CORIOLANUS reviewed

CORIOLANUS

Directed by Ralph Fiennes

with Jessica Chastain as Virgilia

It pains me to write this, but I finally saw a Jessica Chastain movie I wasn't completely enamoured with!  Lest you think this is due to her limited screen time as the hero's devoted wife Virgilia, I am a big fan of both William Shakespeare and Ralph Fiennes, so something else is afoot ... (methinks). 

A 'problem play'

Sh's second to last play is a difficult one to adapt under any circumstances -- the characters are one-dimensional and unlikeable, the story lacks any of the complexity of human character that mark his greatest tragedies. Nor does it offer modern-day viewers any of the over-the-top madness of Titus Andronicus (effectively adpated for the screen by Julie Taymor in 1999). This is no actor's vanity project, either. Fiennes shows real talent directing his actors and using the language of film to convey a story.


Fiennes updates the action in the play to a nameless, battle-scarred European country, complete with 24-hour CNN-style news channel providing the necessary, if dry, explanation of enemies and troop movements (a clever device that Fiennes overuses). To compensate for the drier aspects of the plot, Fiennes devotes a large amount of screen time to the warfare itself. This treatment owes an obvious debt to the time Fiennes spent on the set of The Hurt Locker, shooting his memorable cameo in that film. The scenes of urban warfare that earn the title character, Caius Martius, a new moniker ("Coriolanus" after the city he captured) and the opportunity to rule Rome, are bloody, tense, and belong in another movie!  


These wordless 'action scenes' may serve to open-up the story beyond the confines of the stage, but you cannot watch Shakespeare without thinking "maybe he had another reason for conveying the action with a few choice lines of dialogue instead." I found myself impatiently waiting out these unnecessary scenes, for I knew the real action was back in Rome.

The citizens of Rome are a fickle lot

Boy, are they! They change allegiances faster than Republicans choosing a Presidential nominee. And like all Shakespearean rabble, it doesn't take much to sway them. Coriolanus' refusal to curry favor with them or the Roman Senate doom him. The Roman tribunes (here they look like British members of Parliament) are similarly malleable, and are responsible for Coriolanus' exile from Rome.  


It is at this point when the movie finally takes off, on the wings of the Bard's brilliant command of the English language. The monologues of Coriolanus and his willful mother Volumnia are priceless when delivered by outstanding Shakespearean actors like Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave. Their performances make this movie a must-see for Shakespeareans and provides a satisfying payoff at the bloody end of this 122-minute saga. 


It is a shame the character of Virgilia wasn't given a similar scene.  Poor Jessica Chastain is reduced to standing around looking pretty, and shedding the occasional tear (rolling it down her flawless, porcelain cheek on cue!). She performs both duties exquisitely. Let's hope Fiennes remembers her the next time he directs Shakespeare (he has too much talent not to try again): she would make a lovely Ophelia.

Britt Marling = Sundance Sweetheart

Move over, Parker Posey, there's a new It Girl on the Independent Film scene, and her name is BRITT MARLING. 

Considering where she got her start -- as a Econ major at Georgetown (a major near and dear to foreignfilmguy's heart) -- the lovely Ms. Marling has captured the attention of the parka-wearing set at Park City in a remarkably short time, with TWO films to her credit premiering in the same year: 2011's sci-fi "Another Earth" was well-received and nominated for two Independent Spirit awards (Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay). 


The second film she both starred in and penned, "Sound of My Voice" (in wider release in 2012) is sure to garner the same accolades (Well, not exactly the same, since she's already written her first screenplay). But there is no doubt she is destined for stardom, propelling the film as the mesmerizing leader of a bizarre cult whose motivations are never fully explained. As you can see from the pictures, her movie star good looks go a long way to sell the notion of this mysterious stranger leading a group of devout followers from a basement in southern California.


The screenplay, sadly, takes a nose-dive after setting-up a compelling story about a couple (the very good Christopher Denham and Nicole Vicius) who infiltrate the cult in an effort to expose it. Another indie, last year's "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is both more nuanced and effective at depicting a cult's simultaneous allure and danger. But much like Darren Aronofsky's first effort, Pi, the brilliance is in the set-up -- outweighing the drawbacks of a hasty, poorly thought-out conclusion, and offering the promise of better things to come.

You-know-who's triumphant return to Cannes

(The lovely) Jessica Chastain continues her red carpet domination at the Cannes Film Festival by attending the Lawless premiere (one night after the Madagascar 3 premiere). One challenge with viewing the much-buzzed about Lawless -- Chastain has a very prominent nude scene which she will have to watch with hundreds of other viewers at the film's premiere. "It's going to be interesting to see this film in a huge theater," says Chastain, speaking at the Euphoria-Calvin Klein party on Thursday night. "Because I am, you know, more exposed." 

"It will be totally embarrassing," she adds, breaking into peels of giggles. "I am going to be bright red. I'll have to cover my eyes during that scene."

Chastain said a controversy about the lack of female directors in the line-up for the Palme d'Or was pointless. "I think it's silly," she told AFP in an interview. "I think a film should be judged on the film and not on the sex of the person who directed the film." 
>>Tell it like it is, JC! (ffg)


(More than a thousand women film-makers and others have signed a US petition in support of French feminists protesting the lack of female directors in the line-up for the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes. There are no female film-makers among the 22 competing for the Palme, which will be awarded on May 27, and just two among the 17 in its new talent section).


This headline got my attention:

Cannes 2012: Jane Fonda, Jessica Chastain, Naomi Watts Vie for Top Gown at 'Madagascar 3' Premiere 

Best & Worst in the same week

I saw two movies this week that run the gamut from art to pointless waste of film. Reviewing chronologically, I'll start with the latter.

Damsels in Distress

Dir: Whit Stillman

I always had pleasant memories of Whit Stillman's 1990s films (while I've always thought his debut film "Metropolitan" (1990) far superior to his 1998 follow-up "The Last Days of Disco," in between he created a gem with 1994's "Barcelona"). He has inexplicably waited 14 years to direct again, and his talents as a writer-director have plummeted precipitously, judging from the vehicle he chose to make his comeback: "Damsels in Distress" is dreadful on so many levels, it will be hard to list them all. 

All attempts at wit, humor and pseudo-intelligence that Stillman crams into his script fall flat, like lead. I suspect he dusted off a screenplay he wrote BEFORE his breakthrough hit, and refused to change a word of it! (A sadder alternative is that he has been living  in a bubble for the past 20 years, and has no idea how young people think, act or talk nowadays). Of course his fans will say this is all a deliberate exaggeration, you know for comedic effect! The best comeback to that argument? It's not in the least bit funny. Released on the heels of HBO's new series, the anti-'Sex & the City' for Generation Y, "Girls", this movie feels even more dated and out-of-touch.

Nothing in this film has the slightest connection to reality (anyone's reality). The male students who inhabit this college come straight out of 'Animal House'--but with less wit and intelligence (you read that right). The female students speak like only a middle-aged white patrician would imagine a liberal arts major would speak -- circa 1950, perhaps (but I doubt even then).

I prefer to remember the good times!

The lead damsel, poor Greta Gerwig ("Greenberg"), is fast-earning a reputation for doing nice work in utterly unwatchable movies (let's hope her next one, "Lola Versus," fares better). The other young actors, all attractive and intelligent, make the most of the very little they have to work with.

The movie has two minor things to recommend it: 1) one character is a practicing Cathar, that 13th century Christian sect in the south of France that was persecuted out of existence by the Inquisition (it's about time they had a revival!); and 2) the incongruous song-and-dance number at the very end of this disaster is refreshing, given the overall inanity of the rest of the film. But even that moment recalls a similar scene in a much better movie: "500 Days of Summer," which has 10 times the wit, humor and intelligence that Damsels so obviously strives to achieve, AND it has a better song-and-dance sequence!

The Deep Blue Sea

Dir: Terence Davies

Speaking of incorporating song (and music) into a film, no one does it with more artistry than the British director Terence Davies who, like Stillman, has waited over a decade between feature films, but in this case, his absence only makes us miss and appreciate his undiminished talents. Davies has always had a very narrow focus. His films ("Distant Voices, Still Lives" (1988); "The Long Day Closes" (1992)) are quiet reminiscences of a time long past: Britain during and just after the War. To call them nostalgic would be damning with faint praise: his films are reverent meditations on the specific past of their creator. For his latest, he chooses material that nicely fits into his ouevre: Terrence Rattigan's 1950 stage play "The Deep Blue Sea." 

The opening title tips you off that you are watching a play: "Around 1950" (film is too concrete a medium to fudge on time like that). Then for the next five uninterrupted minutes the movie wordlessly takes you under its spell, as the strains of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto sweeps you back in time to homes heated by gas (only after you inserted a shilling into the meter), without phones or television, as the camera lingers over furniture, pictures, and finally, Rachel Weisz's lovely bare legs. The story takes off from there, but Davies' gift is in keeping his audience in his world for the next two hours, so much so that you can hear the crack of the fire, every squeak in the  floorboards, and can almost smell the old-fashioned gas furnace and the mixture of smoke and beer in the pubs.

The story, costumes and staging evoke David Lean's "Brief Encounter" -- a classic of the time period depicted here (1945), and a personal favorite of mine. The film's finest moments involve the music of the era (remarkably, some of the most emotional scenes have no dialogue): patrons in a pub sing along to "You Belong to Me"; Londoners wait out an air raid in the Underground during the Blitz while singing the haunting Irish traditional "Molly Malone." This is pitch-perfect filmmaking.

Ms. Weisz truly inhabits the depressive main character, Hester Collyer. You are willing to follow her downward spiral from bored wife to neglected lover because you can't take your eyes off of her. Her male counterparts are both fine -- Tom Hiddleston as Freddie and (especially) Simon Russell Beale as her spurned husband.

True, Davies cannot entirely overcome the play's inherent staginess: it does gets talky in the second half, and it is rather depressing throughout. But before it sinks too deep, Barber's majestic music brings the story to an emotional and uplifting close. Even during the closing credits, I was treated to Eddie Fisher's "Anytime" (I'm sure my mother knew that song) while I learned that the Barber recording used in the film was the same recording I've been listening to all these years: Hilary Hahn's excellent version with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which the lovely Ms. Hahn autographed for me at the Kennedy Center on March 27, 2003. No wonder I have an emotional attachment to that piece!