Well, since the blogging didn't seem to be working out today after all, I went and saw Pedro Almadovar's Volver to try and free my mind and get the creative juices going. Didn't really work - while I liked it well enough, Volver is no Mala Educacion or Todo Sobre Mi Madre (though more coherent than Talk to Her, which is something, I suppose).
Critics have been waxing rhapsodic about Penelope Cruz, and while the film is a vast improvement over some of the dreck she's been in lately, it's not her best work, and it may be time to face that Cruz, while lovely, is just not the greatest actress. Here she plays Raimonda, a young-ish mother raising her teenage daughter and supporting the family on at least three menial jobs, until a disastrous turn of events leads the daughter to kill her Dad (who was, in fact, her stepfather), and Raimonda to take desperate measures to cover up the crime. Meanwhile Raimonda's sister Sole (So-lay) is dealing with the death of their Aunt, who may possibly have been visited by the ghost of their Mother (Carmen Maura).
As it turns out Mom is very much alive, and her return leads to resolution of a couple of deeper mysteries around the women's lives, as well as that of the family's friend Agustina, who is dying of cancer - and Blanca Portillo provides the film's most touching performance.
If this sounds a bit busy, it is - Almadovar's more than able to keep track of all of this, but he's not in top form here - the script is not where it needs to be, Maura has little to do except look winsome, and the revelations feel artificial and forced (as opposed to say, Mala Educacion where the revelations spring from the story in all sorts of unexpected places). I knew where this was going well before we got there, and I suspect others will as well, and without a sense of surprise, what should be dramatic revelations fall rather flat. What's left is clearly a love letter to Penelope - Almadovar shoots her like Loren in her prime, with "drab" looks that only highlight her beauty (and her breasts), and va-va-voom sequences that show what she's capable of as a Screen Goddess. Like Tarantino and Jackie Brown, focusing so closely on one female star throws eveything off, and both films drag in a way that's really unnecessary.
But I will say this - this season seems to be a season of creepy, twist-y films for me; aside from Volver, and Oldboy, which I mentioned previously, I'm also the lone holdout who thought Brian DePalma's adaptation of The Black Dahlia was just as twisted as it needed to be (I am a big James Ellroy fan for just such weirdnesses). Another film I haven't mentioned - which I watched on the interminable trip home from Montreal - is The Shanghai Gesture, a 1941 flick that was the last studio film from Josef von Sternberg (Dietrich's Blue Angel director).
In fact, to see what a director can do when focusing on a great beauty without losing sight of the story, this is a good place to start, and von Sternberg, who had an eye for such things (Dietrich, after all), is working here with Gene Tierney, one of the most beautiful women ever onscreen (see photo). Also along for the ride is Ona Munson (Belle Watling from Gone With the Wind), also well photographed.
Based on a John Colton play, The Shanghai Gesture stars Tierney as Victoria "Poppy" Charteris, the daughter of a wealthy financier played by Walter Houston, who gets sucked into the seedy gambling and bars world of prewar Shanghai. Munson plays Mother Gin Sling, an ex-hooker who runs one of the gambling dens and helps lead Poppy astray, particularly when she realizes that her father is trying to drum her out of business.
Events culminate in a nightmarish dinner party, where secrets are revealed, lives are changed, and the possibilities for the future are shattered. Tierney, who went on to play Laura in that classic story, as well as the icy bitch in Leave Her to Heaven, gets off to a rollicking early start here. Her accent is atrocious, but she plays a willful rich girl with aplomb, and gowned by her husband (to be at the time) Oleg Cassini, she looks nothing short of breathtaking, though only a promise of her future stunning looks. Munson, gowned by a different designer, is also a sight to behold, in a series of Asian-inspired fantasias that pay homage to the traditions without following them slavishly or becoming cartoonish, as so many films from that period do.
Indeed von Sternberg shows that it was perfectly possible at the time to cast realistically - his bar is populated by beautiful Asian extras where many forties films take Europeans and try to make them up Asian. And Mother Gin Sling's club is a triumph of a set design - a series of concentric balcony circles overlooking the roulette wheel that will bring Poppy to her doom - an obvious reference to circles of hell that von Sternberg makes brilliant use of visually. I am all about twisted parent child relationships this year, and The Shanghai Gesture is an unexpected gem - proof that those Amazon recommendation lists can provide some real finds.
gene is indeed beautiful-it's interesting, to me, she has a very Vivan Liegh look. Also, based on our conversation last night-it's the Ghost and Mrs Muir that I had seen her in. She is exquisite there too and Teddy and I both love the movie.
Posted by: Jennifer | November 29, 2006 at 11:01 AM