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Les invasions barbares (2003)
Lies
The surface of this film is seductive, shot with a light that's at times both nostalgic and hip, and a livelysometimes intelligentinterplay of language. However, at its heart, "The Invasion of the Barbarians" is hollow, a structure built on one illusion after another. Almost everything about it pretends. Examples: the dying Rémy's life-long lechery is simply acceptedby everyone, including his former wife who "threw him out" fifteen year beforeas an endearing part of his character; the dying Rémy is too fat to have the debilitating, wasting cancer he's supposed to have; the heroin addict Nathalie shows no sign of addiction to anything more intense than caffeine (one snappy dose of methadone and she's on the road to recovery); Rémy's son, Sébastien, who has been deeply estranged from his father for years, is brought back within the circle of love when he's reminded that the old man changed his diapers. Maybe the joke is on us: do we want so much to believe that all error, especially emotional error, can be forgiven? That our friends will gather around us in the final daysregardless of the costand make of us the great focal point of their own emotion? Do we want to believe these things so much that we'll indulge ourselves in a sensual escape? Of course. (Hollywood has always known this.) There's one scene deep into the film in which Sébastien's colorless fiancé, Gaëlle (see how nice all the names are?), who works in London on the art market, tours a great Montreal basement full of Catholic artifacts that have been put into storage. The priest who accompanies her hopes she'll tell him these Marys and Josephs and Jesuses are worth something on the global market. But no, she says, though maybe they have some intrinsic value to the community from which they came. Director and writer Denys Arcand wants us to find some intrinsic value in how Rémy's "community" rallies round him; we find only lies.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
Thin, predictable
The only beauty in DRS is the Riveria landscape. The plot is predictable (as is usual in comedies dealing with drifters and grafters and con-men - oh my). Glenn Headley's performance (as Janet Colgate, an innocent American who finds her naive self on the Mediterrean coast through good luck) is an effective parody of the goof-girls of earlier cinema, though the writing is so poor that the punch of her role in the plot is telegraphed much too early. Martin and Caine coast through the film, bringing nothing sharp or vinegary to roles that really need it. Martin does pull off an eerie allusion (or tribute) to Jerry Lewis, but it feels so much like an allusion that it fails as itself. (One starts thinking about Lewis instead of following the immediate story.) Such films trade on our willingness to forget how the wealthy live at the expense of those of us who work, but stop short of a critique of such exploitation. Nothing new about that, of course, and, when it's done well - as in "The Thin Man," for example - we don't care.
Ae Fond Kiss... (2004)
Too simple, too facile
The complexity of cultural conflict, racial tension, the difficulty of one generation breaking free from the restrictive traditions of the previous generation - all of these are good subjects for film (or stage or literature). Think Romeo and Juliet, for example. The conflicts in "Ae Fond Kiss" (the title comes from a Robert Burns song) - racial, cultural, generational, religious - all demand serious attention and reflection. This film doesn't achieve that attention or reflection. The story of love (or desire) trivializes the broader issues. Photographed effectively, even at times beautifully, especially the cityscape of Glasgow, the film nevertheless is poorly edited (disjointed scenes) and unevenly paced. Eva Birthistle manages to appear both lovely and prickly; Atta Yaqub manages to both attract and repel. The script is too facile. An overall disappointment. And, it can't be said too often, people should keep their clothes on; sexual desire and tension can be presented much more effectively through nuance and gesture. (See Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love.")