SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: Diane Lane in 'The Big Town'

Introducing a new series on The Agitation of the Mind: an early hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning celebration of all that's sultry, sensuous and seductive in cinema. And who better to start with than the incomparable Diane Lane in 'The Big Town'?

Unfaithful

Discounting his 1976 short ‘Mr Smith’ and 1990’s ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ as exceptions to the rule, there’s a definite thematic through-line to Adrian Lyne’s work as a director. Here’s a list of his films, accompanied by a thumbnail synopsis and a brief encapsulation of the subtext:

‘Foxes’ – in which a group of teens experience growing pains/rites of passage/sexual maturity. Subtext: if it’s pleasurable, you pay for it.

‘Flashdance’ – in which a welder pursues a second career as an exotic dancer (occasioning the classic ‘Full Monty’ line “hope she dances better than she welds – them joints won’t hold fuck all”). Subtext: ‘woman in a man’s world’ as a cloak for sexual objectification a-go-go.

‘9½ Weeks’ – in which repressed woman meets shag-happy but dangerously unpredictable stranger. Subtext: if it’s pleasurable, you pay for it.

‘Fatal Attraction’ – in which a rumpled middle-aged bloke married to the eternally gorgeous Anne Archer inexplicably decides to indulge in a bit on the side with a demented bunny-boiler. Subtext: dumb bastard had it coming.

‘Indecent Proposal’ – in which a hard-up couple agree to a $1 million/one night/one off carnal agreement with a rumpled middle-aged über-rich bloke. Subtext: sleeping around isn’t good for your marriage.

‘Lolita’ – in which a rumpled middle-aged academic gets hot under the collar for a somewhat-under-the-age-of-consent nymphet. Subtext: this kind of behaviour is a really bad idea. Seriously. Don’t go there.

‘Unfaithful’ – in which the wife of a rumpled middle-aged boring corporate dude does the wild thing with a hunky Latino bookshop owner and all manner of complications ensue. Subtext: sleeping around isn’t good for your marriage.

So, in summation, the World According to Adrian Lyne operates on the fundamental principle that fornication is the venal curse of the human race and only regret, recrimination and disharmony can ever come of it.

Which should make Adrian Lyne the most presbyterian director in the history of cinema. Except that he revels in it. ‘9½ Weeks’ in particular comes across as little more than a Zalman King (who co-wrote ‘9½ Weeks’) or an A. Gregory Hippolyte production but with a bigger budget. A case could be made that King and Hippolyte are more honest in that they acknowledge the sexual content of their films as the raison d’être and – with the possible exception of Sherilyn Fenn’s weepily confused heroine in ‘Two Moon Junction’ – depict it as pleasurable.

There’s a whiff of hypocrisy to Lyne’s work. Whereas European directors depict sex as natural and erotic (Julio Medem’s hauntingly beautiful ‘Sex and Lucia’ is an ideal example), sometimes complicated and maybe destructive, but always pleasurable, Lyne wants to have his cake and eat it. Or rather have his soft focus trouser-arouser scenes and make his characters pay for them.

‘Unfaithful’ would be easy to dismiss but for Diane Lane. If she transcends the material in ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’, she positively reclaims it here.

The stand-out scene takes place before Constance (Lane) has even embarked on her affair with Paul (Oliver Martinez). So torn-up with guilt just for visiting him (even though nothing, at this point, happens between them), she goes to see her husband Ed (Richard Gere) at his office and takes him a gift she’s just bought. They talk but Ed breaks off to take a phone call, during the course of which he throws his toys out of the pram and harshly berates a flunkey. The reaffirmation Constance has been looking for crumbles as Ed shows his true colours. Lane communicates the emotional crux of the scene through her eyes and it’s a good, subtle piece of acting.

‘Unfaithful’ isn’t all that much of a film, nor is Lyne all that much of a director (he shoots everything in the bland tightly-framed style of a commercial for designer kitchens), but he fell on his feet with his leading lady.

Hollywoodland

George Reeves has some notable credits on his filmography: ‘Gone With the Wind’ (the event movie of 1939), ‘Blood and Sand’ opposite Rita Hayworth, ‘The Fighting 69th’ and ‘From Here to Eternity’.

So you can understand why it was galling for him, returning from a wartime stint in the army and finding it difficult to resume his big-screen career, to don a padded suit and a pair of tights to play Superman in a popular TV series. That TV was, at that time, derided by film-makers and movie actors as a novelty at best and a bastardisation at worst, would only have added salt to the wound.

Reeves died on 16 June 1959, of a gunshot wound to the head. A verdict of suicide was arrived at, though controversy and unanswered questions continue to linger. Indeed, Reeves’s mother engaged the services of a private detective to look into the circumstances surrounding his death.

This fact provides the jumping-off point for Allen Coulter’s slow-burn drama ‘Hollywoodland’. The private eye here is a fictional character, Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), whose burgeoning obsession with the case is comparable to Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal)’s obsession with the Zodiac killer in David Fincher’s film.

Simo is two-bit operator, struggling to maintain a relationship with his troubled son and keep things civil with his ex-wife (Molly Parker). A recent case has gone pear-shaped, his client murdering the allegedly unfaithful spouse he’d hired Simo to follow – a woman Simo dug up no dirt on.

Hired by Reeves’s mother (Lois Smith), this new investigation gives him something to focus on; to delve into; to get too personally involved with. Simo’s sleuthing plays out in counterpoint to a series of flashbacks which chronicle Reeves (Ben Affleck)’s life, beginning with his chance encounter with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), a woman a decade his senior who enjoys an open marriage to MGM troubleshooter Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins) – ie. they both consort with other partners and Eddie’s only going to get pissed off with you if you don’t treat his missus right.

Which makes Eddie a suspect when Reeves splits up with Toni the better to enjoy the attentions of younger society playgirl Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), leaving his former – and eminently supportive and generous – mistress distraught. But as Simo comes to understand just how volatile Reeves’s relationship with Leonore was, he begins to wonder if the solution isn’t significantly closer to home …

Kudos to Coulter and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum: they don’t try to impose a solution on the film. ‘Hollywoodland’ is a mystery sans resolution, like the aforementioned ‘Zodiac’, or Antonioni’s ‘Blow-Up’. In fact, like that latter film, it’s more a rumination on image and perception. At three key points, Simo finds himself drawn back the house Reeves died in, standing sepulchrally outside while a different possibl scenario plays itself out inside (ie. in Simo’s imagination).

Brody, playing very much against type as a wiseacre P.I., channels the likes of Jack Nicholson in ‘Chinatown’, before peeling back the layers and finding the lost soul within his character. Affleck does some of his best work onscreen, his matinee idol looks and slightly artificial air of suavity ideally suited to a 1950s leading man. Hoskins’s American accent wavers occasionally, but he’s suitably pugnacious as Eddie Mannix; you have no trouble believing that when this man deals with things, they stay dealt with.

The ladies of the cast excel: Lois Smith gives a potent performance as the grieving but irascible mother; Robin Tunney goes all out for white trash high camp as a floozy with a mouth as loose as her morals; and Diane Lane provides the human core of the film, a glamorous and intelligent woman just beginning to fear the future as she edges into middle age. Lane projects grace and dignity, which makes her profanity-spiked comment about Reeves’s new squeeze all the more shocking. It’s the best line in the film and it’ll make you wince. (It’s about smoke rings, by the way.)



Tomorrow: the Diane-fest concludes with 'Unfaithful'.

The Big Town

To the best of my knowledge ‘The Big Town’ is the only feature film helmed by prolific TV director Ben Bolt. Which is a shame since it’s one of the better American movies of the ’80s, free of the artificial visual stylisations which render much of that decade’s filmic fare hideously outdated. To indulge in a sweeping generalisation, it was a decade marked by high-profile directors seeming hell-bent on generating indulgent and excessive throwbacks to the Hollywood of old – ‘The Cotton Club’, ‘One From the Heart’ and ‘Heaven’s Gate’ spring to mind – and ending up with costly flops that marred reputations and even bankrupted studios.

‘The Big Heat’ pays homage to old school Hollywood – the films noir of the ’40s – but manages to be small scale, reined-in and focussed on telling a pacy story. Bolt’s direction is clear-sighted and unpretentious. He loses no time in establishing character and location. The opening credits, playing out to Johnny Cash’s mournful rendition of ‘Home of the Blues’, sets up not-quite-hero-not-quite-anti-hero J.C. “Cully” Cullen (Matt Dillon) as a small-town boy from a farming community, holding down a grease-monkey job in an auto shop by day and proving himself a craps shooter extraordinaire by night.

Equally swiftly, Bolt and scripter Robert Roy Pool (adapting Clark Howard’s novel ‘The Arm’ have him blow Nowheresville for the big town (Chicago). Sponsored by hard-nosed businesswoman Ferguson Edwards (Lee Grant) – whose embittered husband, referred to only as Mr Edwards (Bruce Dern), was a renowned dice shooter until he was blinded in an acid attack by a vengeful opponent – Culley breaks every game in town, strikes up a non-committal romance with hometown girl Aggie (Suzy Amis), and enjoys the easy money, flashy clothes and the cachet that comes with the Edwards’s protection.

But it isn’t enough. Cleaning up with their money is one thing, but Culley wants to make a big score with his own stake. He hears tell of a game run by club-owner and mobster George Cole (Tommy Lee Jones). He attends, flashes his money around and wins big. In doing so, he rubs Cole up the wrong way. In a further complication to his continued personal safety, he falls hard for Cole’s exotic dancer mistress Lorry Dane (Diane Lane). They are soon conducting a full-blown affair.

With Cole out to bring Culley down a peg or two, and Lorry leading him a merry dance, into the picture comes Phil Carpenter (Tom Skerritt) who swiftly replaces the Edwards as a mentor of sorts. But is Carpenter the man Mr Edwards has been dreaming of revenge against all these years? And to what lengths will he go to get that revenge?

With its naïve but corruptible protagonist, duplicitous femme fatale, sardonic gangster, tangle of divided loyalties and milieu of back rooms, bars, shadowy streets and gaudy neon, ‘The Big Town’ is straight-up film noir. Perhaps only the ending, where Culley at least gets one of the girls (as well as the chance to resume his old life), hits a wrong note – the happy ending. The rest of it, though, is compellingly cynical, particularly when Culley realises just how thoroughly he’s been used.

Dillon captures both sides of Culley: the wide-eyed country boy suddenly exposed to a flashy, addictive lifestyle; and the inveterate money-grubber for whom materialism is everything. Jones, Skerritt and Dern are on top form. Suzy Amis, in only her second film appearance following a bit part in ‘Fandango’, is luminous as the romantic heroine with a chequered past.

And then there’s Ms Lane: seductive, smouldering, fantastically foxy in her show-stopping fan dance. In the pantheon of great burlesque routines in the movies – after singling out Rita Hayworth’s immortal “Put the Blame on Mame” turn in ‘Gilda’ for the number one spot – Lane’s fan dance is definitely Top Three material alongside Lolita Davidovich’s voluptuous bit of bump ‘n’ grind in ‘Blaze’*. She’s everything a femme fatale should be, viz. enough to make a priest kick a hole in a stained-glass window.



*Davidovich (billed as Lolita David) has a small role in ‘The Big Town’ as, presciently enough, a stripper.


Tomorrow on the Diane-fest: ‘Hollywoodland’.

Under the Tuscan Sun

As a non-fiction literary sub-genre, the moderately-successful-writer-buys-old-house-in-picturesque-European-village-befriends-the-locals-and-writes-bestseller-about-it is a fairly narrow field. Three titles pretty much define it: ‘A Year in Provençe’ by Peter Mayles, ‘A Valley in Italy’ by Lisa St Aubin de Teran, and ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ by Frances Mayes.

There have been two attempts at capturing Mayles’ summery prose onscreen: the ill-advised BBC adaptation with John Thaw, and Ridley Scott’s ‘A Good Year’ starring Russell Crowe. I mean, come on – Russell Crowe as a fictionalised Peter Mayle! Lounging around in a vineyard! (“At my command … uncork another bottle.”)

St Aubin de Teran’s book, perhaps the most elegant literary work of the three, has yet to be subjected to the big screen treatment.

‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ was filmed in 2003, writer-director Audrey Wells’ only film to date apart from 1999’s ‘Guinevere’, a decent enough rites-of-passage movie starring Sarah Polley. ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ is middlebrow, middle-of-the-road, inoffensive and somewhat pedestrian in its direction.

It would be so easy to criticise this movie. You could call it a chick flick (if you wanted to be really cruel, you could call it a middle-aged chick flick). You could call it chocolate box film-making (cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson’s camera positively bathes in the glorious scenery). You could accuse it of revelling in cliché (if you don’t see the last half dozen scenes coming like the QEII on a duckpond, you’re clinically dead). You could write off the last half hour as an excess of saccharine (seriously: the final reel isn’t just sugar-coated, it’s wound in clayfloss, dipped in whipped cream and drizzled with melted chocolate).

But I’ve got to admit … and it’s not just because of Diane Lane’s presence … I have a soft spot for ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’. And with my recent movie-viewing including ‘Che – Part One’, ‘Hell Drivers’ and ‘Emperor of the North’ – dark, intense films – ‘UTTS’ provides a pleasant change of pace: light-heartedness, sweeping sunny vistas, the laughter of friends, the flowing of wine and the transient joie de vivre of a May-to-September romance.

Having said that, the romantic subplot is probably the worst aspect of Wells’ fictionalisation of Mayes’ memoir, giving the film its clumsiest scenes and its single most awkward visual image.

On the whole, though, watching 'UTTS' it is like sinking into a bubble bath or getting that slight fuzzy feeling from your second or third glass of wine (or your second or third bottle, depending on your personal tolerance levels). It clears the palate before you reach for, say, ‘Unforgiven’ or ‘Deep Red’.

And to give the film its dues, it owns up to its clichés. My favourite scene comes fairly early on. Novelist Frances (Lane) has divorced her cheating bastard of a husband and moved into a gloomy apartment (“you’re a writer?” the realtor says; “you can help the others [tenants] write their suicide notes”); her best friend Patti (Sandra Oh) endeavours to cheer her up by treating her to a package tour of Tuscany. One of her fellow tourists, stumped at what to write on an obligatory postcard to his mother, calls upon Frances’ literary talents. She glances around the piazza, sees a gaggle of nuns eating ice cream, an expatriate British woman chatting with the locals, a small car weaving non-too-discreetly through a throng of pedestrians, a couple of bronzed and oleaginous types checking out women, people buying food and two small boys positively drooling over a gleaming red Ferrari. “It’s market day in Cortona,” she writes; “the piazza is an ongoing party and everyone is invited. Clichés converge at this navel of the world. You almost want to laugh, but you can’t help feeling these Italians know more about having fun than we do.”

It’s a nice moment, slightly self-deprecating. Much of the first half works on this level: a patchwork quilt of gently played-out scenes, such incident as there is deriving from character and observation without the need to force anything resembling a narrative arc on the proceedings … until, that is, the last forty minutes or so. Still, it’s just about forgivable. Wells might be a pedestrian film-maker, but her cast are perfect: Diane Lane transcends the material time after time, Sandra Oh makes an excellent foil and Lindsay Duncan is memorable as the expatriate British actress still living in a fantasy world of Rome à la Fellini. There’s a nod to ‘La Dolce Vita’ that could easily have been cringingly embarrassing, but comes off as curiously poignant.

My advice: crack a good bottle of Italian wine as the movie starts, enjoy a terrific first half with its celebration of female unity, then drink yourself into a pleasant stupor wherein the convergence of clichés no longer detract from the sheer gorgeousness of the Tuscan locations … and of the delectable Ms Lane.




Posted to coincide with Diane Lane’s 44th birthday. Up tomorrow on the Diane-fest: ‘The Big Town’.

From the mouths of babes

This from IMDb:

Screen siren Scarlett Johansson is eyeing a career switch as soon as she begins to wrinkle - she's preparing to become a director before movie bosses pass her up for another ingenue.

Johansson made her film debut at the age of nine in 1994's North, and already fears she'll be overlooked by the next budding beauty.

She tells America's Harper's Bazaar magazine, "It's hard to be a 24-year-old actor and not be typecast. A lot of roles are either for a sexy person or a Juno-type character.

"That ageism makes the actress fearful for her future, making her consider another path within the industry. There is some weird ageist quality in Hollywood, perhaps that's why I lean more toward directing and development.

"That's probably the direction I'll take; I can't keep up this face forever, you know."

Notwithstanding the fact that she’s only 24 (I’m 36, have yet to publish my first novel or direct anything beyond a shot-on-camcorder-edited-on-home-computer documentary about a local poetry society, but I’m nowhere near giving up hope), can I just add, for the defence, that an actress's best years are NOWHERE NEAR BEHIND HER AT EVEN TWICE THAT AGE.

Exhibit A: Diane Lane in ‘Unfaithful’ – age: 37; sex appeal: through the roof.

Exhibit B: Michelle Pfeiffer in ‘Stardust’ – age: 49; sex appeal: wowsers.

Exhibit C: Celia Imrie in ‘Calendar Girls’ – age: 51; sex appeal: the thinking man’s older woman.

Exhibit D: Helen Mirren in a random tabloid shot on some beach in a bikini – age: 63; sex appeal: timeless!

This post is dedicated to the natural beauty of older women everywhere. And to anyone who can’t see past their 20s … get a grip.

New Year's resolutions

First and foremost, a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all.

Here’s to a 2009 that gives us better news (enough with the ‘credit crunch’ doom and gloom, already; I’m convinced this any-minute-now recession would evaporate and the economy take an upswing if only the media would shut the fuck up about it) and better movies.

Here on Planet Agitation, I think I’ve just about got myself into a writing discipline that balances work on my novel-in-progress (about 22,000 words completed thus far) with new material for the blog. And with a few dirt-cheap January sale DVD acquisitions, I won’t be short of things to write about.

My aim is to post at least two articles a week (although I’m giving another shout to anyone who wants to contribute anything: any and all cinema related musings to opentosuggestions.neil@lycos.co.uk, please), with the weekend article given over to Personal Faves. Next up: cinema’s finest claymation double-act.

Later this month, on January 22nd to be exact, I’ll be celebrating the birthday of one of my favourite actresses – the oft underrated Diane Lane – by kicking off a three-day Diane-Fest (or a four-dayer if I can get hold of a copy of ‘The Big Town’ by then).

In February, the Second Annual Hitch-Fest will include ‘North By Northwest’ from the Personal Faves list. File under ‘fest’ during the following months these luminaries: Werner Herzog, Luis Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar; not to mention, during the latter stages of ’09 the obligatory Third Annual Dirk-Fest.

Just let me recover from this hangover and deal with going back to work tomorrow, then it’s back to business …