METROPOLITAN – John Hughes on the Upper East Side

METROPOLITAN is a cult movie originally released in 1990 and currently on limited re-release in the UK. It is a beautifully observed piece written and directed by Whit Stillman – a man who was nominated for an Oscar for this screenplay and then was barely heard of again. Similarly, the movie stars a bunch of unknown young actors who have largely disappeared from public view. This only adds to the mystique surrounding the film. It’s as though we had a glimpse of a usually hidden, and perhaps vanishing, world for a brief moment, and then it was gone. For the movie focuses on a group of young adults called the Sally Fowler Rat Pack. They are a bunch of “Upper Haute Bourgeoisie” (i.e. preppie) kids who attend a series of debutante balls and after-parties in New York over Christmas vacation. What is amazing about the film is that, because it focuses on a very specific social milieu, it can look at all the same concerns that we find in any John Hughes movie, but adds an another layer of dramatic intrigue.

As with John Hughes, the main concerns are unrequited crushes, how different social groups interact and the desperate need to succeed socially. Indeed, we get all the Hughes stock characters. Audrey Rouget is the classic sweet, innocent, confused heroine. She even has that Molly Ringwald short bob haircut, albeit atop couture ballgowns and strings of pearls. She spends her time reading Jane Austen novels and sympathises with the principled heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price. She has a crush on Tom Townsend, the geeky hero of the piece. He is our “everyman” entrée to this society – the outsider who is adopted by the wealthier group of friends and who has to rescue our heroine from the evil clutches of Rick von Slonecker – the classic John Hughes Jock/villain nemesis of the piece – albeit in black tie. Of the other members of the group, the most notable is the cynical anti-hero Nick Smith – a viciously self-aware social climber who hides a heart of gold underneath his wry exterior.

The glory of this movie is the pithy dialogue and most of the memorable lines are delivered by Nick. Indeed, this must be one of the most quotable movies of all time – up there with WITHNAIL AND I, SWINGERS and GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS. A classic Nick-ism is: ‘Playing strip poker with an exhibitionist somehow takes the challenge out of it.’ However, the most ironic lines usually come from the less self-aware members of the UHP – such as when Sally Fowler sits in her gorgeous Upper East Side apartment in a ball gown, having drinks after a debutante party, and earnestly decrees that she is “not a snob, and I abhor all forms of snobbism.’ Or when our hero, Tom Townsend, intones that he does not ‘read novels. I prefer good literary criticism.’ This intellectual snobbery could have been lifted straight out of THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, a WOODY ALLEN movie, or perhaps a Noel Coward play.

The key question is, I guess, why should you set such a movie in this specific social set? My response would be that the most biting humour, and the underlay of tragedy that gives the movie its depth, derives from its setting. For while the preoccupations of the Sally Fowler Rat Pack are mainly about how to get a boyfriend/girlfriend, occasionally they stray into the more serious. Nick and Charlie Black are painfully aware that the type of society they inhabit is on the wane, and that their type is doomed to failure. Society has evolved around them and they are dinosaurs. (Although it is interesting to note that sixteen years later, black and white tie functions are alive and well.) In fact, it is worse. A random ‘UHP’ they meet in a bar tells them that it’s not as easy as all that. They are not doomed to failure, but are active agents in their own failure. The early years of promise are replaced by a middle-age of mediocrity made all the more painful by the fact that one or two peers will succeed, throwing your own failure into relief. This seems to me to be tragically true. Most of us will under-perform our life goals, but the gap between intention and reality is all the greater for those who are told time and again in their youth that they have the world at their feet: that they are the Best and Brightest. I also found the depiction of the painful relationship that Tom has with his social standing to be incredibly true to life. Tom is part of the social set, albeit at the lowest echelon, but reacts against its superficiality. However, it is blackly ironic that he expresses this discontent by pretentiously declaring himself to be the disciple of an obscure French socialist.

Having said all this, the movie is not without its flaws. Thanks to the cast of inexperienced unknowns, most of the performances are unbelievably wooden, and it is testament to the quality of the script that the movies survives and is funny anyhow. Nonetheless, given its combination of straightforward teen-angst comedy and the more piquant observations about the future of the social set, METROPOLITAN deserves its place as a cult movie.

METROPOLITAN was originally released in 1990 but is on re-release in the UK right now.

DOWN IN THE VALLEY - great performances, great movie

DOWN IN THE VALLEY is a fascinating movie that tackles issues of personal identity, contact between families and outsiders, and relationships across the ages. It does so in a manner that is far more convincing and affecting than recent movies such as THE KING, and (I am laughing at mentioning this in the same review) PRIME. Set in contemporary California, the movie tells the story of a thirtysomething drifter called Harlan (Edward Norton), who comes across as a throw-back to the days of the Wild West. By chance he meets a teenage girl called Tobe (played by Evan Rachel Wood), who causally invites this strange, other-wordly man to the beach. Despite the uneasiness we feel at the age gap, it is clear from the early scenes of the movie that it is Tobe who is making all the running, although it is telling about Harlan's grip on reality that he never thinks to check how old she actually is - at least on camera. In addition, it is a mark of Edward Norton's talent that while he can incite the audience's unease at much that Harlan does, we never think of him as a stock-sexual predator. In fact, in many scenes between Tobe and Harlan - riding on horseback, or just sitting in the bath together - they just look plain innocent and love.

The relationship between Tobe and Harlan reminds me of a current hit song in the UK, whose chorus plays: "Show some love, you ain't that tough: fill my little world right up, right up." Both Tobe and Harlan are characters who live is small, isolated worlds. Harlan has no friends to speak of, no job, and no real home. He spends his time play-acting old Western movies in his motel room and writing letters that serve as vehicles for defining his persona rather than actual attempts at communication. Tobe meanwhile has a kid brother who she loves but is faintly irritated by and an absentee father. So when these characters meet, with nothing to distract them from this new all-consuming love, things reach a pitch intensity that is almost bound to be unstable. The intensity of love where there once was an emotional vacuum is echoed in Harlan's relationship with Tobe's younger brother, Lonnie. Lonnie is a poor, lonely kid who knows that he is not his father's biological son, and also that he lacks "gumption" and other qualities that would make his father, Wade (played by David Morse), look upon him kindly. When Harlan shows him attention and tells him he is an okay kid, it is as though Lonnie suddenly has something to believe in, and that faith is ever-enduring.

Other than the universally fantastic acting, other things to note about DOWN IN THE VALLEY are the evocative sound-track and photography, by DP Enrique Chediak. He beautifully contrasts the "road to nowhere" rat-race of crowded highways, day and night, with Harlan's horseback rides on the edge of the city. The topography of the Valley is used to great effort - notably when Harlan's takes a vantage point on the traffic below, and in scenes at dusk near the end of the movie, when Lonnie and Harlan are walking near the camp-fire. At times, you can just sit back and just soak up the photography with the wistful score, and let the action roll on - almost as an afterthought.

Which is what some viewers may want to do. Some of the people I saw this movie with complained that the screenplay took the characters to extreme places that seemed not at all in keeping with what we knew about them. However, I have to respectfully disagree. I think the script is at pains to point out the conflicting feelings that Tobe has about Harlan, and also, given what we know, fully explains Lonnie's unswerving devotion to him. In addition, the movie opens itself up to criticism by referencing a number of cinematic greats, not least TAXI DRIVER. Referencing the greats is always risky, because you remind the audience of films which they are likely to think "better" than what they are currently watching. Worse still, it can just seem lazy. However, I think that these cinematic references are justified, as they throw up the pop-culture references that make up Harlan's psyche.

To my mind, DOWN IN THE VALLEY is one of the most original and interesting movies that I have seen all year. You have to buy in to the underlying concept but I believe that once you do this, everything that Harlan, Tobe, Lonnie and Wade do seems in character. Best of all, there is a certain thrill in seeing such an all-round quality product - from the acting to the sound to the photography to the editing. Go check it out!

DOWN IN THE VALLEY showed at Cannes 2005 and went on release in France in February and the US in May 2006. It is currently on release in the UK. I do not know of a release date for Germany, Austria or Australia.

THE THIEF LORD - charming live-action kids flick

THE THIEF LORD is a charming live-action children's movie based on the popular novel by Cornelia Funke. Neither I nor my god-daughter have read the novel, but judging CURIOUS GEORGE a little too young, we opted for this flick instead. We went in with zero expectations but both found it captivating. The story takes all the familiar strands from classic children's fiction. We have two young brothers, Prosper and Boniface. They have been orphaned, and their evil aunt and uncle opted only to adopt the younger brother - six year old Bo. So, one night, Prosper helps Bo escape and they head to Venice, for no better reason than that their late mother always told them magical fairytales about the city. In Venice they are taken in by a group of orphans who hide out in a dis-used cinema (!) led by the enigmatic Thief Lord, Scipio. However, all is not as it seems. Scipio is desperate to become an adult, the evil Uncle and Aunt have hired a private detective to track our heroes down, and a shadowy Count wants the gang to steal a wooden wing from a kindly photographer. Much of the film consists in young kids outwitting mean and/or kindly adults and finding their way to a magical roundabout on a secret island in the lagoon. This fantastic fairytale is brought to life by a quite amazingly good cast of children. In particular, the little kids who play Bo (Jasper Harris) and young Ernesto (Zak Davies) are alternately heart-breaking and hysterical. We also have, somewhat bizarrely, Alexei Sayle and Vanessa Redgrave chewing up the scenery as a corrupt shopkeeper and a nun respectively. This movie is not rocket-science, but I am not sure why it has received such a harsh reception from the critics. I would strongly recommend it to kids (and adults) who love stories about magic and fantasy.

THE THIEF LORD was released in Germany and Austria this January and is now on release in the UK. There is no scheduled release date for the US, France or Australia.

LEMMING - Another day, another disappointing movie

It seems like all I watch these days are film that are not so much bad as disappointing. From X-MEN 3 to THE KING, I watch films with actors, directors and production teams that I admire, but which fail to engage or excite. Today's offering is a French supernatural revenge thriller called LEMMING. The movie is a four-hand piece set in contemporary France. We are introduced to a young couple called Alain and Benedicte Getty. They are a "model couple" living in a nice suburb. The husband works for a high-tech company that makes fancy kit for monitoring one's own house - little flying webcams to spot leaks and such. He finds a lemming in the drain. This being a moody French film, that is a Significant Fact. Alain and Benedicte become entangled with Alain's oleagnious, whoremongering boss Richard, and his veangeful wife, Alice. The film unfurls at length into a supernatural thriller which I found dull, dull, dull. It was never spooky, never scary. Neither the script nor the camerawork created any tension or paranoia. The symbolism - spy-cams and suicidal lemmings - was hamfisted. The nightmare scene elicited unintended laughter. As for the ending, we are given an attempt at a tantalising enigma. But it is not a par with the final frames of that outstanding movie, HIDDEN/CACHE. The film fails badly and this is all the more pitiful considering that is directed by French wunderkind, Dominik Moll, and stars four great actors. Alain is played by Laurent Lucas - the actor who played cabaret-singer Marc Stevens in the superb Belgian horror flick, CALVAIRE. His wife Benedicte is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who played JANE EYRE in the outstanding Zeffirelli production and also featured in 21 GRAMS. Andre Dusollier plays the lecherous old Pollock - an actor I'll always remember for his similarly creepy performance in UN COEUR EN HIVER. Finally, the iconic Charlotte Rampling plays his veangeful wife, Alice. What a waste.

LEMMING opened Cannes 2005. It is at the fag-end of its super-limited UK release and at the start of a limited US release. It opens in Germany on July 13th 2006. I do not know of an Austrian or Australian release date.

X MEN: THE LAST STAND - weak

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND is the third installment in the wildly popular comic-book franchise. For anyone who doesn't know, the basic idea is that there are a bunch of people in the world who are mutants, with special psychic or physical abilities. These vary from the rubbish - Wolverine can extend knives from his knuckles - to the aweseome - Jean Grey/The Pheonix can atomise people. The world of "normal" people is understandably nervous at having such powerful people in its midst. The mutants react to this fear in one of two ways. The "good guys" try to control their powers and use them only in ethical ways. They are led by Professor Charles Xavier. But another group, led by Magneto, take a more Werner Herzog view of the world. They believe that the natural order of human-mutant relations is aggression and cruelty. The conflict between these two camps forms the back-bone of every X-MEN movie, usually triggered by some half-assed action on the part of well-meaning but feckless "normal" humans. In this case, the humans have isolated a child who carries a natural antibody to the X-gene. (Whatever. I have not read the comics - the "science" is a blur.) Close contact with the kid cures the mutation and the cure is free for all on a voluntary basis. The feckless part is where the government handily soups up some plastic guns with anti-body darts that disable mutants on impact. Nice.

As with any X-MEN movie, THE LAST STAND is full of high quality action sequences. The final set-piece, where Magneto rips up the Golden Gate Bridge to form a path to the cure-centre on Alcatraz, is inspired. (Clearly, it would have just been easier to take a boat.) We also got some really fine acting from Sir Ian McKellan as Magneto, Anna Paquin as Rogue and Kelsey "Frasier" Grammer as Dr. Hank McCoy a.k.a. The Beast. He's a sort of bright blue Chewbacca character who can kick butt while quoting Churchill. This may sound ridiculous but it is fantastic casting. When Grammer plays McCoy, who is a Secretary of State, he has real gravitas. I also want to mention the inspired casting of Cameron Bright as the anti-body kid, for want of a better phrase. That kid has these amazing eyes and a way of holding his gaze on a person that is unnerving. He is perfect for the role, just as he was petrifying in the Nicole Kidman supernatural thriller, BIRTH.

However, despite the great set pieces and some fine acting, I found THE LAST STAND to be a deeply irritating viewing experience. Why? First, Halle Berry, who plays Storm, is so wooden as to make my coffee table look postively animated. When a close friend dies, her tears are less convincing that a contestant in Big Brother. Second, the script is really trite. Take for example two senior clinicians at the cure-lab on Alcatraz who watch Magneto's army rip up the frickin' Golden Gate Bridge and launch a volley of assaults on their lab. About ten minutes in, one turns to the other and says, "they're coming after us." No shit. Similarly, when Magento unleashes a great evil on to the defenders of the lab, he utters the words "what have I done?" in an entirely unconvincing and out-of-character volte face. More generally, while the script raises some interesting issues about who we class as "normal" and the implications of scientific cures for the "abnormal" - it does so in a really ham-fisted manner. Dear lord, to have Rebecca Romjin sit there dressed up as the mutant Mystique, telling her interrogater that she refuses to answer to her "slave name" Raven Darkholme.....

Third, feminists will no doubt be fuming at the final scene featuring Wolverine and Jean Grey. I cannot tell you why this makes me mad without giving away the plot, but suffice to say that those of you familiar with the etymology of the word hysteria, and the phrase la petite mort (thanks to Katya for correction on spelling), will know why this scene undercuts the PC-ness of having Halle Berry as the chief X-MAN. Finally, the last scenes are completely opaque in their meaning. So the anti-body kid is now a student at Xavier's academy? Has he lost his power to de-X the X-men? We're never told. And as for the very last shot of Magneto, what the heck is that meant to mean?

All in all, the plot inconsistencies, bad acting*, suspect social politics and sheer silliness of the script made this the worst episode of the franchise for me. One wonders if it is coincidence that this is the only one of the three to have been helmed by Brett Ratner (the guy behind those Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan Rush Hour movies). Now here's the weird thing. Ratner took over X MEN 3 after the director of the first two movies, Bryan Singer, dropped out to work on the "troubled" Superman movie. Weird thing is, Singer was taking over from....Brett Ratner. So, if Ratner managed to de-X the X-MEN movies, does that mean that the Bryan Singer SUPERMAN RETURNS is gonna kick ass? Stay tuned to find out....

X MEN 3 is open global release. *Amazingly, I am NOT referring to Vinnie Jones here. Vinnie is actually remarkably good in his role as the Juggernaut. Indeed, he has some of the funniest lines in the film. Which means that not only have I praised Vinnie Jones' comic timing in this review, but I have also, implicitly, claimed that so far this summer, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III is the block-buster viewing choice of the man of taste. Blimey.

PICCADILLY JIM spits on the grave of Ian Curtis

As a god-fearing English(wo)man, I think cricket is proof of the existence of a benevolent god and that HP sauce is culinary genius. But, while Shakespeare could clearly take Moliere and Goethe in a straight fight, I'd rather read P.G. Wodehouse. For P.G. Wodehouse wrote novels that combine slapstick comedy, social satire, Byzantine plots and quintessentially English nonsense. I was, then, somewhat disappointed when I realised that a rare screen adaptation of Wodehouse's novel, Piccadilly Jim, was not going to be given a UK cinematic release. On paper, it looked like it couldn't fail. A frothy plot full of mistaken identity, love, hate, dynamite, fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles... It also features a script by Oscar-winning screen-writer Julian Fellowes and a cast of fantastic British and American actors. But, sad to say, this adaptation of PICCADILLY JIM is a failure on almost every level. Given the quality of the base text, and the writing and acting talent attached to this project, one can only assume that this failure is down to a horrific misinterpretation of Wodehouse on the part of the director, a chap called John McKay.

As I said, the source text is a light, frothy farce. There are two American sisters of immense wealth called Eugenia (Allison Janney) and Nesta (Brenda Blethyn). Nesta is a writer of salacious novels who is trying to cultivate a salon. To wit, she is harbouring a number of young artists in her house, not to mention her idiot nephew, Patridge (Tom Hollander) who is apparently concocting a new sort of WMD called Patridgite. Nesta is married to a mild-mannered financier called Mr Pett and has a loathsome, fat, spoiled son called Ogden. She also has a charming niece by marriage called Ann (Frances O'Connor). Ann wrote a book of poetry that was ridiculed in print by one "Piccadilly Jim" - a disolute dandy called Jim Crocker (Sam Rockwell). Now here's where the fun begins. Jim's dad, Bingley Crocker (Tom Wilkinson) is married to Nesta's sister, Eugenia. In typically Wildean style, when Jim falls in love with Ann, he pretends to be a clean-living man named Algernon, rather than the Jim Crocker she thinks that she hates. Then, in a turn of comic genius, pretends to be himself in order to pull off the "inside job" of kidnapping Ogden to make Ann happy. But of course, Ogden, being loathsome, is in on the act for 50%. At the same time, Ann's suitor, Lord Wisbeach (Hugh Bonneville), is being impersonated by a German spy who is after Patridge's WMD. Oh, and Crocker's dad (a failed actor) is pretending to be Nesta's butler.

Now, this is an awful lot of plot (and not even the half of it) for a movie that lasts seventy minutes, and the key to getting these sorts of films to work is to keep the atmosphere light and to play it *absolutely straight*. The plot is so ridiculous and convoluted - the characters so bizarre to a modern eye - that the only way to make it fly is if everyone involved has an absolute conviction that this Wodehousian world actually exists. That is the genius of the recent Stephen Fry-Hugh Laurie Jeeves & Wooster TV adaptations. The antics may be eccentric, but within the coherent 1930s world shown on screen, they make absolute sense.

It is here that I feel that the director made a complete pigs-ear of this adaptation. Instead of running with a straightforward period comedy - trusting in Wodehouse to make the audience empathise and laugh - he tinkered with the formula. So what we have is a design mish-mash - caricatured 30s costumes meet almost contemporary stylings. The hero, Jim Crocker, walks around in a cheap lounge suit that would not look out of place in a 1980s night-club in Essex. The music is also all over the place. We have glitzy cabaret singers crooning schmaltzy covers of 80s classics such as Joy Division's superlative lament, Love Will Tear Us Apart. Unforgiveable. And to cap it all off, there are lots of hysterical over-the-top performances by actors who should know better but have obviously been badly directed. It's a crying shame.

PICCADILLY JIM toured the festival circuit but was not released in the UK. It was released on DVD on Monday.