You Know Mr Gorbachev, The Guy That Ran Russia For So Long?

I can never really work out whether I think To Die For is overrated or underrated. I quite enjoy it, but is it actually good? All of the camp theatrics of the film - are they deliberate overplays designed almost to function in a Brechtian way, to stop you really relating to the characters and instead forcing you to analyse them critically? Or are they kind of just overplays. I'm tending to go with the former. I'm thinking I like the film.

Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne, a beautiful girl with no real talents but a true desire to succeed. She badgers her way on screen as a weather reporter for a local news station, and is constantly winning over her husband Larry (Matt Dillon) to get her way - manipulating him into submission is probably a more accurate way to describe her actions. Larry wants Suzanne to take time off her climbing of the corporate ladder in order to start a family, something Suzanne is not keen on. To this end, she begins a project with schoolkids and lures three of the dumbest and most hick into her trap. 


Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix) is the ringleader, probably the dumbest, and Suzanne seduces him one night at her house. Russel (Casey Affleck) seems to be a bit smarter but still follows Jimmy around as his foil, while Lydia (Alison Folland) idolises Suzanne and seems to have no one else to hang around with than the two brutes - I believe after rewatching To Die For that Lydia is in fact a lesbian, in love with Suzanne, unsure of how to deal with her teenage feelings in a small American town. Suzanne ends up bribing and cajoling the kids to off Larry, which they do, before Suzanne turns her backs on them and pretends to know nothing about it - she is let off from her charges due to entrapment technicalities employed by the police in gathering evidence against her. She thinks she has won, but in the end she does not, something shown with a great little cameo from David Cronenberg.


Kidman won her first Golden Globe for her terrific performance, combining devious planning with ditzy actions and making herself endlessly creepy yet undeniably watchable. Dillon played the shallow role of the husband well also - it wasn't much of a stretch in terms of complexity of character, and the camped nature of his performance suited his strengths. Affleck was strong in a small role, and Folland did decent work with her confused character (she is probably my weakest link in the cast, however), while Phoenix did terrific things with his down and dirty portrayal of someone who may in fact be on the verge of a medical diagnosis of mild retardation. His character allowed for the deepest character representation in a real sense on screen, and he grabbed hold of it and made it work for him. No wonder he went on to become the great performer he has since been recognised as.


The script from Buck Henry (based on the book by Joyce Maynard) was very clever, and the dialogue and narration from Suzanne was written perfectly. Director Gus Van Sant let the film take itself along, giving it a quirk but leaving it decidedly more accessible to the mainstream than his earlier works. He seems to dip in and out of mainstream in phases - following To Die For he ran around and made such films as Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, before dropping out again for the Death Trilogy (here and here), and now seems to be in and out much faster - Milk was serious yet commercial but upcoming Restless looks like it may play more akin to Paranoid Park.


Anyway, I've distracted myself. I like it. I do. 4 stars.

I Want You With Me, That's All.

After the reasonably cool reception Fur: An Imaginary Portrait Of Diane Arbus received, both critically and commercially, I wasn't expecting anything particularly spellbinding, but in the end I was quite taken with Steven Shainberg's follow up to Secretary. It's a very, very different film to his breakout indie smash from a few years earlier.


As the title would suggest, the film is not a biography of the acclaimed American photographer. Taking a biographical novel as its source material, Fur reimagines what might have created and inspired the woman behind the photographs, what might have made her the artist she became. Nicole Kidman stars as Diane, married to Alan (Ty Burrell), a studio photographer. A man, Lionel (Robert Downey Jr) moves in upstairs from where the pair live and work, but he is not really a man to begin with - he is an enigma in a mask, eyes and mouth peering out. 

Shortly after his arrival, Diane decides that she wishes to make use of the camera her husband has given her. Alan has encouraged her to pursue her own art, and she frames her desire as a project to photograph her neighbours, though she is really drawn to the mystery of Lionel. Upon convincing him to let him into her home she discovers the man behind the mask. Lionel is covered in hair, a victim of a rare condition that has seen him make quite a living as a circus freak, meaning his friends are also of that vocation - dwarves, women without arms and the like. Rather than fear, repulsion or disgust, Diane is fascinated by him. The two are drawn together as she attempts to construct in her mind how the portrait can be best imagined, all the while taking photos of his door and nothing else. As their relationship grows Alan discovers these rolls of film, helped by his and Diane's children who are noticing that their mother is growing increasingly distant both emotionally and physically. Shocked he confronts his wife, but also on some levels understands the infatuation, which may or may not be true love, and rather than trying to put a stop to the exercise allows it to continue. Lionel, however, is dying. And Diane does not yet have her portrait.


There has been talk over the last few months about Nicole Kidman and her place in the last decade. I have read a number of people both stating and repeating the statements of others acclaiming her as the actress of the decade. This is not necessarily saying that she was the best of the noughties, but rather that, in her choices of roles, she proved herself to be one of the most interesting and intriguing. And yes, look at what she has done and who she has chosen to work with. A musical by Baz Luhrmann. A quasi-experimental theatrical take on the American mid-west with Lars Von Trier. A Russian prostitute. An Anthony Minghella epic. Remakes, thrillers, animations. Watching her hasn't always paid off, but it has always kept you guessing, and for this I wholeheartedly agree with much of what is said. I, for one, have always been in camp Kidman. And this role, a risk if ever there was one, adds to that mystique. Taking on the role of an artist as almost entirely imagined through the surrealistic eye of Shainberg and his writer Erin Cressida Wilson is a risky undertaking, but she pursues it with gusto. And the work she puts in is terrific, perfectly suited to the aloof and psychologically delicate nature of Diane.


Robert Downey Jr is an actor I can't quite get my head around. I'm not entirely sure what I think of him. I think he has a lot of charisma, but I always know when I'm watching him, even when he is covered head to toe in long, thick hair. I think his charisma definitely suited this part, which needed someone you could believe Diane would be so enamoured with, but I still thought it was Robert Downey Jr.


The visuals in the film were quite striking, taking some influence from Arbus' work, but combining them with the aforementioned surreal edge. Once upstairs everything takes on a strange edge, not quite planted in reality. Reflecting the fact that the two characters are in no small way unsure not only of themselves, but of each other and the situation they find themselves, the look of the production and the nature of how they are shown is all a little off-kilter, keeping you slightly off-balance. And it works a treat.


Fur is a very, very interesting idea and the outcome was a valiant effort at trying something new. Did it work in every way? No. It all remained a little distant, not quite hitting the viscera, staying put in the intellect. But, in keeping with where Kidman has spent her last decade, it was very, very interesting. 3.5 stars.