bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 40
Dance with a Stranger . . . Silverado . . . Wetherby . . . Plenty . . . Out of Africa . . . After Hours . . . Compromising Positions . . . Kiss of the Spider Woman . . . A Chorus Line . . . Jagged Edge . . . Twice in a Lifetime
This new bout de papier feature may subject you to my biases as I tend to keep away from sci-fi, Stephen Spielberg and, as a rule, violence. Having made that qualification, here goes.
Since September, Ottawans have been busy trying to keep abreast of the new releases with barely a spare day to catch up on the oldies at the Towne.
My only disappointment this fall was Dance with a Stranger, the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain. I was always waiting for something to happen. Perhaps I was suffering the after effects from Rambo, in which a cast of thousands were miraculously gunned down by our intrepid hero. Nevertheless, Dance with a Stranger was marvellously well-acted and totally faithful to the period. Don’t be deterred by the lack of action: Miranda Richardson as Ruth Ellis is faultless.
I began my fall movie-going with Silverado, which was still running in Ottawa on my return from two months in England. Lawrence Kasden’s contemporary western (is he serious or is this a spoof?) may not please afficionados of the genre; however, it is a stunningly beautiful film with plenty of fine camera work – I particularly liked the snow-speckled west — spectacular escapes and shoot-outs. I shall go again to delight in the performance of Linda Hunt as the keeper of the saloon. She appears so wise in whatever role she undertakes and her scenes with the incorruptible Paden (Kevin Kline) are memorable.
Wetherby did not have a very long run in Ottawa but gets my personal Oscar. It is a well-crafted study of the effect of a stranger’s violent death on a middle-aged school teacher. Her thoughts go back to the time when, as a young girl, she fell in love with an airman whose short life also ended violently. Small town English life is faithfully recreated and the use of flashback is the most skilful I have encountered, never obtruding, drawing you inexorably into the school teacher’s soul. Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter share the role and the supporting cast is strong, although Judi Dench and Ian Holm deserve a special mention.
I consider Vanessa Redgrave and Meryl Streep to be the finest actresses around today, but Meryl Streep is in danger of overexposure. In Plenty she plays an Englishwoman who returns home and finds it difficult to adapt to the accepted role of women in peacetime. Streep is not completely at home in the role and I should have liked Kate Nelligan to have repeated her success in the part in London and on Broadway. British attitudes and mores after the war take some hard but justified knocks. Charles Dance as the husband enmeshed in his wife’s rebellion does what is required of him and John Gielgud and Ian McKellen are excellent as Foreign Office mandarins.
Meryl Streep again stars in Out of Africa, this time with Robert Redford. A massive cliché loosely based on the memoirs of Isak Dinesen (Baroness Blixen) is interminably long. Anyone who has read the book should quickly forget it, but go to wonder at Meryl Streep who is quite simply superb. I would also like to have seen more of Klaus Maria Brandauer as her husband, and less of Robert Redford. However, I cannot complain as the Baron is but a shadowy presence in the book. Sidney Pollack gets lost in the romance between Streep and Redford (Denys Finch Hatton), and gives cursory screen time to the relationship between the Baroness and the natives on the farm, the effect of tribal differences and the inflexible colonial attitudes which she constantly encountered There is plenty of African scenery and wildlife and a whole heap of romantic goo. I have to confess I wept buckets.
Two films deservedly popular with Ottawa audiences were After Hours and Compromising Positions. The latter is not, as its title might suggest, a film made for late-night pay T.V., but a witty murder mystery. A lecherous dentist is murdered. He has quite a way with women and takes photographs of them in, you’ve guessed it, compromising positions. Susan Sarandon plays the ex-reporter housewife turned amateur sleuth (to the chagrin of the detective assigned to the job played by Raul Julia), whose curiosity and determination to unearth the truth lands her in innumerable difficulties. It is hilariously funny and I particularly enjoyed the well-observed relationship between Sarandon and her lawyer husband: he says, “Now I’m not the kind of clod who hasn’t time to tune into his wife, but…
After Hours is Martin Scorsese’s night on the town with a difference. Griffin Dunne plays an ordinary computer programmer who, as a result of a chance encounter with Rosanne Arquette (who desperately sought Susan), is catapulated into a living nightmare of weird experiences with the inhabitants of Manhattan’s Soho. Bizarre, fantastic, sometimes macabre, always funny.
Kiss of the Spider Woman, Hector Babenco’s film starring William Hurt as the homosexual Molina and Raul Julia as his heterosexual cell-mate, has received unanimous raves. The relationship between this unlikely couple is the theme of the film. It begins with Hurt’s monologue, which becomes an argument, and culminates in an embrace and a deep understanding between them. Both actors are excellent, though I was not entirely convinced by Hurt’s Molina. I felt, too, that the film came to pieces in its final moments after Molina is released. This is so often the case when a stage play is translated to the screen. The director feels compelled to take to the streets in order to satisfy the audience. For the most part, Richard Attenborough has resisted this temptation in A Chorus Line in which he relies more on stage-craft than cinematography to bring the musical to the screen. He is not entirely successful — the third-degree interviews given by choreographer Zac to his 16 hopefuls are often embarassingly hammy — but go and see it, if only for the dancing.
Finally, two films for you if you want simply to be entertained. If you like conventional thrillers with plenty of well-engineered suspense, you might want to take in Jagged Edge. Glenn Close defends Jeff Bridges, charged with the horrific murder of his wife. There are some good courtroom scenes, heightened by the antipathy between Close and the local DA who had been partly responsible for her absence from the courtroom for some years. I won’t say any more, I may spoil it for you.
In Twice in a Lifetime, a Terms of Endearment clone, Gene Hackman gets a chance to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition by playing a romantic lead instead of one of his famous tough detectives. It is well-acted throughout, but I think Amy Madigan, who plays the couple’s married daughter, deserves a special mention. Her parents’ 30-year marriage disintegrates overnight when Gene Hackman meets Ann-Margaret. The film is entirely plausible and Ellen Burstyn is most touching as the wife.
Farewell until next time when I hope to discuss some of the newer French and German films. Happy movie-going!
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 40. Read the rest of this issue →
