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Gossip Review by
Cynthia Fuchs
It's a metaphor About
ten minutes into Davis Guggenheim's first feature, Gossip, you might
wonder where his college student protagonists are living. Like, what planet?
Every exterior is spectacular, noir-urbanish and drenching-rainy, and all
interiors (apartments, libraries, dorms) are gargantuan, with 20 foot ceilings
and cinder block walls and, for the "party" where the film's central
event does or maybe doesn't take place (the uncertainty is the point of the
gossip), there are added achingly-trendy touches, like musty-colored and
artfully broken windows, wrought iron staircases, several floors, and oh yes, an
enormous bar with perfectly lit bottles and neon everywhere. At first it's
amusing to imagine such a university, where, only a few short steps from any
dorm or class room, there may exist a windy, portentous rooftop or an abandoned
greenhouse with great-effect lighting and clay pots strewn about, just waiting
to be smashed into some hapless assailant's skull. But then you come back to
yourself, and you realize, it's a metaphor. A stunningly beautiful, surely
meaningful, and sometimes distracting metaphor. As
metaphor, the film's extreme look -- its architecture, camera angles, weather --
externalizes the characters' extreme emotional (and occasionally mental) states.
Along with the elaborate set design and chiaroscuro shadows, the film deploys
any number of mood-altering effects: time-lapsing student bodies in hallways,
multiple mouths in teeth-clicking close ups, a soundtrack thumping with
heartbeats and whispers ("Can you hear me?") and deep-dark music (by
former psychiatric social worker and new wave musician Graeme Revell). This
extreme look would seem to be a curious amalgamation of the many talents and
experiences involved in its making: you can see bits from Guggenheim's previous
TV background (Party of Five, ER, and NYPD Blue episodes);
original director and eventual executive producer Joel Schumacher's Flatliners
and Lost Boys; production designer David (Taxi Driver) Nichols;
and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak's surreal sensibility (he recently
directed Romeo Must Die). As
metaphor, these splendid visuals just seem to be. The script -- by
Gregory (Rosewood) Poirier and Theresa (Harriet the Spy) Rebeck --
doesn't spend much time explaining how such a picturesque locale might exist
within reach of rock stars, much less undergraduates. (The film was shot in
Montreal, but clearly is not set there or anywhere else that would be so
cost-cutting.) Characters make vague references made to the extraordinary wealth
of devilishly handsome Derrick Webb (James Marsden, Katie Holmes' co-star in Disturbing
Behavior and soon to play Cyclops in X-Men), who has a trust fund but
no visible contact with his parents. (For that matter, there's not a parent in
sight in Gossip.) Derrick's multi-level loft apartment and bank account
are large enough that he supports two needy roommates, funky part-time-job-girl
Cathy Jones (Lena Headey) and geeky art-boy Travis (Norman Reedus), over whom he
lords how much they "owe" him: you might see immediately how the
film's schematic morality breaks down here -- as usual, rich people are bad,
even though everyone in the film aspires to be rich, or to look rich -- but
Jones and Travis are a bit slow on the uptake, which leads them to make several
egregious errors in judgment and allows the plot to, um, develop. The
three roommates hang out a lot, lolling about their swanky space, drinking,
smoking cigarettes, going to bars, drinking, going to parties, and drinking.
Occasionally they go to class, in particular, a communication studies lecture
class, where they endure Professor Goodwin's (Eric Bogosian, paying the rent)
prattling on about the amorality of tabloid culture and infotainment. Goodwin's
growling disapproval presumes that there were "good old days" when
news and gossip were plainly discrete, and the movie doesn't challenge that
quaint presumption; instead, it makes a rather overwrought case against libelous
or ill-considered language, and the general meanness of privileged kids like
Derrick. Not incidentally, Derrick is also the one who's always handing round
drinks at the apartment, whenever the roommates are having a heart-to-heart. The
film's anti-drinking argument is somewhat muddled by the fact that it makes all
this excess look so good, but for the most part, its many drinking scenes result
in kids passing out, puking, or having unwanted sex. The
designated "good" characters drink as well, but they suffer for it,
and more importantly, learn from their suffering. These good characters also
spend a few minutes not drinking, so you can see that they are coerced by peer
pressure more than they are inclined to excess on their own. Jones is introduced
at the library: the film opens with a sensational overhead tracking shot of this
austere space, where every student -- and there are rows and rows of them, all
bent over their books -- has a separate, polished dark-wood desk with a swell
green lamp. And, to make sure you see she is not wealthy, you also see Jones at
work, flipping burgers at a local eatery. Still, the first scene at the library
cuts to Jones preparing to party: she slips into a splendid red cocktail dress
and spiky heels, makes up her face, and high-tails it to the bar where she's to
meet Derrick and Travis. At
this first bar scene, you learn what you need to know about Travis. He's
sensitive and strange, and unlike his chums, maintains a relatively low-key
(though also stylish) wardrobe, tending to raggedy coats and
paint-spattered t-shirts. At the bar, Jones and Derrick encourage Travis to hit
on a cute girl, who rebuffs his awkward handshake. Upon witnessing this
disaster-in-the-making, Jones and Derrick spread the story that their boy is a
famous rock star's child. Immediately, the barkeep buys all three of them a
round and cleavage-prone girls are lining up to talk to Travis, while Jones and
Derrick smirk at one another. Ah-ha, you say to yourself, here's the set-up:
gossip is fun... until it hurts someone. This
lesson emerges in what might be termed the "plot." Derrick, Jones, and
Travis decide that for their communication class project, they'll start a rumor
and trace its permutations. And so: they say moneyed and notoriously virginal
Naomi (Kate Hudson) had drunken sex with her nice guy beau, Beau (Joshua
Jackson), a story which evolves into date-rape, suicide, and homicide
accusations. That is, the project turns sour quickly, especially as Naomi goes
through a fairly public meltdown. A pair of police detectives (including Sharon
Lawrence, reliving her NYPD Blue glory days?) investigate the date-rape
charges, with much drama. On the occasion of Beau's arrest -- at school, of
course, for the theatricality of it -- the detectives arrive with a couple of
dour uniforms, walking through the hallways in slow motion, their trench coats
billowing and backlit. Dazzling as this image is, in fact, the film's third
detective is its most significant: just when you're thinking -- again -- that Gossip
has no notion of reality, no referent or reason, suddenly there's a foreboding
knock-knock on Derrick's door. He opens it, and voila! Edward James Olmos,
looking so very solemn and laconic. And then you get it. The rain, the darkness,
the lack of sense: Gossip is a college students' fever-dream version of Blade
Runner! This
would be fine to go along with, but still, Gossip soldiers on, setting up
motives and situations. Jones -- being the girl, being "emotional" (as
Derrick accuses her) -- frets out loud that their prank has turned
"ugly" (a description that is frankly hilarious, in the midst of all
the gorgeousness the film is laying on so thickly). Despite her concerns,
however, she succumbs to her movie-scripted desires and has sex with the
obviously despicable Derrick. The next day, she happens upon some information
that suggests Derrick has been dishonest with her. Naturally, she drinks and
frets some more. You want to like Jones: she's obviously the film's moral center
and she wears such great outfits! But her behaviors are maddening. And so, you
may look elsewhere, say, to Travis. Though he doesn't have a lot of screen time,
this waif does make crucial appearances, outside Naomi's room just after she has
an outrageous biting-slapping-and-nails-clawing fight with Derrick, listening in
on that sex scene between Jones and Derrick. Travis
is, then, the film's conscience, its wounded soul, and in that role, he
appropriately doesn't say much. Instead, he observes and reports, not as a
journalist or academic (these being inevitably corrupt in the film's/Goodwin's
not-so-imaginative economy), but as an artist. He makes lots of art. Everywhere.
Travis works with multiple computer monitors and digital editing programs. He
decorates the apartment with portraits of his roommates (Jones's likeness
appears on their sofa, with her mouth ominously missing), and covers the walls
of his room with floor-to-ceiling pictures. These collages are half-painted,
half-blown up digitized photos; they're chipped, torn, eerie. And as the gossip
and its effects turn increasingly "ugly," Travis's artwork becomes
increasingly violent. The multi-wall collage depicts bullets unsubtly labeled
with the word "words," as they fly toward a victim's head. Deep. Not
so surprisingly, when it comes time to find a culprit for all the damage, Travis
starts to look a little suspicious, precisely because of his obsessive imaging.
And here he embodies the film's own aesthetic and its most incisive (and
accidental?) insight, that in a media-saturated universe, such as the one the
students inhabit, images create and, indeed, are a valid reality, however
internal, hurtful, or extreme. While it ends up being a very conventional moral
argument against terrible words (being mean), Gossip's more potent
subject, the one it only gets at in its surface -- its excessive look -- is the
free-floating process of gossip, the slipperiness of meaning and desire. Contents | Features | Reviews
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