The
Truth About Charlie
review by Gregory Avery, 25 October 2002
Did Jonathan Demme burn out a
bearing while making the calamitous Beloved? His new film,
The Truth About Charlie, a remake of Charade and his
first feature in four years, is a woozy, roisterous, exhausting
mess, and the off-beat casting of its two leads turns out to be as
ill-starred as you might expect.
As a woman who comes to Paris to
discover that her dead husband is not who he was cracked-up to be
and doesn't know who to turn to for help, Thandie Newton is lovely
and unexpectedly, and indirectly, evokes the lilting sound of Audrey
Hepburn in her voice (Hepburn played the same role in the 1963
film), but she only seems to be vaguely engaging the camera most of
the time, and her performance seems a tad too weak to fully engage
us (and, in the end, she's reduced to being merely tremulous and,
worse, agape). She's miles ahead of Mark Wahlberg, though: you can
see why he was cast, for the way he can shuttle between boyish charm
and menace in a flash, but, while it turns out that he can wear a
beret without looking foolish, the guy still can't act -- you find
yourself yearning for Matthew Modine in Married to the Mob to
come in and show him how this sort of thing is really done. Wahlberg
stands in the middle of his scenes and holds his ground with the
paused intensity of someone waiting for a really long traffic light
to change.
The story in the original film,
with its constantly shifting alliances, quadruple-crosses, and
unexpected plot turns, made more sense than what's going on, here:
things are further complicated by bobbing camerawork, switches
between 35 mm. and HDV that keep us off-balance (the cinematography
was by the superb Tak Fujimoto, a longtime Demme collaborator, so
the colors are terrific), and loads of movie references. Part of the
action takes place in a hotel named the Langlois; one scene is set
on a Ferris wheel in the Tuilleries, and specifically evokes The
Third Man; Hannibal Lecter's glass cell even turns up in a
closing scene. One character makes a reference to Shoot the Piano
Player, which is then followed by a clip from the Truffaut film
with Charles Aznavour, which is then followed by Aznavour himself,
singing to the characters and to the audience. There's also a
musical cameo, in a tango bar, by the great French nouvelle
vague muse Anna Karina. (Aznavour's voice is a bit on the
rough side; Karina, on the other hand, is terrific, before, now, and
always. The film, despite all else, has one of the best musical
soundtracks this year, loaded with French pop, rap, and Afro-pop,
along with two cuts from Malcolm McLaren's Paris album.) But
trying to keep up with everything is a bit of a stretch: the film
feels like it's taking place inside of a Mixmaster, with any scenes
which would have drawn us into the story and characters getting
thinned-out.
Tim Robbins turns up as a U.S.
government official, representing a department with a phony-sounding
name, and who gets Newton's character to trust him -- he bugs his
eyes during his very first scene and signals to us that he's a loony
from the start. (Robbins is best when he's not playing a villain.)
There are two breathtaking appearances by Magali Noël, though (it
would have been nice if she'd had some dialogue, too), and the best
scene in the movie is one at the very, very end between Robbins and
Frederique Meininger, who plays the distraught mother of the title
character -- it has the kind of humor which first drew us to
Jonathan Demme's films, and which he hopefully will find again. |
Directed
by:
Jonathan Demme
Starring:
Thandie Newton
Mark Wahlberg
Ted Levine
Joong-hoon Park
Lisa Gay Hamilton
Christine Boisson
Frederique Meininger
Charles Aznavour
Tim Robbins.
Written by:
Jonathan Demme
Steve Schmidt
Peter Joshua
Jessica Bendinger
Rating:
PG-13 - Parents
Strongly Cautioned.
Some matrial may be
inappropriate for
children under 13.
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