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Home Cinema
by
Leonard Heldreth
Insight into the world’s
oldest profession
Two films this month deal with what is said to be the world’s
oldest profession, while the remaining two examine personal experience as public
spectacle and “whatever works.” Chéri
In the
Belle Époque era in France, which extended from the 1870s to the First
World War, culture flourished and beautiful people did interesting things. Stravinsky,
Diaghilev and Nijinsky (sometimes wearing nothing under his tights) shook up the
worlds of music and ballet. James Joyce and Marcel Proust, each revamping the
novel in his own way, had dinner together one evening in Paris and admitted that
neither has read the other’s works.
European royalty married American
heiresses and frittered away the money by building beautiful houses and hosting
lavish parties. In this period of excess, sandwiched between two very destructive
wars, beautiful courtesans dallied with the rich and famous of both sexes (including
such luminaries as the Prince of Wales together with members of the European and
Russian nobility), and acquired enormous power and wealth of their own.
It
is in this period that Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), usually known simply
as Colette, places her novels, Chéri and The Last of Chéri.
Best
known as the author of Gigi, Colette led a life as colorful as one of her characters:
she left her unfaithful first husband, worked as an author and a music-hall performer,
married the editor of Le Matin, and left him when she was fifty-one after an affair
with his twenty-year-old stepson. She had liasions with both sexes and knew many
of the famous courtesans of the period, experiences which she drew upon in her
novels.
The film Chéri is about the relationship between Léa
de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Chéri, the son of her friend and one-time
rival in the demi-monde, Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates). Peloux suggests Chéri
is too wild for her to control, and she would like Léa to take him under
her wing and teach him how to behave, both in bed and out.
If the six-year
affair between Léa and Chéri has Oedipal undertones, that only adds
to the silken decadence. The complication that arises from such an affair, however,
is that both people fail to maintain their emotional distances and learn to care
for each other. Then Charlotte decides it is time to marry Chéri off to
the daughter of another wealthy courtesan. The rest of the bittersweet film details
how the two lovers deal with this marriage and its aftermath.
Stephen Frears
is an award-winning English director (Dangerous Liaisons, also with Pfeiffer;
Dirty Pretty Things; The Grifters; High Fidelity), and he brings talent and experience
to the director’s chair. He even narrates the opening and closing lines of
the film, which bring the story to a powerful close.
Pfeiffer is fine as Léa,
balancing her affection for Chéri with the emotional detachment typical
of her profession. She still is beautiful, but conveys the quality of a woman
who knows the best is over. Rupert Friend is strikingly handsome as the dissolute
Chéri, aptly conveying the careless affection of youth, while Bates sometimes
seems over the top as Chéri’s mother—she often seems still to
be in her Molly Brown character from Titanic.
Perhaps the real stars of the
film are the sets and costumes. Peloux’s sprawling country estate, stuffed
with Baroque furniture and decorations, contrasts with de Lonval’s art deco
Paris house, and together they illustrate the transition occurring in France at
the time (photographs from the period show the mansion of Prince Constantin Radziwill
to be as cluttered with drapery and bric-a-brac as that of Peloux). In the same
way, the costumes that drape the elegant women are a visual feast, with their
elaborate layers and extravagant hats. Watching the film provides an education
in the lifestyles of a period with which many of us are unfamiliar.
The tensions
in this film, like those in Colette’s novels, generally are beneath the surface,
and the action is minimal, but the nuanced acting, the lavish sets and costumes
and the exploration of topics that seldom appear in American films—all these
make Chéri a pleasant viewing experience.
The
Girlfriend Experience
Despite the passage of a hundred years and the differences
between French and United States society, the lead in The Girlfriend Experience
shares a number of concerns with her counterpart in Chéri. Like the Belle
Époque courtesans, Chelsea (Sasha Grey), also known as Christine, provides
more than just sex. She provides, as the title implies, the “girlfriend experience”:
she meets her client as though they were going on a date.
They often have
dinner at an exclusive restaurant, perhaps attend a movie or a show and then go
to a private apartment or expensive hotel.
Chelsea offers a beautiful woman’s
companionship, conversation, affectionate physical contact and sex if the client
wants it, although not all do. She usually spends the night and departs the next
morning with a large stack of bills. She keeps meticulous notes on her meetings
with each client—what she wore, what he likes, where they went, what they
did and her reactions to the interaction. She has her own Web site, selects her
clients from the applicants and invests her money carefully. Like her predecessors,
she is trying to anticipate the time when she will no longer have the youth and
good looks to provide the services and collect the fees she now does.
Like
Léa, she has a live-in boyfriend, who understands and is comfortable with
her profession, and he has his own career as a physical trainer; like her, he
is hustling to build his career and branch out into a line of accessories, such
as gym clothes. Chelsea is considering opening a children’s boutique, as
long as she can do it anonymously.
Like Léa, she sometimes has problems
with the boyfriend when she lets emotions intrude from her professional into her
personal life. Unlike Léa, Chelsea is only twenty-one and still is youthfully
beautiful; she also intends to amass enough money and alternate careers to be
very well-off by the time she reaches forty.
Not a great deal happens in the
film, and Soderbergh, as he did in some of his earlier films, fractures the time
scheme so sometimes the audience sees the results of an action before it witnesses
the action itself.
The story follows Chelsea as she meets with various clients,
thinks she is attracted to one on a permanent basis, argues with her boyfriend
over a weekend he plans to spend in Vegas; meets with her Web site director and
explores some of the business areas she is considering.
She also sees a former
client with another high-priced call-girl, an experience which jolts her more
than she admits, because she thinks of herself as the best in her business. In
one uncomfortable scene, a sleazy Web site operator offers her a good write-up
in return for free services.
The clients and Chelsea spend most of their time
talking about money, investments, political situations and even who to vote for
(the film is set during the recent Presidential campaign); they almost never talk
about sex or themselves (except to complain). In fact, the film has very little
nudity and few sexual situations.
Grey portrays Chelsea as an intelligent,
cool professional who knows the “girlfriend experience” business. Grey
herself, despite her youth, has made more than 150 hard-core pornography films,
but she also is beautiful, intelligent, well-read, and more polished than most
women her age.
Why Soderbergh picked her for the part is not clear, since
she does nothing on screen in this film that most actresses wouldn’t do.
While she is not Academy Award material (and the part certainly doesn’t call
for that), she is more than competent for the role she has been given. Her interchanges
with a reporter during an interview and her disagreements with her boyfriend,
while cool and calm, are nicely done.
The photography also is cool and polished,
appropriate for the film and effective at conveying Chelsea and her world. While
The Girlfriend Experience is not a thriller or a dramatic tour de force, it’s
an interesting look at the way the courtesans of the Belle Époque have
moved into the twenty-first century and continue their variation on the world’s
oldest profession.
Adoration
Atom
Egoyan is Canada’s second-best-known film director, after David Cronenberg,
and he makes complex, thoughtful films far away from the car-chase and shoot-em-up
scenarios. His best known film in America is The Sweet Hereafter (1997), based
on a Russell Banks novel. Nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best
Screenplay, it explores the aftermath of a schoolbus accident in which several
children are killed.
Like this earlier film, Adoration explores the results
of people’s actions, or what they say they did, and could have repeated the
tag line from that earlier work, “there is no such thing as the simple truth.”
Adoration begins with a Canadian French teacher’s assignment to her class
to translate a news article into English.
The 1986 article concerns an Irish
woman flying to Israel to be married; she is pregnant and her Jordanian husband
will follow her in a few days. At the airport, Israeli security find in her hand
luggage a bomb scheduled to go off in the air and destroy her, her unborn child
and the other passengers.
One student, Simon (Devon Bostick), begins to translate
the article as if he were the unborn child who has now grown up and is questioning
his father’s almost unbelievable actions.
The teacher encourages the
boy to present his version to the class as a dramatic reading. He then posts his
version on the Web, and it causes a furor in chat rooms and other public comment
venues; some of the passengers from the plane that would have been destroyed join
in on the fray, criticizing the boy and his family for what might have happened.
The Lebanese teacher, Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian and Egoyan’s wife),
is called into the school administrator’s office for discipline.
As this
story unfolds, the film explores Simon’s real history and finds he is an
orphan whose father, Sami (Noam Jenkins), was Lebanese and whose mother was Canadian;
he now lives with his mother’s brother, Tom (Scott Speedman). Before the
film concludes, Egoyan (who is of Lebanese ancestry) explores the strained relationship
the boy has with his uncle, his feelings about his deceased parents, and his love-hate
relationship with his extremely prejudiced grandfather, Morris (Kenneth Welsh),
who blames the father for the death of his daughter in an auto accident. How the
French teacher and an expensive violin fit into this puzzle are other matters.
Egoyan explores the basis of our beliefs, how family members affect what we
think of ourselves and of others, and the motivations for and validity of terrorist
actions. He also looks critically at the way public comment, in the form of the
Internet, can shape our self-images, both for good and for bad as well as limit
how we see the world.
Simon constantly films his grandfather and others with
his portable video camera and posts material on the Web, where people (skinheads,
holocaust survivors, Simon’s fellow students and many others), enclosed in
the blocks on his computer screen, argue their points. Egoyan’s film is a
fascinating panorama that keeps shifting until only at the end is a semi-coherent
pattern revealed, but it is not clear how long that pattern will last.
Adoration
is a difficult film to describe without giving away too much of the plot, but
despite some whining by reviewers whose brains wanted to remain in idle while
watching, it’s a solid achievement. The acting is excellent; the photography,
especially in the country house section, is striking; and violin music provides
a lovely and appropriate background soundtrack. Egoyan has created one of the
most complex, thought-provoking films of the year; if you enjoy films that encourage
thought, don’t miss it. Whatever Works
Compared
to Adoration, Woody Allen’s most recent film, Whatever Works, is straightforward,
simple and almost optimistic. And while it is not up to Allen’s greatest
works, it is interesting and often downright funny as Allen manipulates his characters
and pulls their strings to generate laughter.
Originally written for Zero Mostel
in the ’70s and updated with references to contemporary politics and Barack
Obama, the story concerns the tribulations suffered by Boris Yellnikoff (Larry
David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”).
Boris was almost nominated (so
he says) for the Nobel prize in physics, and he does not suffer gladly the lesser
brains around him. He has lost his former (wealthy) wife and his university position,
and he depends on teaching chess to young children for income—you can imagine
how well this works.
His troubles really begin one night when he is accosted
by a starving (so she says) young woman (Evan Rachel Wood) who persuades him to
feed her and let her stay in his apartment for a few days.
One ditzy problem
leads to another, and finally he marries her, finding a modicum of contentment
until her mother (Patricia Clarkson) shows up. Then her father (Ed Begley Jr.)
shows up. Then a handsome young man (Michael McKean) intrudes. And so forth.
By
the end of the film, all the confusion has been sorted back out again, and almost
everyone is back with the person they want to be with—or think they want
to be with. That’s about as optimistic as Woody Allen ever gets.
The acting
is good, with David as the Allen persona (although it’s tempting to imagine
Mostel in the role, especially in the scenes with the chess-playing children).
Wood plays pretty and dumb quite well as Melody, and Begley, Jr., and Clarkson
evolve out of their Southern stereotypes into Manhattan stereotypes as the film
progresses.
The soundtrack is the usual pleasant Allen jazz, the photography
is competent (although it often looks like a filmed stage play) and there are
enough sarcastic jokes that work to keep an audience interested. It’s not
a great film, but it’s a Woody Allen film, and most of the time, hey, you
could do worse.
—Leonard G. Heldreth Editor’s Note: All films
reviewed are available on DVD or VHS from local stores. Reviews of earlier films
cited can often be found at www.mmnow.com [
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