of their childhoods."

If so, they have my sympathy.

Films in the Coen brothers' oeuvre come in three flavors, in order of their palatability to the general public: reasonably straight-ahead dramas (Miller's Crossing, No Country for Old Men), serio-comic morality tales (Raising Arizona, Fargo) and purely demented character studies (Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn't There).

The latter category — lunatic descents down the rabbit hole, which not even Rod Serling's Twilight Zone could have embraced — best characterizes A Serious Man.

I'd call this film unwatchable, except that it's too oddly bizarre to be dismissed entirely.

I'd call it incomprehensible, except that its broad strokes do make sense. Sort of. After a fashion. The dozens of smaller issues don't lend themselves to easy answers, though.

Setting aside the Jewish tropes, the film's core message derives from the two mantras — the Schrodinger's Cat paradox, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle — that are viewed, by our physicist protagonist, as evidence of God's hand: Nothing in life is reliable, so you may as well anticipate the worst at all times.

And the corollary: It's impossible to anticipate every worst, so quit trying.