“Elephant Song” transports Nicolas Billon’s psychological thriller of the same name from the stage to the cinema but keeps the intimacy of the play on the much larger canvas of the screen.
Set in1966, Bruce Greenwood is Dr. Toby Green, chief of staff in a mental hospital investigating the mysterious disappearance of psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence (Colm Feore). Lawrence vanished after an appointment with Michael (Xavier Dolan), a long time patient who is believed to know the location of the missing doctor. Despite warnings from Nurse Susan Peterson (Catherine Keener), Green’s ex-wife and the health care worker closest to Michael, that the patient is a compulsive fantasist, Green dives into a cat and mouse game with the troubled young man.
“Elephant Song” is long on intrigue but short on satisfaction.
In his conversations with Green, Michael is meant to be a Hannibal Lecter Jr.—a comparison reinforced by Dolan’s slavish Anthony Hopkins impression and, “quid pro quo,” reference—an expert manipulator one step ahead of the doctor. Trouble is, his mannered delivery is artificial and most of his revelations are red herrings. His revelations feel simply like plot points to keep the action moving, without ever getting us much closer to the heart of the mystery. Later his more natural interactions with Peterson are a welcome relief from the affectation of his scenes with Green.
Greenwood and Keener do good work here, even though it strains credulity that Michael could hold such sway over seasoned pros like Green and Peterson.
“Elephant Song” is essentially a two-hander broken up with flashbacks, but director Charles Biname skilfully builds drama and tension throughout. It’s a shame that there is no payoff before the end credits roll.
Director Steven Soderbergh calls Full Frontal the unofficial sequel to Sex Lies and Videotape, his groundbreaking 1989 film. Most everyone else has called it a mess, or useless waste of time. One prominent American critic even suggested this might be the worst film ever by a major director. I can’t say I agree with the harsh criticism. While I’m not exactly sure what the movie is about, and vast passages of it simply do not work, I do think it is a film with great passion and energy. Soderbergh has left behind the slickness of Ocean’s 11 and Erin Brockovich and made an experimental film that bristles with inventiveness. Not everything works, but there are several nice performances, particularly by David Hyde Pierce and Catherine Keener and I enjoyed watching an A-list director stray from the tried and true and explore rockier ground.
“Please Give” is a small indie movie in which the cumulative effect of the acting and dialogue outweighs the film’s shortcomings. Set in New York City it is the story of real estate, of neighbors, of young and old, of lovers and adulterers. In other words, it’s everyday life in the big city.
Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt are a married couple who run an upscale vintage furniture store. It’s the kind of place where sofas aren’t called sofas, or chesterfields, but referred to by their designer’s name—Corbeau or Eames. In a ghoulish (but common NYC practice) they purchased the apartment next door to theirs and are waiting for the elderly tenant (Ann Marie Guilbert) to pass away so they can renovate and take over her space. Until then the old lady is looked after by her two granddaughters, the troubled Mary (Amanda Peet) and Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), a kind hearted but quiet mammography technician (mamogrammist, maybe?). Mix in some liberal guilt, acne and two hundred dollar jeans and you have a story short on drama but bubbling with real feelings.
“Please Give” doesn’t have much of a story, and often feels more like a series of situations strung together than an actual film, but it does have interesting characters.
Keener and Platt have the easy way about them of a couple who have been together for many years. They are like well worn in shoes, comfortable and maybe just a bit stale.
She’s slowly becoming consumed by guilt. Guilt because they are well off, guilt because they make money reselling dead people’s furniture for a profit, guilt, because she doesn’t feel worse about waiting for the woman next door to die.
He’s on the edge of a mid-life crisis, and finds himself flirting with Rebecca’s pretty sister Mary at a dinner party. Keener and Platt make much of the material, adding layers of complexity to their characters through their performances. Both are thinly written, particularly Platt’s mid life meltdown, and although they could have simply been vessels for the film’s comments on New York life, the actors keep it real.
The knockout performances belong to Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet as sisters with very different outlooks on life. As with Keener and Platt, the characters feel underwritten, but both blossom on the screen. Hall, so striking in “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” is mousey and withdrawn for much of the film but comes out of her shell and Peet is a fireball of neurosis; unlikable and emotionally damaged.
“Please Give” is a small movie that will likely only find a small audience but is worth a look to see some very good actors do some very good work.
Freud would have had a ball with Molly (Marisa Tomei) and Cyrus (Jonah Hill). Molly is what the Viennese Sexologist would have called an engulfing mother, a single mom with an extra strong connection to her son. Cyrus is, well, he’s Cyrus—an overweight twenty-one-year-old with an Oedipus complex and an attitude. Enter John, played by John C. Reilly, a single sad sack who falls for Molly and feels the wrath of Cyrus. As Freud said, “How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”
When we first meet John he’s been single for seven years and still pines for his ex wife (Catherine Keener) even though she is about to be remarried. At her insistence he goes to a party and following some of the most awkward attempts at picking up women ever put on screen he meets Molly, a pretty partygoer who is attracted to his awkwardness and honesty she begins a relationship with him. After a one night stand and the words nobody wants to hear—“My life is really complicated right now”—John follows her home and meets Cyrus, her man-child son. Cyrus pretends to be happy that John is around. “You deserve someone to love you in the way that I can’t love you,” he tells his mother, but secretly he is plotting to drive a wedge between the two.
“Cyrus” is a dark character study disguised as a comedy. Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, a Coen-lite brother team best known for making no budget indies like “The Puffy Chair” that make the Dogme 95 films look like slick Michael Bay movies, it has a few chuckles sprinkled throughout, but don’t expect a John C. Reilly laughfest like “Stepbrothers.” “Cyrus” is about broken people, unhealthy relationships and how people act when they feel threatened. Like real life sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, other times it’s awkward, but the brothers and actors ensure that whatever the tone of any given scene, and no matter how outrageous the situation, that it rings true.
Tomei is the glue that holds the film together. As Molly, mother of Cyrus, girlfriend to John, she’s caught between two men she loves and must provide balance as their emotional war escalates. She’s warm and believable, but also vulnerable and unpredictable. It’s another great performance from an actor who should be a bigger star than she is.
Reilly finds a balance between the character work he does for Paul Thomas Anderson in movies like “Magnolia” and the slapstick he’s been doing lately with Will Ferrell in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” It’s his most layered performance in some time and it is refreshing to see an average-guy leading man on the big screen.
Like Reilly, Jonah Hill adds dimension to Cyrus, taking a character who could have been played for laughs and adding some intensity and depth. Freud might have been speaking about him when he said, “One is very crazy when in love.”
“Cyrus” is an odd film. Not quite a comedy, not quite a drama it falls somewhere in between. Just like real life.
Lately we’ve grown used to seeing Christopher Walken in comedic roles—almost veering into self-parody—so it is refreshing to see him not rely on tricks and produce a layered, heartfelt and emotionally rich work. In “A Late Quartet” he delivers his most poignant performance in years.
Walken is Peter Mitchell, cellist and senior member of The Fugue, a world famous string quartet. For twenty-fives years and 3000 performances he has helped to define chamber music with first violinist Daniel Lerner (Mark Ivanir), second violinist Robert Gelbart (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Juliette Gelbart (Catherine Keener) on viola. When Peter is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and decides to hang up his cello, the Fugue friends are thrown into turmoil.
Walken’s illness and retirement are the catalyst for the film’s look at how people deal with change, but it also provides the heart. Many of the situations are melodramatic—an affair, an inappropriate romance among them—but it isn’t so much about the events themselves as it is about how change affects people.
Each of the three remaining musicians become different people once they have been cut loose from the watchful eye of their friend and mentor. The overall effect is more interesting than the mechanisms of it. The affair and the plot machinery that keeps the story going are there simply to serve great performances from a powerhouse cast.
Hoffman, Keener, Ivanir and Imogen Poots as Robert and Juliette’s college-age daughter Alexandra are uniformly strong, but the maestro here is Walken.
Subtle, nuanced and heartbreaking, his portrayal of a man confronting old age and an uncertain future is first class, a virtuoso turn.
“A Late Quartet” could have been a downer film about classical music and mortality, but instead it’s funny, melancholy and touching.
