It seems like Juliette Binoche is trying to compete with Orson Welles, who received joint third billing in The Third Man in return for about 8 minutes screen time. Here Binoche draws top billing and gets to work about ten or twelve minutes. It's very possible that without her prominent billing this wouldn't draw flies. Sure, the usual suspects, the Festival crowd who like to award prizes to worthless material - check L'Esquive if you don't believe me - have appeared out of the woodwork at Venice but I was part of an audience of eight and most of those I suspect were sheltering from the snow that fell on Paris earlier today. Perhaps it's me but I couldn't detect much of a reason for actually making this. After the hackneyed opening - the rolling of the rock only to discover the body of Jesus is no longer there and a director yelling 'cut' to let us know it's only a film - director/actor Matthew Modine tells Binoche it's time to go back to NY, just like that maybe two minutes after completing the scene, no wrap party, no packing, nothing! only for her to announce she's splitting and leaving for Jerusalem like now, Man. Okay, she's been profoundly affected by perhaps months of filming and immersing herself in the role of Mary Magdalene but we have to take that on trust. After that we get dragged into the story of Forest Whittaker, a celebrity TV interviewer who just happens to be making a series of programmes on Religion and hardly ever gets back to his pregnant wife who, in the real world, instead of yelling at him would be down at the studio because as a celebrity he surely has enough clout to have his wife there. There's lots of talk and I mean TALK, endless, meaningless and in between Binoche wanders around Jerusalem looking cute as Amalie but ultimately this is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying ... nothing.
Review of Mary
