And that’s the problem with this labored new comedy about sex addicts,
homophobia, head injuries, 12-step programs, cults, subliminal advertising,
Viagra, latter-day Victorians and Prozac. The film is more
catalog than comedy,
a checklist of erotically twisted dysfunctions strung together to fill 89
minutes of chirpy, stylized screen time.
The film seems to have earned its contested NC-17 rating not so much for
any specific breach (there’s no nudity) as for its cumulative effect.
Virtually every scene and line is leeringly, wearyingly fixed on sex, with a
decided tilt toward bizarre fetishes. One addict gets aroused by licking car
tires. Another finds his pleasure in toilets. Even the Baltimore shrubs get
erections.
Tracey Ullman stars as Sylvia Stickles, who frowns through the workday at
her family’s convenience store and frets over the misdeeds of her balloon-
breasted daughter Caprice, a.k.a. Ursula Udders (a pouty Selma Blair). When
Sylvia gets whacked on the head in a traffic accident, she’s transported into
the realm of a sex-addict cult led by tow truck operator Ray-Ray Perkins (the
trashily charismatic Johnny Knoxville).
The premise — that sexual liberation is a kind of traumatic release –
has some ripe comic possibilities. In one of Ullman’s best scenes, shot in
woozy fish-eye, Sylvia turns a tame hokey pokey at a nursing home into a
squirming full-body possession that ignites the staff and sends the residents
running for cover.
But “A Dirty Shame” squanders its comic capital on redundant bits about
her perplexed family and secret society of fellow sex addicts. Suzanne
Shepherd plays Sylvia’s stern scold of a mother, Big Ethel. “My daughter’s a
good girl,” she declares. “She hates sex.” As Sylvia’s clueless chipmunk
husband Vaughn (Chris Isaak) tracks his wife from one sexual escapade to
another, the neighborhood squares off into two camps.
Big Ethel and her “Neuters” want to clamp down on dildo users, hairy
homosexual bears, chronic masturbators and other libertines taking over the
neighborhood. Ray-Ray, meanwhile, is glazed in the Christ-like white light of
a savior.
A series of subsequent head injuries sends the plot on its gyrating
course, as Sylvia and others are knocked in and out of their sexual fixations.
There are decency squads, 12-step meetings and cameos by Patricia Hearst and
Mink Stole that Waters uses to plow the well-worked turf of buried sexual
neuroses. Much of the film has a dutiful, recycled feel. If you’ve seen a John
Waters film or two, you’ve already seen this one.
Ullman makes the most of a cramped situation. Playing Sylvia with a kind
of vexed determination, she makes sex — or its absence — seem like a
kind of infection you just have to put up with. Even when she’s coming on to a
taxi driver or exultantly bonding with Caprice daughter (”I’m a cunnilingus
bottom and I’m your mother!”), she looks exhausted. Can’t this all just end,
her pleading face seems to ask. By the time the credits roll, the audience
knows just what she’s going through.
– Advisory: This film contains abundant sexual language and situations.
– Steven Winn
‘When Will I Be Loved’
Drama. Starring Neve Campbell, Dominic Chianese, Frederick Weller.
Written and directed by James Toback. (Rated R. 84 minutes. At Bay Area
theaters.).
Neve Campbell is going through her arty phase. Last seen in Robert
Altman’s “The Company,” she’s back in “When Will I Be Loved,” another art film
that’s more pretentious than it needs to be. Whatever amends Campbell is
trying to make for “Scream” and “Party of Five,” I’d say she’s made them and
should move on.
“Loved” is vintage James Toback, a filmmaker known for intense minimalist
dramas. His latest — a different permutation of the sexual arrangement he
featured in “Two Girls and a Guy” — could just as well be called “Two Guys
and a Girl.”
Campbell plays Vera, the female component in the mix. Vera is conceived
as a femme fatale. We know this because a fabulously wealthy Italian count and
media mogul (Dominic Chianese in a role that doesn’t fit him as well as Uncle
Junior on “The Sopranos”) is willing to pay $100,000 to sleep with Vera based
on spotting her twice. He makes the offer to her boyfriend, Ford (Frederick
Weller), a hustler who convinces Vera to accept the deal by telling her it’s
just the first step in her sexual liberation. What he doesn’t know is that
Vera has a lesbian lover on the side.
Ford also talks Vera, whose family is loaded, into handing the count’s
entire payment over to him. With such verbal acuity, Ford shouldn’t have to
pimp for a living. He could be a personal injury lawyer.
The plot so far is lifted from “Indecent Proposal,” but it takes an
interesting film noir twist when Vera ups the ante without telling Ford.
Campbell is no Jeanne Moreau; she lacks even Demi Moore’s allure. So it’s
not obvious why Vera is worth the big bucks. But Campbell is good at
portraying a spoiled brat. She’s got the pout down cold. Vera’s filthy-rich
snooty parents plead with her to dump Ford. What girl’s folks would approve of
such a sleaze bag?
While it’s a pleasure to see a movie set in New York actually shot there,
Toback’s Manhattan is eerily under-populated, probably to save money on extras.
At times Vera and her guys practically have the town to themselves.
Campbell has a great body, toned during years at a ballet barre, and she
isn’t bashful about showing it off. “When Will I Be Loved” opens with her
taking a very leisurely shower, an improvement over “The Brown Bunny,” where
you had to wait until the end for the hot stuff.
– Advisory: This film contains nudity and violence.
– Ruthe Stein
‘The Life and Times of Luchino Visconti’
Documentary. Directed by Adam Low. (Not rated. 120 minutes. At the Roxie)..
There is only one reason to see “The Life and Times of Luchino Visconti,”
and that is because you are a fan of the filmmaker (or you think you could be
a fan). It’s a standard, talking-heads-and-film clips documentary, yet
Visconti (1906-76) was not only one of the great filmmakers of all time, but
one of the most interesting people ever to make a movie, so this made-for-BBC
documentary is never boring.
There has been a bit of a Visconti revival lately, with the release of
“The Leopard” to DVD and theaters, and a recent retrospective of many of his
films at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.
A born aristocrat who could trace his family to the time of Charlemagne,
Count Luchino Visconti di Madrone was a lifelong Communist. He was a champion
horse trainer and breeder, whose mount Sanzio won the prestigious Milan Gold
Cup in 1932. He was a homosexual when that kind of lifestyle had to be
absolutely hidden, and had affairs with Franco Zefferelli (an assistant on “La
Terra Trema”) and the star of his “Ludwig,” Helmut Berger.
But above all, he was a filmmaker, a man who contributed one of the three
key Neorealist films, “La Terra Trema,” then went on to examine the passing of
the aristocracy in “Senso,” “Rocco and his Brothers” and “The Leopard.” A late
trilogy, “The Damned,” “Death in Venice” and “Ludwig,” detailed his
fascination with the German infiltration of Italy during World War II,
something he despised.
Visconti “recreated history with a multicolored intensity,” says the
narrator in director Adam Low’s movie, and his films, which often explored the
Italian family, were among “the most subtle ever made.”
About family, he knew a lot. He was the fourth of seven children, and his
parents encouraged the individual personalities of each child. When they
divorced in the early 1920s (a rare event then), it was a traumatic split in
which young Luchino chose to live with his mother, on whom he had a fixation
that would extend to his films.
His father was a notorious bisexual and philanderer, but his mother
pushed Visconti to become whatever he wanted to be — but to do it well. He
quit horse training when the French fashion designer Coco Chanel introduced
him to Jean Renoir, and he became an assistant to the great director on “A Day
in the Country” and “The Lower Depths.” From Renoir, he was imbued with the
passion of both films and Communist principles, and later put both to the test
with an illegal adaptation (he hadn’t purchased the rights) of James M. Cain’s
“The Postman Always Rings Twice,” which became Visconti’s first movie,
“Ossessione” (1942).
Many have forgotten that Visconti, who kept a box at the famous Milan
opera house La Scala, was a revolutionary theatrical and opera director as
well, making Maria Callas into a major star.
Peppered with interviews (Zefferelli, Claudia Cardinale, members of
Visconti’s family and many others), archival family photographs and liberal
film clips, “The Life and Times of Luchino Visconti” is a satisfying portrait
of a unique and complex individual.- G. Allen Johnson
‘September Tapes’
Suspense. Starring George Calil and Wali Razaqi. Directed by Christian
Johnston. Written by Christian Johnston and Christian van Gregg. (Not rated.
95 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.).
The most disingenuous film of the year. A sham. Pathetic. Embarrassing.
The people behind this movie, which was made in Afghanistan, should be ashamed
of themselves.
Is it a documentary? A drama? First Look Pictures, which is partly
responsible for “September Tapes,” would like audiences to guess — or to
presume — it’s a nonfiction film. Some newspapers have even described the
movie as a documentary, apparently misled by promotional materials that don’t
make it clear. Well, this much should be clear: “September Tapes” is a cynical
attempt to a) cash in on Americans’ post-9/11 interest in wartime and revenge;
b) cash in on the continued curiosity about Afghanistan; and c) cash in on
whatever market there still is for dramas similar to “The Blair Witch Project.
”
The movie opens with a prologue that says, “Complex Media Partners have
acquired the rights to what have been called the ‘September Tapes’ from
Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. The 8 tapes and voice recorder were
obtained by soldiers at the Pakistan border during the last known battle
involving the leaders of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.” We then watch the
tapes, which were supposedly made in the summer of 2002. The story line: A U.S.
documentarian named “Don Larson” (who, it turns out, is really actor George
Calil) and his small crew go to Afghanistan to make a film about the hunt for
bin Laden.
Within the first 20 minutes, big clues emerge that Larson isn’t really a
serious filmmaker and that “September Tapes” isn’t really a serious film. In
Kabul, Larson sees a woman wearing a burqa (a tent-like garment with netting
over the eyes) and says, “I didn’t think they had to wear that.” A short time
later, he’s passing out gum to Afghan kids and asking his translator (Wali
Razaqi), “How do you say the word ’share’ in Afghan?” Documentarians who go to
Afghanistan would do a smidgen of research and know that “Afghan” isn’t a
language, and that Afghan women are still being pressured to wear burqas.
Documentarians who go to Afghanistan also don’t act like a combination of John
Wayne and Sylvester Stallone — which is what Larson does throughout the
film as he swears, shoots automatic rifles at Afghan fighters, and spouts off
such cliches to his translator as, “We both knew we were going to have to push
the edges.”
“September Tapes” is a mix of acting and real-life footage. On its Web
site, First Look Pictures says “September Tapes” is the “first non-Afghani
film shot in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, and it is also the
first feature shot in an active war zone.” So what? Though the movie contains
some sensitive images of Afghan kids and others, and though the film was
apparently made with the consent of some Afghans, “September Tapes” never
edifies, never humanizes, never entertains and never says anything new or
interesting. Afghanistan shouldn’t be used as a backdrop for some director’s
selfish attempt at provocation. Real Americans and real Afghans are still
dying in Afghanistan. We don’t need to see a fake version of that on the big
screen.
– Advisory: This film has scenes of violence and foul language.
– Jonathan Curiel
‘Bang Rajan’
War drama. Co-written and directed by Thanit Jitnukul. In Thai with
English subtitles. (Not rated. 120 minutes. At the Lumiere)..
The legend of the village of Bang Rajan in Thailand is a bit like the
Alamo is in our culture — in 1765, during the height of the Burmese-Siamese
wars, a small village repeatedly repelled the advances of a Burmese army that
was superior in strength and numbers for five months until they could resist
no more, thus becoming an inspiration to the Siamese kingdom. The site of the
village is a tourist attraction near the old capital of Thailand, Ayuttaya,
which is north of Bangkok.
The film “Bang Rajan,” made in 2000, is the most successful Thai movie of
all time, an ambitious, relatively big-budget movie with sweeping battle
scenes and likable characters, and here in the United States it is “presented”
by Oliver Stone (actors Jaran Ngamdee and Bin Bunluerit both have roles in
Stone’s forthcoming “Alexander”). But while the battle scenes are impressive,
they are repetitive; and while the characters are likable, they never rise
above the level of cliche.
Director Thanit Jitnukul, a veteran Thai filmmaker, appears to be more
workmanlike than auteur, based on this movie. While Thai cinema is raising its
international profile considerably — in the past five years it’s second
only to South Korea in Asia in terms of the emergence of new, strong voices –
“Bang Rajan” plays it straight. “The Legend of Suryiothai,” a recent release
that was an equally epic period piece that has its own problems, is slightly
better.
“Bang Rajan,” which surely takes “Seven Samurai” as its inspiration,
takes time to establish its many characters. Most effective is Bunluerit, a
drunkard who seems to be all comic relief until he reveals that the Burmese
have killed his wife and children (Bunluerit won best actor at the Thai film
awards). There is, of course a love story — between the village’s most
skilled archer (Winai Kraibutr) and his wife (15-year-old Bongkot Kongmalai),
who eventually joins in the fight herself — and an outsider (Jaran Ngamdee),
a fearless warrior with a Rollie Fingers-like mustache.
Subtle this film is not. Still, Jitnukul can direct action, and every
slice of the blade, thwack of the arrow and the glistening of sweat on near-
naked bodies makes “Bang Rajan” a mostly pleasurable diversion.
– Advisory: This film contains explicit violence.
– G. Allen Johnson
‘Hearts and Minds’
Documentary. Directed by Peter Davis. (Rated R. 112 minutes. At the
Castro.) .
The names and faces come swimming up out of the past — Clark Clifford,
Walt Rostow, Daniel Ellsberg, George Ball, Gen. William Westmoreland. These
Vietnam War-era figures seem, like the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, prophetic and
palpable presences in Peter Davis’ enveloping documentary, “Hearts and Minds.”
First released in 1974, this fearless, Oscar-winning film is important
and tragically comprehensive all over again. With the nation’s attention
distracted by irrelevant static over the 30-year-old service records of Kerry
and Bush, “Hearts and Minds” sounds a deeply somber chord. Here, in a
devastating, deliberate assemblage of evidence, is what war is really all
about — violence and lamentation, courage and deception, guilt and
irreparable loss.
Cutting from combat footage to interviews, a furiously grieving
Vietnamese farmer who’s lost his daughter in a bombing raid (”My daughter died
right here”) to an oblivious American truck driver (”I don’t even know who
we’re fighting for over there, to be honest”), Davis canvasses this war’s
sweeping historic catastrophe.
The film builds its cumulative force through the accretion and
juxtaposition of specific detail. One U.S. veteran remembers, with a starkly
ironic grimace, “the thrill, the excitement of blowing stuff up.” Another gets
a hero’s welcome in New Jersey and paints his aerial missions for the
hometowners in a golden hue: “You’re up there doing something mankind has only
dreamed of.”
The footage shot in Vietnam has a telling intimacy, whether it’s of a
matter-of-fact South Vietnamese coffin maker, war profiteers or a pair of
American GIs cavorting with prostitutes. A survivor in one village stares
straight into the camera and reports, “My sister died and I’ve got no home
left.” Then, with tears and downcast eyes, as if she had somehow fashioned her
own shame: “I have nothing to sell, nothing to do.”
The unnerving brilliance of the film owes to the director’s skill at
assembling information and allowing it to speak for itself. The scenes have
full weight and amplitude; nothing is exploited for an easy effect. “Hearts
and Minds” builds a withering critique by never raising its voice.
Interviews and archival footage supply well-drawn historical perspective.
Clark Clifford, Lyndon Johnson’s conscience-stricken secretary of state,
recalls the American post-World War II confidence that “possibly we could
control the future of the world.” Moments later, Johnson himself is onscreen,
shifting the moral weight of the war to Vietnam itself, a tiny country
overwhelmed. “The ultimate victory,” he says, “will depend on the hearts and
minds of the people who actually live out there.”
Richard Nixon, John Foster Dulles and J. William Fulbright (”A lie’s a
lie”) all put in appearances. At opposite poles stand the granitic
Westmoreland and a distressed Ellsberg.
Filmed beside a placid, wind-kissed lake, Westmoreland delivers his
famous, fuddily formal remark that life is plentiful and cheap in Asia: “The
Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner.” Davis
follows that with the scene of a Vietnamese woman hysterical with grief as a
family member is buried before her eyes.
Ellsberg appears at a seaside window. His gaze keeps shifting outside, as
if to some remote horizon. His voice chokes at several points and then turns
steely: “We weren’t on the wrong side,” he says. “We are the wrong side.”
– Advisory: This film contains scenes of violence in warfare.
– Steven Winn
