MID-SUMMER MOVIE MUSINGS


MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT (A)

People my age and older -- pre-baby boomers, if you will -- often complain about today’s movies that “they don’t make ‘em the way they used to.” I can’t argue with that, but I can’t complain about it, either, because, for the most part, I think movies today are better than ever, despite arguments to the contrary by those who speculate why cineplex attendance has been declining. They are, on balance, better written, better directed, better acted, better photographed, and better edited than most of what lit up the silver screen in my youth, the so-called golden age of Hollywood, during which screen characters, their relationships with one another, and the situations of the plot were highly idealized, romanticized, sentimentalized, and synthesized. By the time the musical scores of Hugo Friedhofer, Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Miklos Rozsa, and Dimitri Tiomkin rose to a conclusive crescendo and “The End” was boldly imprinted upon the last scene, the virtuous and villainous had been neatly identified, the conflicts between them exploited and resolved, the bad and the ugly served their comeuppance, and the good dispatched to live happily ever after.

What ticks off many of my contemporaries about today’s movies is that they’re too violent, too profane, and too tragic. “We want to be entertained, not frightened, embarrassed, and depressed.” What they’re really saying is that they want to leave their troubles and tensions behind at the box office, have a good laugh, maybe a good cry, too, as long as everything turns out magical at the end -- just like it did in the good old days, when every dark cinematic cloud ultimately had a silver lining. There is no shortage of films today that depict the life and times of the 21st century around the world with unsparing explicitness and truthfulness. Obviously, I’m not talking here about the CGI blockbusters that draw throngs of the young, restless, and thrill-a-minute gluttons to air-cooled multiplexes during the summer months, or the semi-salacious comedies featuring unctuous and air-headed characters in frolicsome situations that insinuate enough sex to stir and titillate, but not enough to earn the industry’s “R” rating that will cut into the adolescent audience they largely attract. Nor am I referring to the pixel-packed animation features -- fare for the whole family to enjoy -- that serve as the 21st century counterpart to Snow White, Bambi, Pinocchio, and Uncle Remus. No, the films that I mostly see and write about are independently made, thematically urgent and substantive, and inhabited by characters who draw us into their lives for better or worse. Of the 39 films I’ve seen so far in 2006, only five have been popcorn fare; eight have been documentaries -- a category claiming a larger share of the mature moviegoing public every year.

Every once in awhile, though, there’s a new film the aura and tenor of which harkens back to moviemaking’s golden age of innocence, offering up the requisite sweet sensations, the expectant tugs at the heartstrings, but nobly balanced by a coherent, persuasive script, deep character sensibilities, intuitive and appealing actors, and an unpredictable, but perfectly credible outcome. “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” is an enchanting, old-fashioned film with newfangled smartness and soul, thanks to its director Dan Ireland, who, as cofounder of the Seattle International Film Festival, knows a little something about artistic integrity, and its leading lady Joan Plowright, the ex Lady Olivier, who, at 77, gives a performance in a “little movie” that ranks with her most distinguished in film, possibly even eclipsing my favorite role of hers as Eva Krichinsky in “Avalon” (1988). This film couldn’t possibly offend or disturb anyone -- it isn’t gratuitous in any way; there isn’t one moment of violence or overt sexuality and only an instance or two of the most benign profanity. And yet it is irresistibly and deeply involving, particularly to those of us in the autumn of our lives.

The plot of “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” is built around serendipity and destiny. Our central character, recently widowed after the death of a husband (Arthur) she adored and relied upon, has arrived in London from her native Scotland, to begin life on her own in a retirement hotel, poetically licensed as “The Claremont”, whose virtues don’t quite match those extolled in its print ads. The slightly tired and tattered Claremont caters to single and slightly tired and tattered ladies and gentlemen who’ve earned the right to wear purple and intrude their eccentricities into each other’s lives. Mrs. Palfrey is wary about becoming chummy with the other pay-by-the-month guests -- many of whom are brazen busybodies -- tenaciously guarding her privacy and declaring her newfound independence. “I’ve been a daughter, a wife, and a mother,” she reflects. From now on, I just want to be me.” Everyone dines solo at The Claremont, at eternally optimistic, but equally poignant tables for two.

However, in a vulnerable moment, Mrs. Palfrey lets it slip that she has a loving grandson named Desmond -- an esteemed archivist -- who also lives in London. Residents at The Claremont wear doting relatives as badges of honor and high standing, and so Mrs. Palfrey is embarrassed when weeks go by and her grandson doesn’t materialize in the hotel dining room. The other guests are beginning to suspect that Desmond is a fictitious character. And Mrs. Palfrey is loathe to admit that he doesn’t return her calls.

Out one day on an errand, Mrs. Palfrey is caught in a sudden rainstorm and, rushing to get back to the hotel, literally stumbles and falls into the spare, equally solitary life of a twenty-something, long-haired writer in torn jeans named Ludovic Meyer (a dazzlingly endearing Rupert Friend). He carries her into his basement flat, attends to her lacerated kneecap, and serves her a calming cup of tea. It soon becomes clear to both that, despite the half-century difference in their ages, their souls are poetically in sync.

Mrs. Palfrey enlists an apt and eager Ludovic to pose as Desmond to get the nosey bunch at the hotel off her back -- even buys him a white shirt for the occasion. Their arm-in-arm entrance into the Claremont dining room is a high note of the film, generating more excitement than the downbeat hotel has experienced in years, further cementing their unlikely, but providential alliance. When Ludovic inquires about Mrs. Palfrey’s favorite movie and she regales him with a plot summary of David Lean’s classic “Brief Encounter” (1946), another enriching coincidence occurs and Gwendolyn (Zoe Tapper) soon takes center stage in Ludovic’s life. Ultimately, certain inevitabilities have to be reckoned with, and the ying and yang of gain and loss lead to a bittersweet, but spiritually validating denouement.

Another classically trained young British actor, Friend was also seen last year as Mr. Wickham in “Pride and Prejudice”. No doubt about his rising star -- he has five more films in various stages of production. Among the supporting cast, as whimsically idiosyncratic Claremont residents, are familiar favorites such as Anna Massey, Robert Lang, and Millicent Martin. Clare Higgins has a haunting scene as Ludovic’s well-meaning, but disassociated mother.

Technically, “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” is a 2005 film, released in New York and Los Angeles just before the end of the year. It opened to mixed reviews, a few critics complaining -- no, whining, unjustifiably -- about excessive sentimentality. Then it played at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in early January and was accorded the audience favorite award. What followed was a three-month run in that desert city, in the midst of which the film’s marketing executive, in an incredible lapse of duty, failed to enter Joan Plowright’s name in the Academy Awards best actress competition. As a result of its success in Palm Springs and other sophisticated markets, it appears that “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” is set for a much wider re-release. I can’t urge you enough to see and support films of this temperament and calibre.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (B+)

I’m seized by twinges of guilt and remorse at not being able to bestow an “A” on a film that carries such an urgent message from that rarest of species -- a politician who commands my admiration and respect. Al Gore presages an environmental calamity from global warming in an 100-minute documentary that does its best with charts, graphs, photographs, live footage, and cartoons dripping with cruel ironies to arm us with the facts and implore us to mend our ways and scare us into action. Despite the conviction, commitment, celebrity, and credibility of the messenger, the exhaustive research attendant to the project, and the sincerity, dignity, humanity, and flourishes of humor inhabiting his presentation, “An Inconvenient Truth” falls short in the galvanization department. Its lack of jolt is not so much a reflection on Gore’s storytelling skills or failings on the part of the filmmakers. What stymies this film is that statistics, no matter how alarming, still photographs, no matter how revealing, cartoons, no matter how mocking and caustic, even footage, now matter how graphic, can generate enough of the horror of the impending calamity to sufficiently motivate the public -- or, more to the point, the segment of the public sufficiently motivated to even see the film, which is tied, of course, to the number of exhibitors contracted to show it.

After its fifth week in release, “An Inconvenient Truth”, showing on only 514 screens nationwide, had tallied up a domestic gross of under $10 million. After its fifth week in release, “X-Men: The Last Stand”, still flickering across 2,408 screens, had amassed $224 million; after its sixth week, “The Da Vinci Code”, on 1,911 screens, had raked in $205 million, “Over the Hedge” (2,007 screens), $144 million. And would you want to take bets on who’s filing in to see “An Inconvenient Truth” in most markets? Ever heard the expression “preaching to the choir?” I saw it on an evening when the Democratic candidate for governor (running a very distant second in the polls to the Republican incumbent) and his wife were camped outside the theater dispensing campaign literature and gathering the requisite signatures to get his name officially on the November ballot. “An Inconvenient Truth” was showing on two screens, so there a captive audience of likely supporters entering and exiting every hour.

The fact is that most societies are purely reactive to catastrophic events; part of the apathy is denial, part a feeling of helplessness -- the predicted events are simply too overwhelming to contemplate, when most people have enough on their plates with the daily grind of life. The American people -- maybe human beings, in general -- don’t swing into action on a grand scale until bad things actually happen and the catastrophe can be seen, heard, smelled, and felt. The Gore presentation acknowledges this with a cartoon that takes place in a science lab. There’s a vessel of boiling water and a carefree frog doing what comes naturally to frogs -- merrily hopping from place to place. He or she, in fact, hops right into the vessel of boiling water, then immediately reacts from extreme discomfort and instinct for self-preservation by hopping right back out.

Now there’s another vessel -- of innocuous, luke warm water -- and a similarly disposed froggy, who hops right in and, this time, stays. The temperature of the water is gradually raised and the complacent frog remains and endures, not yet sensitized to impending danger, even doom. Remarkably, even when the water reaches its boiling point, the frog makes no move to save itself. In the nick of time, a lab worker reaches in and pulls the frog to safety. The analogy is unmistakable. The human race is sitting around apathetically while the globe is heating up, according to Gore and much of the scientific community, from the discharge of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, into the earth’s atmosphere. But we can’t see, hear, smell, or feel the pollutants, and even though not-so-subtle climate changes are taking place, there are still a small number of scientists, politically useful to a government beholden to the interests of big business, particularly the oil industry, who insist that those are not really permanent changes taking place, but rather cyclical anomalies. And that’s a comfortable conclusion to accept, because we can’t do anything at all about cyclical anomalies. And we like the idea of doing nothing at all.

There is no way to truly galvanize people because the calamity hasn’t as yet occurred. The makers of “An Inconvenient Truth” could have enacted the calamity by staging it with computer-generated set pieces as Roland Emmerich or Wolfgang Petersen would (at considerable expense), but, of course, the audience would have regarded it as just another disaster movie -- a reincarnation of “The Day After Tomorrow” or “Poseidon” -- and they’d, of course, be right.

Gore uses a modest graphic to demonstrate what will happen around the world if Greenland and the Antarctic ice shelf continue to heat up, melt, and erode. Sea levels worldwide will rise by 20 feet, and in a very short time. The graphic showed the havoc a 20-foot rise in sea levels will wreak on the playgrounds of South Florida and much of lower Manhattan. But, sadly and tragically, few will be motivated to take the action necessary to stave off or diminish this eventuality until television networks are actually beaming live pictures of major cities and resort areas under water into living rooms around the world. And, if the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is any precedent, a mere blip compared to the inundation from global warming, government will literally be helpless to turn the tides.


BRICK (B+)

Plot lines seldom get more twisty and tortuous than this one, but what is even more bedeviling is the task of assimilating the linguistic code of writer/director’s Rian Johnson’s Southern California high school subculture; these kids speak in tongues very foreign to my ears. Their catchy, edgy cant, which some have likened to the private-eye jargon of Dashiell Hammett crime novels, sometimes has the hip-hop cadence and rhyme of rap, together with some of that genre’s repugnant content. Occasionally, there are stretches of dialogue that even reminded me of Shakespearean verse, though the Bard would probably be neither flattered nor amused by my suggestion. Bottom line is that, despite my considerable admiration for Johnson’s exhilarating, idiosyncratic script and his cadre of gifted young actors playing characters for the most part behaving badly, I struggled throughout to decipher enigmatic conversations salt and peppered with 21st century teen slang and keep up with who was doing what to whom and why -- feeling like an out of touch old fogy trying to fit in.

The story goes something like this. Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, even surpassing his memorable performance last year in Gregg Araki’s “Mysterious Skin”) is this see all, hear all, but say little antiheroic loner. If “Brick” is indeed an homage to noirish mystery thrillers of the 40’s, which seems to be a common impression, though not mine, Levitt, then, is reprising in a teen milieu some of the misanthropic characters associated with Humphrey Bogart. Brendan distances himself from his class’s mainstream -- perhaps, maelstrom is more fitting -- but his instincts, both animal and intellectual, are acute. High-minded and astute, but no sissy, Brendan can get sufficiently riled and confrontative with evildoers when the cause warrants. Our hero’s “cause” is his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie De Ravin) who turns up missing under ominous circumstances, then suddenly reappears before Brendan to spin a self-deprecating yarn about their incompatible lifestyles as a way of discouraging him from sleuthing her situation further. Then, poof, she vanishes again.

It’s clear that our young man is anything but over his estranged amour. He enlists the aid of a nerdy classmate and nascent gumshoe he calls “The Brain”(Matt O’Leary) -- hey, that’s what I was called in high school to differentiate me from the far more vaunted jocks; maybe times haven’t changed that much after all. “I can’t let her go, Brain,” he ruefully confesses to his like-minded buddy. “The Brain” knows where all the school’s proverbial bodies are buried. He agrees to be an extra set of ears and eyes for Brendan, sniffing out leads as to Emily’s where-and-whyabouts. Once on his mission, it isn’t long before Brendan stumbles upon her whereabouts. Unraveling the whyabouts proves far more labor intensive as Brendan runs afoul of a short-fused thug named Tugger (Noah Fleiss), a wigged-out substance abuser named Dode (Noah Segan), a two-faced seductress named Kara (Meagan Good), and a woman-of-the-world wannabe named Laura (Nora Zehetner), all of whom forge and breach alliances with unconscionable abandon. Setups, double crosses, and paybacks are de rigeur with this bunch. Amorality and treachery rule.

Eventually, Brendan’s perseverance takes him outside the student body and into the surreal sanctum of a drug kingpin -- known by his foot soldiers and constituents as The Pin (Lukas Haas). One misadventure leads to another, copious, but not gratuitous, blood is spilled, and ugly truths finally rise to the surface. We and Brendan become privy to the nasty ramifications of drug deals gone awry, the mystery of a tainted “brick,” presumably of cocaine, emerging betrayals, festering rivalries, the ruthless settling of scores, and just how Brendan’s ex factors into all of this.

Adult authority figures are noticeably scarce in “Brick”, who in films of old would have outsmarted and outmuscled schoolhouse ruffians and preserved decorum by intimidation, if not physical force. And school officials would have held sway with parents in matters of misbehavior and discipline. Here, Richard Roundtree makes a cameo appearance as the school’s assistant vice principal Gary Trueman, with whom Brendan carries on a tough bargaining session regarding the exchange of pertinent missing persons information. Each is mindful and respectful that there’s a delicate balance of power between school administration and the student body; both also know that balance can easily tilt towards the students if administration gets too pushy. So, despite Trueman’s authoritarian posturing, it is Brendan who’s dealing from a position of strength. The only parent to put in an appearance is The Pin’s mother -- a blathering Gracie Allenish airhead who’s clueless about what’s going on in her son’s cellar center of operations at 1250 Vista Blanca (get it?), offering his inner circle cookies and milk on their afternoon break.

Recently, Time magazine interviewed novelist John Updike about his latest book, Terrorist, which centers around a disaffected Arab-American high school student in New Jersey, whose Islamic faith is increasingly in conflict with the American value system. The interviewer inquired about the challenges to a septuagenarian writer of discoursing in today’s adolescent vernacular, to which Updike replied: “You don’t want to make it feel like you ran out and bought the latest version of the teen slang compendium. ...Maybe I did a laughably feeble job. I just tried to hear it, hear it as I imagined it. I figure this is my little world and not anybody else’s.” I can’t help wonder whether the language of “Brick” represents Rian Johnson’s “own little world”, or was the 32-year-old writer-director able to physically penetrate the realm and soak in the mores and language.

As an addendum to his observation about teen slang, Updike discussed his perplexity with rising levels of teen violence: “This is so beyond what was present in my high school... This kind of friendliness toward death, this feeling that it’s not such a big deal to kill or die, is after my generation. And you begin to say, why? There are so many people in the world that I think the notion that you are dispensable begins to catch everywhere. And that also, in an economic situation that seems a dead end to everybody, like this one (in his book), I think it’s easier to be willing to die.”

The characters of “Brick” are inured to violence, regard it as an inevitable characteristic of their lives, accept that it goes with the territory of life

Shot in San Clemente, California, much of “Brick” looks like the film stock was purposefully underexposed -- the color noticeably desaturated -- giving emphasis to the movie’s dark themes and shadowy characters, a la film noir. I intend to see it again when it becomes available on DVD, hoping to distill more meaning from the lingo and pick up threads missed the first time around.


ON A CLEAR DAY (B-) / KINKY BOOTS (A-)

Why have I lumped these two together? Simply because they’re both cut from the same cloth as the coattails they’ve grabbed onto -- a peculiarly British genre of films dating back to 1997’s “The Full Monty”, an irresistible crowd and critic pleaser, that summer’s sleeper hit worldwide, which ultimately earned its director, writer, and lead actor a boatload of nominations and awards and spurred other independent filmmakers to try their hand at what has become a more or less tried and true formula (Billy Elliot, Little Voice, Calendar Girls). The setting is usually a gritty, down-on-its-luck factory town in the British Midlands or Scotland, where marginalized wage earners are either locked with management in a bitter work stoppage, or caught in an industry whose product is no longer in strong demand, necessitating layoffs and reassignments. Sometimes the characters are just plain repressed, restless, bullied, or bored and looking for a diverting and/or rewarding way out of the hum-drums. Sometimes it’s the offspring of unfulfilled souls who aspire to break out of the blue collar mold or are persuaded to do so by their enterprising parents. The essential thread is that the central characters commit to a process of reordering their lives and reinventing themselves, usually in a way that’s uncharacteristically creative and affirming for the prevailing lifestyle.

In “On a Clear Day”, Frank (Peter Mullan), after decades with a Glasgow shipbuilder, finds himself downsized out of a job at the age of 55. Feeling devalued and adrift, his self-esteem in shambles, he isolates himself from his high-strung wife Joan (Brenda Blethyn), mellow son Rob (Jamie Sives), and even his cronies, despite the best efforts of all to buoy and validate him. Finally a chance remark by one of the mates Danny (Billy Boyd) gives Frank an idea, a challenge, and an escape hatch from his funk -- he will attempt to swim the English Channel. Besides the adrenaline rush of accomplishing such a physical feat in middle age -- Frank is unusually buffed for a man in his mid-50’s (Mullan is actually only 46) -- he needs to settle a personal score regarding a tragic accident years before that claimed the life of his second son. His behavior toward the surviving son -- a nontraditional, stay-at-home husband and dad, much too “sensitive” for Frank’s convention-bound tastes -- has been distant and disapproving ever since.

Mum’s the word about Frank’s impending venture with everyone except the four mates prepping him for his 21-mile crossing. Joan fears he’s having an affair, but, then, she’s got a secret of her own -- unbeknownst to her frequently absent husband, she’s been pursuing a job as a bus driver to keep the household financially afloat, but having a dickens of a time taming her temper and passing the exam. Much of this is not as serious as it sounds -- there are plenty of antics and blunders along the way to produce a fair share of laughs. Ultimately, though, reconciliation and rapprochement rule the day, a clear day on which you can foresee a rose-colored future for just about everyone involved in this feel-good, but lightweight and predictable yarn.

It’s hard to be hard on a film like this whose big earthy, working-class heart is in the right place. The writing is competent, occasionally even clever, the direction is diligent, and the performances earnest and endearing -- no one in British cinema is more earth mother than Brenda Blethyn. But “On a Clear Day” never rises out of the realm of modestly pleasant entertainment.

However, “Kinky Boots” does, in part because it has enough twists, tangents, and ticklish interrelationships to keeping us guessing about the outcome, and I guessed wrong. When his father Harold (Robert Pugh) suffers a fatal heart attack, sole heir Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton) is called back to Northampton from London to take over a family business he’s never fancied for himself as a life’s career. To make matters thornier, he soon discovers that the product -- men’s dress shoes -- has a market of diminishing returns, and his father has been covering up the factory’s failing fortunes for years, in order to keep his workers working.

Not to belabor the likelihood of certain plot details -- Charlie, agonizing over the inevitability of closing down the plant, crosses paths with Simon (Chiwetel Ejiofor), masquerading as Lola, the most athletically agile, formidably constructed drag queen I’ve ever seen, and, believe me, I’ve seen my share. Lola doesn’t lisp, mince, or prance, she belts, struts, and stomps about in thigh-high boots that are fire-engine red, not pansy pink. Ejiofor, who made his leading role debut as a Nigerian doctor drawn into a grisly discovery at a London hotel in the 2002 malevolent thriller “Dirty Pretty Things” and has gone on to prove his versatility and verisimilitude in romantic comedy (Love Actually, 2003), space villainy (Serenity, 2005), and mobster mashing (Four Brothers, 2005), gives a performance whose dynamism has as much to do with his character’s spiritual intensity and emotional honesty as its gender-bending panache. Growing up misunderstood, repressed, and abused has infused Simon with insights, passion, and fortitude that seldom waver and never knuckle under.

The fact that it’s impossible to find stiletto heels that will hold up under Lola’s muscular frame or withstand the stress of her punishing nightly routines is what brings about an improbable business alliance with Charlie. The glam, hip, and cosmopolitan Lola emigrates to provincial Northampton to design a line of kinky boots that will restore the Price factory to profitability -- but not without an inherent clash of lifestyles and values, and pockets of resistance in the unionized work force. When confronted with the prototype, crafted by Charlie himself, Lola shrinks back in horror, bellowing in basso profundo “Please, God, tell me I have not inspired something burgundy. (I want) red, red”!!!

Relationships, standards, and judgments begin to strain and/or shift. Even after the two entrepreneurs have built a harmonious working relationship, and the new line is beginning to take off, Lola can only get so far in breaking down certain of Charlie’s social conditioning barriers, his level of comfort with unconventional lives. An incident when they meet for dinner at a local restaurant causes a rift between them that imperils the business itself. Meanwhile, Charlie’s revitalizing venture is at odds with a scheme being pursued by his fiancee Nicola (Jemima Rooper), which will turn the factory into condo lofts. She wants the two of them out of the parochial East Midlands and back in the vibrant, sophisticated capitol. And his horizon-expanding, albeit ambivalent, relationship with Simon (Lola) has Charlie questioning whether Lauren (Sarah-Jane Potts), a rallying voice in the shoe factory and increasingly attentive presence in his personal life, wouldn’t be a better match than Nicola. And Simon, sensing that his once straight-laced boss is showing signs of moral liberation, has a flirtatious moment or two with Charlie that comes within a whisker of being mutual.

There’s a lot going on “Kinky Boots,” much to process as the plot, based on actual events, is unfolding. Charlie is the evolving character -- his belief system shaken and stirred by the chance encounter and subsequent symbiosis with Simon -- and Edgerton’s facial expressions window into a soul being incrementally awakened to gradations of gray and splashes of color after years of sleepwalking in complacent extremes of black and white. Geoff Deane and Tim Firth have melded wit, whimsy, and wisdom into a screenplay that’s as evocative as it is entertaining. Julian Jarrold, known heretofore for his television work (Crime and Punishment, All the King’s Men, Anonymous Rex, Great Expectations), has hereby established himself as a credible director of theatrical films, as well.


CLEAN (B-)

It’s title is deceptive. When this film ends, we are meant to assume that lead character Emily Wang has finally kicked her wretched heroin habit and is “clean.” But it’s hard to care very much one way or another because of the selfish mess she’s made of her own life and those whose lives she’s touched along the road to recovery, including that of her son Jay, who’s been all but abandoned to the care of her in-laws, while Emily and her partner Lee flounder in the agony and ecstasy of penning and peddling their music and shooting up the proceeds.

Writer and director Olivier Assayas has indulged himself in creating a virtuosic vehicle for actor and former wife Maggie Cheung, as Emily, a rock singer on the cusp of desperation and fame, who makes excuses for her addiction on the basis of the hard knocks and humiliations inherent in getting a career off the ground. She may or may not break through with a chart topper, but Emily has already mastered the business of flimflam and manipulation. Cheung, known throughout Asia for her work in Hong Kong action films, won the best actress award for “Clean” at Cannes in 2004, but, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

Emily is a petulant, sullen, self-pitying creature, and Cheung plays her with a rigid and frigid one-dimensionality that is irritating and resistant to compassion, or at least mine. I don’t want to judge Cheung’s acting skills on the basis of one film, and I’ll concede that her face commands attention, if not admiration. However, if she really is an actor capable of emotional depth and range, she’s been betrayed here by the director’s mishandling of her character’s complexity and his obsession with tight close-ups on a face that’s translucent and inscrutable. Aside from an early scene in which she is arguing with Lee, shortly before his death in a run-down motel room of drug overdose, Cheung’s countenance is largely impassive. On the few occasions when she smiles, the expression seems disingenuous. Even in scenes with her boy, late in the film, in which she’s trying to convince him that she’s a fit, caring, loving mother, her soft words have a hard edge, and, though her mouth forms a smile, her eyes remain cold. I was pulling for him to reject her bid to reclaim him.

Still, there are things to admire about “Clean”, and one of them is Nick Nolte’s uncharacteristically sweet-tempered, thoughtful, humane performance as Albrecht Hauser, Emily’s father-in-law. Despite his hulking frame, craggy face, and look of dissipation, Albrecht is a gentle giant whose own hard living, which we have to assume and imagine, has infused him with a fatalistic philosophy that is grounded, empathetic, and forgiving. When his wife Rosemary (Martha Henry), who blames Emily for the death of their son, is diagnosed with cancer, Albrecht makes a calm, touching, reasoned case for restoring Jay to his mother, citing both the practical aspects of rearing Jay “when we’re no longer around” and his faith in Emily’s devotion to the boy and sincerity in getting her life in order. And Albrecht’s interaction with Emily, though cautious, is full of hopefulness and goodwill.

Henry, whose work I know from the Stratford (Ontario) Theater Festival, shows her mettle as the first lady of the Canadian stage in three memorable scenes with Nolte. The film was shot in Canada, some of it in and around the industrial city of Hamilton, Ontario, where Lee dies and Emily’s life unravels. But there are scenes that take place in London -- Rosemary’s birthplace which the Hausers visit with Jay and where she is diagnosed and hospitalized -- and Paris, where Emily goes after doing jail time for narcotics possession, to reunite with old friends and rehabilitate herself.


THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (B)/
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (B)

Meryl Streep is the prima donna absoluta of American cinema, filmdom’s equivalent of La Stupenda, the acclamation accorded in the 60’s to Joan Sutherland, bel canto opera’s voice of the century. Streep has been beguiling us with profound, penetrating performances for nearly 30 years, beginning with a couple of prophetic scenes in the 1977 award-winner “Julia”. It is said that she can play just about any character, and, while that may be somewhat hyperbolic, it’s essentially true, with no better example than her tour-de-force presence in the multi-award-winning HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”, in which, for openers, she appeared unrecognizably as an orthodox Yiddish rabbi named Isador Chemelwitz, switching genders, religions, and dialects to portray a Mormon housewife named Hannah Pitt, then turning Jewish once again to portray the reincarnation of convicted Communist spy Ethel Rosenberg.

However, her amazing versatility, her gift with accents, her genius at fleshing out complex characters -- while having no peer in the industry -- does not guarantee that the end result is entirely successful and satisfying every time out. And I think Streep, who could teach vain and testy upstart colleagues a lesson or two in humility and accessibility, would agree that it’s impossible to deliver a career-defining performance 50 times, which is the approximate number of theatrical films she’s appeared in. The New York Times rates 14 of Streep’s performances as “critic’s picks”, an impressive number that represents between 25 and 30 percent of her entire body of feature film work, and those 14 do not include “The Bridges of Madison County”, “A Cry in the Dark”, or, unbelievably, “Sophie’s Choice”, all of which are major achievements, in my humble estimation.

At 57, Streep works more than any other film actress her age, with the possible exception of Susan Sarandon. She has had leading roles in three films released in the past nine months alone, and six more are either in pre-, current, or post-production stages, or have been announced, including an eagerly awaited turn as Watergate figure Martha Mitchell in “Dirty Tricks”, scheduled for release later this year. If anything, she might be guilty of being “just a girl who can’t say ‘no’.” And, despite the fact that she’s never been known as a temperamental diva, some directors may be in awe of her stature and credentials and leave her too much to her own devices. That, of course, didn’t happen in “Angels in America”, with sure-handed Mike Nichols at the helm, but it does happen to some extent in two non-blockbuster movies that have generated surprisingly strong appeal in the middle of the summer -- “The Devil Wears Prada” and “A Prairie Home Companion”. I’m in agreement with The New York Times, which rates “Companion” a “critic’s pick”, but not “Prada”.

Make no mistake, “Prada” is highly entertaining, even occasionally observant. It’s the story of a somewhat naive Generation Y woman named Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) -- an aspiring journalist -- who’s hired on as the assistant to the editor of Runway magazine -- a career coup but a job nightmare, owing to the fact that said editor is the Cruella de Vil of the fashion industry -- a sadistic high priestess named Miranda Priestly (Streep). Barely surviving an early spate of missteps and misadventures -- many of them hilarious -- and the subsequent wrath of her boss from hell, Andy rises to the opportunity to match wits and make points (and peace) with Miranda, though the demands of the job eventually play havoc with her personal life, particularly the relationship with her main man Nate (Adrian Grenier). Hathaway is the actor to watch in this film -- she’s proactive and substantial in the midst of shtick humor involving an outrageous personality like Miranda. Not only does she survive and conquer Priestly, but she out-acts Streep in the process.

I see Miranda Priestly as an emotional terrorist -- unremittingly single-minded, self-obsessed, insensitive, and nasty, with no rhyme or reason to her expectations or demands, other than a towering ego. Those I’ve talked to who’ve read Lauren Weisberger’s novel, upon which the film is based, insist that the author’s Miranda was an unmitigated monster -- in other words, she had no redeeming characteristics or moments. Streep’s Miranda, on the other hand, is only semi-vicious, the boss from heck; her claws don’t sink in as deeply as they should. Her wickedness is too measured, too contained, and her barbs don’t have nearly the toxic sting I expected. Even her timing -- or the editing -- is a little off here and there. “The Devil Wears Prada” could have and should have been funnier than it was.

Streep fares better in a down-home indie based on Garrison Keillor’s legendary NPR radio variety show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” in which she plays a character whose realm and disposition are at polar odds with those of Miranda Priestly, and, in so doing, displays a pair of formidable singing pipes and a lusty flare for country tunes. Oh, and Streep easily looks two decades younger than her 57 years, with a free-falling mane of blonde hair and a copious application of crimson lip gloss. The film recalls radio shows of the 40’s, such as “Duffy’s Tavern” and “Fibber McGee and Molly,” which found their way to the silver screen so the masses could see what their favorite air personalities looked like.

Directed by Robert Altman (Gosford Park, Short Cuts, The Player, Nashville) and originally titled “The Last Broadcast”, Keillor’s screenplay explores the premise that the radio show has run its course (which it hasn’t actually), nudged off the airwaves by a deal negotiated by a born-again corporate magnate called the Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) to buy and tear down the the St. Paul theater (The Fitzgerald) from which the broadcasts originate (they still do). Keillor has created a bumbling, Peter Sellar’s private eye clone named Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) to watch over the proceedings and an angel of death character (Virginia Madsen) on a backstage mission to make certain cast members accountable for past sins.

Streep and Lily Tomlin are the singing Johnson Sisters -- the top act on the show. Yolanda is the sexy one, trying to put a happy face on her terminated affair with Keillor and, at the same time, keep her teen-age daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan) from acting on a suicide wish. Rhonda is the funny one, butch to her sister’s fem, wiser to the wicked ways of the world and fast on the draw with a piercing wit to get her points across.

Dusty (Woody Harrelson) and Lefty (John C. Reilly) are two of the show’s other mainstays; they sing a little, strum a little, and tell the folksiest dirty jokes you’ll ever hear, accompanied by a sound effects man (Tom Keith), who can simulate any sound with his nose, mouth, and hands. Tragedy strikes about midway through the film when a beloved senior member of the troupe has a fatal heart attack in his dressing room while prepping for a tryst with the lunch lady.

Keillor has done a decent job of opening up a microphone-confined setting to include real-life vignettes involving cast members. Some of the devices make more sense and have more impact than others, but, overall, “A Prairie Home Companion” is a balmy, neighborly summer’s entertainment .


THE DA VINCI CODE (C-)

It’s almost inevitable that a film based on a runaway international best-selling novel like “The Da Vinci Code” should also take worldwide cineplexes by storm. Those who weren’t among the 40 million or so readers of the book (I for one), feeling marginalized enough for not hopping onto that rumbling bandwagon, aren’t likely to let the parade pass them by a second time. And those who picked up the book sometime after it was published in 2003 and simply couldn’t put it down for fascination with its symbological puzzles and conspirational themes are clamoring to see it all visualized before them in widescreen and DTS.

There was a six-month marketing buildup to a premiere in Cannes on May 17 and a mass opening worldwide two days later. By the end of its first weekend in release, “The Da Vinci Code” had already chachinged to the tune of $224 million in global ticket sales. To be sure, much of the lure of both novel and film lies in those abstruse anagrams and cryptograms, clandestine cover-ups and bedeviling intrigues within the hallowest of halls, exhilarating chases along the boulevards and back alleys of European capitols, and strongly aberrant behavior on the part of at least one member of a secret, even cultish, organization known as Opus Dei. American society, characteristically motivated by fear, anxiety, and distrust, often gravitates towards conspiracy theories as a way to assimilate and process traumatic historical events. For instance, there are growing numbers who believe that the Bush administration was somehow complicit in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that the Pentagon was targeted with one of our own missiles. How about the legions who still contend, 43 years later, that the Warren Commission whitewashed the involvement of Castro Cuba and/or Lyndon Baines Johnson in the JFK assassination. “The Da Vinci Code” is right up any conspiracy theorist’s alley.

The story, as preposterous and impossibly labyrinthine as it is, also plays into growing cynicism and disaffection among Catholics surrounding the sanctity and altruism of their Church -- in light of pervasive scandal, arcane doctrine, and a hierarchy self-righteously impervious to sociological enlightenment. Is it any wonder that many dispirited Catholics are ready to believe the worst about the power politics of their faith, even, as “The Da Vinci Code” proposes, a perverse ecclesiastical underground in which evil masquerades as piety in the name of inviolability and seeks to silence those who would lay bare a system of fabrications and lies underpinning the world’s oldest surviving institution.

According to the Akiva Goldman screenplay, which readers of the novel claim nearly replicates Dan Brown’s text, there are not-so-subtle clues in certain Da Vinci paintings, leading to the conclusion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a couple who produced an offspring named Sara and a line of descendants dating to the present. Tangential subplots call into question the real meaning and actual whereabouts of the Holy Grail, and how the Knights Templar and Opus Dei factor into the perpetuation of suspect scripture. Central to “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, is a core of purported truths inconvenient and potentially lethal to Catholic dogma, that must be suppressed by any manner or means, including murder.

In case you don’t already know but care, murder is, in fact, what propels this story -- the grisly demise inside a Louvre gallery of esteemed museum curator Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle). Sauniere has been fatally shot, but, in a stretch of credibility, lingers in life just long enough to strip down to his birthday suit and scrawl a cipher -- a puzzle of numbers and letters -- in blood across his body. He then arranges himself symbolically on the museum floor in a pose that will mean something to a Da Vinci savant. Called to the scene to try to make sense of it all are stuffy Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), who has had a mysterious phone call from Sauniere earlier in the day; police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), who also may or may not be the deceased’s granddaughter, and may or may not be in the Mary Magdalene bloodline; and the requisite swarthy investigator from the Quai des Orfevres named Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), who puts a couple of coincidences together and presumes that both Langdon and Neveu are prime suspects.

With some clever maneuvering, the pair manage to divert Fache long enough to wriggle out of the Louvre and onto the teeming streets of Paris in Neveu’s tiny but nimble vehicle -- no more than a glorified putt-putt with a hood and roof. They manage to lose the investigator and his deputies, but eventually, have another pursuer on their tails -- an albino warrior/practitioner of Opus Dei named Silas (Paul Bettany), who routinely gets naked and self-flagellates with whips and chains -- a visual feast for the S&M crowd -- cycling through a punishing protocol of penitence preparatory to carrying out heinous acts upon others, at the behest of his “Teacher,” the Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina). There is brief backstory that suggests that Silas’s servitude on behalf of his faith is “atonement” for “real” crimes of his youth.

In due course, Langdon and Neveu flee across the Channel to London where they find temporary asylum in the gated sanctuary of Holy Grail scholar and Langdon colleague Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen). A wily eccentric equal parts friend and foe, Teabing leads them on yet another frenzied goose chase, replete with obstacles, deceptions, and perilous goings-on too numerous, nonsensical, and convoluted to detail. Eventually, it becomes clear that everyone but Langdon is either duplicitous, conflicted, or morally compromised. But Langdon, our reluctant hero after all, perseveres, all the riddles get solved, and their solution leads us...well, if you haven’t read the book and plan to see the movie, never mind where it leads us. The wrap-up of this aspiring nail-bitter is meant to leave audiences awestruck -- an escalating Hans Zimmer musical score and ceremonious panning and zooming of cameras insinuate as much. But for all of its high-minded premises, its sinuous plot, its esteemed director and cast, and its blockbuster hype, “The Da Vinci Code” is surprisingly pedestrian -- even the chase scenes don’t generate edge-of-seat excitement.

The fact that critics have ranged from frigid to cool about the film as art is having no more effect on box office receipts than the judgments of literary critics who skewered the book as ludicrous drivel amateurishly written had on the thunderous stampede to Barnes and Noble and Borders. Most reviewers have complained that the movie parallels the narrative of the book to a fault -- resulting in long stretches of cerebral dialogue interspersed with only short bursts of visceral action -- a consequence that’s antithetical to holding an audience rapt in this day and age. When you’re reading a book and the narrative gets complex and confusing, you can always reread passages, even flip back to earlier chapters to refresh your memory or connect elusive dots. If a filmmaker relies too heavily on dialogue to advance a serpentine plot line, audience members don’t have the option of rising from their seats and pining, “could you repeat that please, and slower this time.”

In the case of “The Da Vinci Code” The Movie, it’s almost as if screenwriter Goldman and director Ron Howard were assuming that everyone had read...and, what’s more, comprehended... the book. Much of the dialogue comes across as if it’s being delivered in lecture hall, particularly problematic when a folksy everyman like Tom Hanks is doing the lecturing. On the other hand, lofty discourse works to the advantage of a British actor trained in classic theater such as Ian McKellan. McKellan, master orator and irrepressible ham, wrings essence and nuance out of every word -- managing to be both eloquent and mischievous in the process. He’s the only actor having fun with what he undoubtedly knew were pompous lines in a film that takes itself far too seriously.
Paul Bettany, another in a long thoroughbred line of multifaceted male film actors from Down Under (Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger, Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman, Hugo Weaving, Anthony LaPaglia), as Silas, is as macabre and menacing inflicting pain and suffering on himself as he is on his hit list of others, revealing a chameleonic ability to be hideous and handsome at the same time.

Jean Reno brings the right balance of authority and humanity to the role of Fache, especially when he realizes that his belief system may be at odds with his criminal investigation.

In the role of Langdon, Hanks has, at last, succumbed to the Peter Principle and risen to his level of incompetence, miscast as a one-dimensionally starchy academic . We never get passed his pedagogic credentials -- and an ill-advised hairdo -- to get a glimpse of his soul and his life back in Massachusetts. He’s all about theorems and hypotheses from start to finish -- and the occasional witticism he’s allowed to utter to break the tension seems painfully out of place because there’s never much opportunity for tension to build, in the midst of a talkathon screenplay.

As for Tautou, there is nothing I’ve seen in three films of hers (Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, and this one) that suggests that she belongs in front of a movie camera instead of behind a cosmetics counter at Au Printemps. She’s already attained legendary status as the ice princess of French cinema with porcelain features that would surely shatter were she to betray their inscrutability. On the other hand, some might argue that, in playing a cryptologist, Tautou’s technique has every right to be cryptic.

And as a film about ciphers and the impassive people who try to decipher them, “The Da Vinci Code” has every reason to be indecipherable. Yet by all indications, this film is a global crowd pleaser, and that, in my opinion, is unfathomable.


NINE LIVES (B+)

Rodrigo Garcia, the Colombian filmmaker mainly known up to now for his television work on the HBO series “Six Feet Under”, “Carnivale”, “Big Love”, and “The Sopranos”, wrote and directed this collection of woman-driven vignettes, ten to fourteen-minute fragments of lives in varying stages of turmoil, travail, or transition. Each vignette was shot in an single take, utilizing the Steadicam system. We catch just enough in most of the segments to enable us to imagine a bigger picture of what transpired before and how things are likely to play out. These are stories of misunderstandings, missed chances, second chances, bad hands dealt, good hands dealt but bungled, and colliding forces of human interaction that lead to disillusionment and despair, resentment and rebellion, and a host of other emotions. “Nine Lives”, which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Festival, reinforces what most of us should already know about ourselves -- that we’re an imperfect species; that, depending on how impulsive our natures, we sometimes, or maybe often, act in haste, then repent at leisure.

Three or four of Garcia’s snapshots are particularly evocative, none more so than the chance reunion in a supermarket aisle of former lovers Diana (Robin Wright Penn) and Damian (Jason Isaacs). Both have since “happily” married, he into serious money. She’s pregnant -- well along and uncamouflaged -- and wishes at the moment that she weren’t. That there are still sparks between them is unmistakable, but the emotional scars of their breakup are clearly evident, as well. Their conversation is rushed, hushed, and highly erotic -- they’re trying to be surreptitious in busy surroundings, but their sexual longings for one another are palpable, and Penn and Isaacs generate enough electricity to power a small city, running through a panoply of conflicting responses, including, but not limited to, elation, embarrassment, anger, arousal, guilt, and giddiness. These two gifted actors convey the anguished ambivalence of their characters as much by sensual eye contact and body language as words, because propriety dictates that their words have to be selected with great care. Still, enough is said, as the two fitfully part company, then come together again in various parts of the store, to express regrets, recriminations, and reawakened desire. The last 30 seconds, with Diana , having second thoughts about dismissing Damian with hurtful words, frantically searches for him aisle by aisle to take back what she said. I swear it’ll tear up the most hardened filmgoer.

Almost as compelling are mini-episodes involving: (a) a repeat offender named Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo) trapped in a web of mean-spirited inmate politics fueled by a duplicitous guard named Ron (Miguel Sandoval) and assorted other prison personalities fighting to survive day by day; (b) a disassociated, pathologically disturbed young woman Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton) who comes home to confront first her sister and then her father with long-festering issues related to growing up in the family home; (c) a divorced woman Lorna (Amy Brenneman), reluctantly paying her respects at the funeral of her ex-husband Andrew’s (William Fichter) wife, who resists then yields to rapture when old passions flare in a parlor ante room; (d) a middle-aged woman Camille (Kathy Baker), being prepped for cancer surgery, unleashes a barrage of self-pitying invective at her husband Richard (Joe Mantegna) and everyone else administering to her until an injection of sedative reveals her ingratiating lighter side; and e) Maggie (Glenn Close) takes her young daughter Maria (Dakota Fanning) on a picnic at the graveside of a close family member, a ritual that has an unexpectedly heartbreaking outcome.

Not all of Garcia’s snapshots are as composed and focused as one would like. One, in particular -- a family portrait featuring a teenage daughter named Samantha (Amanda Seyfried), an only child care taking her emotionally disconnected parents and serving as communications conduit between the two -- a devoted invalid father Larry (Ian McShane), trying valiantly to put a happy face on life, and his agreeable, but remote wife Ruth (Sissy Spacek), trying to sublimate her grief over an accident that rendered her marriage passionless -- plays stiffly and unconvincingly, as does a subsequent scene involving the same woman in quest of her sexual reawakening in a furtive motel room rendezvous with an outgoing romantic named Henry, played by Aidan Quinin. Spacek can be an affecting actress, or she can appear damnably uninvolved. In this film, as in “In the Bedroom”, for which she earned high praise several years ago, I just couldn’t get a handle on her character. Or maybe I just have an aversion to characters who are purposefully perplexing. Quinine, on the other hand, is a consistently appealing, accessible, but underrated actor, who always brings a high level of vitality and viability to his characters. And he’s had lots of practice, having appeared in 49 films over the past 22 years.

One of the strengths of “Nine Lives,” owing to its episodic structure and unresolved situations, is that it consistently has its audience wanting to know more -- none of the stories wraps up neatly. This is entertainment that speaks to the voyeur in all of us, that not only stresses an inevitable connectivity among human beings, but resigns us to the painful fact that life is fickle and fragile in so many ways.


THE DYING GAUL (A)

Internet chat rooms are popular places for getting into all sorts of mischief. Trouble is, people with too much time on their hands toying around anonymously with others to add a little spice to their lives can easily get entrapped by their own curiosity and/or vulnerability, and mischief, given unexpected revelations, can easily escalate to malice. That’s precisely what happens to Elaine (Patricia Clarkson) and Robert (Peter Sarsgaard) in writer/director Craig Lucas’s probing tale of ambivalent sexuality and self-victimization, “The Dying Gaul”. Based on Lucas’s play of the same title, this visually arresting, intuitively directed and acted, but profoundly disturbing film, set in the seductive Hollywood milieu of big bucks and easy fucks, and which had a limited run of art houses from November to February, can now be found at video rental stores that carry more than just the mainstream and mundane, or accessed on Pay-per-View -- that’s if you’re able to move past the lustful indiscretions and excesses of the three main characters and feel the pain they’ve inadvertently inflicted on themselves and one another. Be forewarned that that may be a tall order for some folks for whom the film’s sexual content is either aberrant or too explicit, or both. Embedded in the narrative is the whole issue of ambisexuality, with a reference or two to the manner in which Kinsey plotted sexuality along a continuum from 0 to 6.

Robert Sandrich is an aspiring screenwriter who’s written numerous scripts on spec, but has yet to make his first sell. He’s expecting his meeting with A-list Hollywood producer Jeffrey Tishop (Campbell Scott) to result in yet another rejection, but, to his giddy amazement, the irresistibly genial and indulgent executive offers him a million dollars for the rights to his latest work, which is autobiographical and carries a huge emotional investment because it deals with the death from AIDS of Robert’s late partner and agent Malcolm (Maurice in the script).

But there’s one catch, and it’s an agonizing one for the writer, for whom his story is so personal -- he has to modify it to change Maurice to Maggie and heterosexualize the material for mass consumption, because, despite Jeffrey’s professed comfort with homosexuality and appreciation for offbeat scripts, his bottom line, of course, is profitability, and, as he says matter-of-factly, “Americans hate gays.” Masterful at massaging egos, Jeffrey dissolves Robert’s resistance, sugarcoating business logic with flirtatious flattery. Robert, humiliated and scornful at first, succumbs entirely, and is drawn, seduced actually, into Jeffrey and Elaine’s glam world. He’s invited to their parties, but is frequently at the house anyway conferring with Jeffrey about script revisions. In no time, he’s treated like a member of their happy family.

Despite being the mother of two young children who are very demanding of her energy, Elaine, a sometime screenwriter herself, takes a protective, quasi-maternal, interest in Robert, sensing correctly that he’s still grieving the loss of Malcolm. But she’s also at that sexually restless age, and her libido needs a little pick-me-up, even if it’s only a prurient peak into a gay man’s intimate thoughts and pursuits. At first, her questions -- over drinks at pool side when Jeffrey is out of hearing range -- are probing but empathetic, and Robert is grateful for the TLC. It isn’t long before he’s totally relaxed in her company, so much so, in fact, that when she gets up the nerve to ask him about his sex life and how he hooks up with potential partners, he tells her about chat rooms -- one in particular -- and, in a reckless moment, even reveals his screen name. Now Elaine is armed, and, though she doesn’t realize it, quite dangerous.

At the first opportunity, she’s logged on to the site, chosen a screen name of her own, and started up an anonymous chat with the unsuspecting Robert. She doesn’t mean any harm; she’s just being naughty and adventurous and wants to see just where this delightful deception takes her. And where it takes her, and, ultimately, where it takes Robert and her husband, is what the rest of the movie is about.

One can’t help but be reminded of two adages that apply to Elaine’s caper and its outcome: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive” and “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” Lucas has written and directed a bold, mesmerizing, multidimensional screenplay whose characters are fervent, unabashed, and psychosexually complex, and whose Southern California visuals heighten the overall sense of unconventionality. The performances of Clarkson, Sarsgaard, and Scott are a clinic in character insight and acuity. Scott, who gravitates toward the idiosyncratic and non-formulaic when choosing film projects -- he had the lead in another Lucas screenplay, “The Secret Lives of Dentists” three years ago and in Dylan Kidd’s edgy “Roger Dodger” a year before that -- also produced this film.