SUMMER SIZZLES AND FIZZLES

AFTER THE WEDDING (EFTER BRYLLUPPET) (A+)

I was just coming off my euphoric high from “The Lives of Others,” a Cold War era story of self-discovery and redemption in the desperately paranoiac last years of the East German Stasi, when along comes an exquisite Danish film about reconnecting lives, second chances, and noble deeds called “After the Wedding,” written and directed by Susanne Bier, that all but left me hyperventilating. Both films are as freehanded and frank as they are forgiving while penetrating with astute precision the flawed, enigmatic, but accessible souls that populate their narratives. Both explore the murky issues of power, trust, self-interest, honor, morality, and spirituality. Without sentimentality or the manipulation of our responses, both end on an upbeat, if uncertain note of hopefulness.

“After the Wedding” is often extraordinary for what is left unsaid -- Bier, with 20-20 vision of her story and its implications, believes in an economy of words and the generous use of camera close-ups to capture nuances in expression, gesture, mannerism, and body language, as her characters have stirring encounters with one another. Of course, that approach takes for granted the keen insights and instincts of her actors and how fully invested they are in their roles. Those assumptions are never in doubt with the cast of “After the Wedding,” which is headed by Mads Mikkelsen as Jacob Petersen, a rugged, hands-on humanitarian and, in some cases, surrogate father, who administers a food-aid program for orphaned children in India.

The promise of a windfall gift from a wealthy Copenhagen industrialist named Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard) that will underwrite construction of an orphanage takes Jacob back to his native soil for somewhat delicate negotiations. There are terms and conditions to iron out before the transfer of funds can be implemented, so Jacob is obliged to be obliging to his benefactor for a few days. As it happens, the wedding of Jorgen’s only daughter Anna coincides with Jacob’s stay, and the affable billionaire is graciously adamant that Jacob attend, though our hero is clearly more at home with grit than glitz.

Just after the ceremony itself, Jacob encounters a coincidental and shocking link with his past and, later, a stunning revelation about the present, that saddles him with a potentially life-altering dilemma. What follows is an urgent and deeply affecting melodrama, in its most distinguished form, that explores with brilliant clarity and aching humanity the yin and yang of allegiances, moral ambiguities, and, in the end, a decision that tests the mettle of a man torn between two callings.

Mikkelsen, seen for the first time by most American moviegoers as the villain Le Chiffre in last year’s James Bond prequel, “Casino Royale,” is a magnetic actor, in the mold of Clive Owen, Gerard Butler, Christian Bale, and Russell Crowe, who commands the screen with his ideally constructed frame, chiseled cheekbones, and wide eyes that peer icily and inscrutably, probe menacingly, and well up tenderheartedly as befits a complex character haunted by a less-than-impeccable past and confronted with having to make intelligent judgments and agonizing choices that will change the entire landscape of his future.

But “After the Wedding” is almost as much Lassgard’s film, as he transitions from impregnable corporate mogul with appearances of ulterior magnanimity to gentle giant in the ultimate state of vulnerability. He has a scene near the end of “After the Wedding” that’s as exhaustively heart-rending as any I’ve seen on film.

Like “The Lives of Others,” “After the Wedding” was an entry in last year’s Oscar sweepstakes for Best Foreign Language Film, but wasn’t placed in general U.S. release until the first quarter of 2007. They’ll be tough competition for the wave of late year entries that usually dominate my “Dazzling Dozen.”


AWAY FROM HER (A)

One of Grant’s first realizations that his wife Fiona is exhibiting symptoms of something more than random forgetfulness or a senior moment comes in one of the opening scenes of first-time writer-director Sarah Polley’s incisive but disconsolate film “Away from Her”. They’re cleaning up after dinner in the kitchen of their Canadian country cottage. He hands her a skillet he’s just dried; she pauses indecisively, glances about the room, then deposits the fry pan in the refrigerator freezer. It’s the dead of winter in a sparsely populated stretch between Hamilton and London, Ontario, and the gloomy winter landscape only accentuates the onset of debilitating illness and the prospect of loss and upheaval.

Before long, Fiona sets off from home on cross-country trails she’s skied hundreds of times, then has no clue where she is or where she’s headed. Grant finds her hours later, terrified, shivering, and gazing off into space in a neighboring town. Days later, when she hoists a tall, narrow-necked bottle one evening and asks if any of their dinner guests would like more...more what?... the cat’s out of the bag. Fiona is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Clearly, “Away from Her” is not escapist entertainment. But it will find a rapt audience among med students, caregivers, those who earn their living in a senior environment, and people like me who are in the autumn of life, wondering if Alzheimer’s is waiting in the wings, and in awe of a filmmaker, not yet 30, brave, sensitive, and skilled enough to tackle a late-in-life disease with such hopeless implications and showcase it around a narrative that is painstakingly observant, candid, and quietly passionate -- all without overplaying its tragic effects.

Polley, a distinguished actor herself (The Sweet Hereafter, The Hanging Garden, Go, Don’t Come Knocking) in small, independent films, has assembled a formidable cast for “Away from Her,” headed by the ageless and compelling Julie Christie as Fiona, still enchanting and engaging even as her faculties begin to fade. Grant, her beleaguered husband, is played by Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, as a character wracked as much by guilt and remorse over past infidelities as the panic and profound sorrow of having to let go of someone he hasn’t been able to live without for 44 years. Adding to his grief is the realization that, in the haze of her dementia, she is transferring her affections to a mute fellow patient named Aubrey at the antiseptic, but surreal nursing home they’ve been consigned to.

Olympia Dukakis delivers one of her most cogent, understatedly eloquent, and heart-winning performances as Marian, the wife of Aubrey, philosophically at peace with the new hand life has dealt her and amenable to forming a mutually supportive alliance with Grant.

Despite its deliberate pace and the glaring absence of action and tech-age graphics, “Away from Her” is decidedly not for sissies. Its disturbing images derive not from sociopaths, bloodbaths, or mutant creatures, but from the insidiousness of a disease that eventually erodes the defining individuality of a human being, leaving behind an empty physical shell.


WAITRESS (A-)

With most triumph-of-the-spirit tales, the path to conquest and glory is predictable. We can take for granted that antagonists will be subdued and/or protagonists will prevail against all odds. And we will revel, and sometimes wallow, in the cumulative surmounting of setbacks along the way to ascendancy and vindication. The current film “Gracie” (which I won’t be reviewing) is triumph-of-the-spirit by the numbers -- the trailers alone lay it out for us in no uncertain terms, with a timeline sequence of clips and bytes.

“Waitress,” on the other hand, plays its hand fairly close to the vest. We know that, given the film’s comedic veneer, it’s unlikely that Jenna’s “train wreck” of a life -- her assessment, not ours -- will prove fatal, or even permanently scarring, in the end. But, inasmuch as our perky, pie-baking heroine (Keri Russell) is self-reproachfully pregnant by the repugnant, abusive man-child of a husband named Earl (Jeremy Sisto) she fears, despises, and is preparing to leave, and inasmuch as she is head-over-heels for her married pediatrician -- a gentle, but passionate soul who pursues her with tender loving care and lustful ardor both in and beyond his exam room -- we’re quite unsure to what outcome this collision course of a narrative is headed.

Much of “Waitress” is set against the evangelical deep south backdrop of Joe’s Diner -- the only place where Jenna truly rules, ingratiating customers with her sunny disposition and sending them into ecstasies with her signature line of pies, tarts, and torts, which, especially when she’s agitated or aroused, are sinful pleasures to the palate. Crowd favorites include “Earl Murders Me Because I’m Having An Affair pie -- you smash blackberries and raspberries into a chocolate crust -- and “Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie -- lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in...flambe of course.”

The fluffy pastry she bestows upon her baby doc on her first office visit proves an unequivocal aphrodisiac, though, with his disposition toward propriety and piety, he likens the offering to a religious experience, avowing that it is “biblically good”. “Jenna, what you do with food is unearthly,” he cries out while they’re locked in an embrace. Somehow, despite his marital infidelity and breach of professional ethics, it’s hard not to be partial to Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) as an affirming antidote to the repellent Earl.

Russell brings just the right amounts of wit, nervous energy, skittishness, and, ultimately, resourcefulness to her character. Sisto reprises many of the unsettling neurotic elements of his role of Billy Chenowith on HBO’s “Six Feet Under’” over five seasons. Only 32, he has an incredible 65 acting credits in a career that’s spanned only 16 years. Octogenarian Andy Griffith makes a rare and endearing feature film appearance as Old Joe, crusty commentator of life and his diner’s best customer, from whom Jenna accepts generous helpings of tough love.

“Waitress” was written and directed with acuity and affection by the late Adrienne Shelly (Factotum, Law and Order, Oz), who also stars as Dawn, one of Jenna’s two commiserating waitress pals -- the other is Becky, played by Cheryl Hines. Unfortunately, Shelly didn’t live to see the completion of her film or its box office success ($16 million in receipts through the end of June). Shelly was murdered in her Greenwich Village apartment house last November by a construction worker she confronted about excessive noise he was making. She was only 40.

As an advertising tag line for the message her film intones -- “if only life were as easy as pie.”





KNOCKED UP (A)

Forgive my self-indulgence, but sometimes I can’t help but marvel at my own unpredictability, my open-mindedness, when certain predispositions and principles would appear likely to sway -- some would say, cloud -- my judgment.

As those of you who read these critiques may remember -- a little film that ensnared vast audiences two years ago and put Steve Carell on the mainstream movie fast track (Little Miss Sunshine, Evan Almighty) incurred my wrath as the most banal, boneheaded Hollywood product of 2005. I refer to Judd Apatow’s “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” that one high-profile critic still insists is “the timeless American romantic comedy classic” -- a hyperbolic declaration for the ages.

Now, along comes Apatow’s latest subcultural fling, with the crude, rude, and libidinous title, “Knocked Up,” that I swear I’ll have nothing to do with, and saints bejeezus, most of the A-list movie scribes are hemorrhaging accolades usually reserved for the late-autumn onslaught of award-worthy releases. I’m getting flashes of “There’s Something About Mary,” “Meet the Fockers,” and “The Wedding Crashers,” but those trained in the craft of critiquing are competing with one another for who can anoint “Knocked Up” with the most fulsome superlatives. Not that they were intellectualizing or mystifying the film’s intent and content -- rather it was the expansiveness of their praise, branding the movie “hilarious” and “uproarious,” terminology I reserve for the very occasional film that has me laughing out loud for long takes at least half of the running time. I’m talking screwball and slapstick, sight gags and frantic antics. I simply had to judge for myself.

I saw “Knocked Up” as the second of two features I booked into one afternoon at our largest multiplex, taking an aisle seat near an exit from which to make my early and hasty escape -- that, as it happens, never took place.

First off, in Nixonian fashion, let me make one thing perfectly clear, “Knocked Up” is neither uproarious nor hilarious. I did not once fall out of my seat and roll down the aisle. Oh, it has its share of mirthful moments, the stuff of chuckles and giggles, but nothing remotely convulsive. “Knocked Up” is surprisingly much too fresh, frank, and richly observant and affecting to be described with such cursory abandon, and I would like to believe that Apatow was not strictly playing for laughs nor are his character insights inadvertent. My point is that the central conceit of “Knocked Up” is not comedic, even though its central character, Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) is cut from Apatow’s stock-in-trade freaky, geeky slacker fabric. Most of Apatow’s humor derives from that fine line between adversity and absurdity.

Ben starts out as the archetypal schlemiel, an indolent klutz who rooms with a bunch of equally feckless penis-driven stoners with hazy dreams of Internet entrepreneurship. Ben subsists on the proceeds of an insurance settlement that are about to run out just about the time he meets Alison Scott (Katherine Heighl), a high-profile TV producer and personality out celebrating her promotion one night at an L. A. singles hangout. It’s the classic mismatch of a Jewish shlob with a stylish shiksa, but, hey, it’s only for one night, and it’s the big score Ben’s been fantasizing about his whole life.

The two get hammered, adjourn to Alison’s apartment and have unprotected sex, because in the heat and blur of foreplay, Ben can’t get his condom on fast enough to satisfy Alison -- probably the funniest scene in the film, but one that, again, has serious implications. Several weeks later, Alison reconvenes with Ben to announce her pregnancy and her intention to have the baby. After shock and disbelief wear off, Ben makes a stab at doing the right thing, signing on to perform his fatherly duties, even though he’s responsibility challenged and hasn’t got the proverbial pot to piss in. Their lives turned upside down, Ben and Alison embark on a stutter-stepped path to getting to really know each other in a context of changing values and reordering priorities, Ben evolving through a process of self-realization into the mensch that has been heretofore dormant, a transformation as surprising to himself as to Alison.

The other major players in this chain of true-to-life developments are Alison’s sister Debbie (Leslie Mann, who is Apatow’s wife) and brother-in-law Pete (Paul Rudd) in whose suburban home Alison has her apartment. Ben and Alison have front-row seats to the highs and lows, the give and take of married life, during which Ben and Pete form one of the unlikeliest of bonds. All four actors give persuasive performances, as do Apatow’s two daughters Iris and Maude, as the daughters of Debbie and Pete.

“Knocked Up” is a very gratifying film, though I fear that too many people are focusing on its slovenly and raunchy content and don’t, or, worse yet, don’t want to contemplate or meditate upon its humanist revelations.


A MIGHTY HEART (A)

If it’s true, as a recent Time magazine article about Hamas, Fatah, Israel, the U. S., and the self-perpetuating and groundswelling quagmire that is the Middle East, that 21rst century enemies, America’s and every one else’s, in a religiously fanatic, politically paranoiac, ideologically explosive world, are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They don’t wear identifying uniforms with nationalist emblems, unless you count hooded jackets and ski masks as typical attack garb. Today’s terrorists are just as likely to be highly motivated homegrown malcontents -- fifth columns in countries that have welcomed third-world immigrants, then segregated and subjugated them -- as alien extremists from foreign hot spots. Just ask the British and French.

On a relatively small scale, the event recounted in director Michael Winterbottom’s grim and infuriating docudrama, “A Mighty Heart,” is a microcosm of a global culture of terrorism which features loosely affiliated societies -- brotherhoods, if you will -- of mostly young, impoverished, disenfranchised, seething, and radicalized men, bonded by their mutual hatred for Western capitalism and what they view as its pervasive depravity, exploitation, and oppression. They function virtually at will within their own politically corrupt and/or destabilized countries. And their mentality and methodology are anathema to the value systems of the countries they seek to destabilize and ultimately destroy.

Four months after 9/11, with retaliatory U. S. bombs raining down on Taliban targets in Afghanistan and suspected al-Qaeda hideouts on its borders with Pakistan, Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent and the paper’s South Asia bureau chief, on assignment in Karachi, is kidnapped en route to one last interview with a crucial, anonymous source regarding thwarted shoe bomber Richard Reid. The journalist is held hostage for 10 days, tortured, then ceremonially beheaded while a video camera rolls. The fact that Pearl is Jewish is what has made him so captivating to this captors, who initially brand him an agent of the Israeli Mossad, before deciding it is in their even broader self-interests to label him a CIA spy or even a hired hand of the espionage counterpart in India, Pakistan’s arch enemy.

Finding Pearl in the sprawling, suffocating, chaotic morass of the world’s second largest city -- with a population numbering 20 million -- compounded by a labyrinthian network of local operatives, presumably linked to al-Qaeda, none of whom, by design, has a complete picture of the operation -- is a navigational nightmare for the team of American investigators and Pakistani authorities, who are also suspect in a high-stakes international game of “whom do you trust?”

Pearl’s French-Cuban wife, Mariane, also a journalist, has accompanied her husband to Karachi, and they are about to embark on the journey home to welcome the birth of their first child, a son whose name, Ådam, they have agreed upon the very day Pearl disappears. When Daniel doesn't arrive home in time for a farewell dinner with colleagues and friends, the stage is set for Mariane’s excruciating 10-day vigil, hopes periodically buoyed by an e-mail or cell phone record that may lead to the abductors, then dashed when raids on safehouses produce potential informants who stonewall defiantly.

John Orloff’s screenplay for “A Mighty Heart” is based on Mariane Pearl’s highly spiritual memoir that not only details the race against time to free her husband and the subsequent horror and heartbreak of his murder and mutilation, but is also a loving tribute to his work ethic and commitment to journalistic objectivity, and, as she offered in a recently published interview, “for his sense of humor and the kind of friend, husband, and son that he was.”

She had high praise for the actor who embodies her character on the screen -- Angelina Jolie. “I asked her to play the role...because I felt a real kinship to her. She put her whole heart into it, and I think she understood why we should do this movie. We had something to say that we knew we should say together.” Indeed, Jolie delivers a fully imagined, expressly authentic performance -- perhaps the most deeply felt and finely tuned of her career -- and the film itself, co-produced by Brad Pitt and shot on location in Pakistan, India, and France -- is supremely dense and relevant, and even though we know the outcome from the outset, the narrative is no less spellbinding. Dan Futterman (Judging Amy, Will and Grace, Sex and the City, Enough, The Birdcage), who wrote and produced “Capote” two years ago, plays Daniel Pearl as a quietly composed and confident man, gracious but resolute, as committed to his personal life as his profession. Futterman is a subtle, versatile, but underrated actor I’d like to see in even meatier roles.

Winterbottom’s camera bears witness to the roiling confusion of an inhumanely crowded metropolis beyond law-and-order governance, where the value of one life is infinitesimal.


A FRENCH WAVE

PARIS JE T’AIME (B-)

There are 20 arrondissements -- numerically designated neighborhoods -- that comprise the so-called City of Lights, referred to just as often as the City of Love (as in tourjours l’amour) an appellation that, from my experiences, is largely hyperbolic and mythical. What isn’t mythical is the bristling hauteur and chilling perfunctoriness of too many Parisians and the simmering and often menacing masses of third-world immigrants who live in abject suburban ghettos but swarm the city’s boulevards and parks engaging in petty crime at the expense of naive tourists. A thinly veiled antipathy towards Americans is legendary, even in times when it was not as roundly deserved as now.

The producers of a newish film called “Paris Je T’Aime,” in part a cinematic expression of Cole Porter’s anthem of adoration, “I Love Paris,” from his 50’s musical “Can-Can,” would, by inference, have us believe there’s something uniquely flavorful and exuberant about the way affection and disaffection play out in the French capitol. They even go so far as to infer that each of the 18 encounters and intimate moments their film peeks in on has some typically characteristic relationship with its neighborhood setting, that there are ties that bind the narrative into a cohesively amorous unit. Don’t you believe any of it.

Now, I may be peevish about the chauvinist mentality of Parisians, but that doesn’t cloud my eyesight nor dim awareness of my surroundings or their historical and aesthetic implications. Paris is a glittering metropolis of architectural resplendence, a capitol of culture, cuisine, and conviviality, featuring a panoply of fragrances, tastes, ethnicities, and lifestyles -- and, yes, a city that eternally celebrates the joys of life. And to some extent, “Paris Je T’Aime” takes a stab at conveying all of this. However, its vignettes, each helmed by a different director, run roughly three to seven minutes, not nearly enough time to flesh out the characters, let alone impart a distinguishing ambiance and piquancy to each neighborhood. What we typically get at the beginning of each eavesdrop is a wide-angle, rooftop vista, superimposed with the name of the district and the name of the director. The actors, by the way, are not identified until the end credits roll, which may not be such a good thing if you, like I, need to put a name to each actor’s face on the screen. If your mind wanders from the situation at hand for more than an instant, or you miss a word or two of dialogue (if, indeed, any words are spoken at all), you’ve lost the thread and missed the point.

And what exquisite acting talent has been assembled for this project, probably worth the price of admission in spite of the uneven success of the skits themselves: in no particular order, Juliette Binoche, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Fanny Ardant, Bob Hoskins, Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emily Mortimer, Rufus Sewell, Elijah Wood, Miranda Richardson, Niick Nolte, Natalie Portman, and Gaspard Ulliel. Particularly well-known to American audiences among the filmmakers represented are Ethan and Joel Coen, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuaron, Gerard Depardieu, Richard LaGravanese, Alexander Payne, Walter Salles, and Gus Van Sant.

As for the episodes themselves, they vary widely, of course, in ambiance, mood, rhythm, and temperament -- and the degree to which you respond may have as much to do with the particular creative imprint of the director as the content itself. Some center on an incidental, sometimes ironical coming-together of total strangers, others involve people already acquainted or even related to one another, whose lives are unsettled, in crisis, or at a crossroads. One or two have the quickened heartbeat and flush of a blossoming liaison. Craven’s contribution is a gothic, late-night encounter on a deserted byway in which a handsome young man (Elijah Wood) comes under the spell of a vampire seductress (Olga Kurylenko).

Among the fragments leaving a lasting impression with me were the following: In “Place des Victoires,” Juliette Binoche is a grieving mother who gets to reunite briefly and achieve closure with her recently deceased little boy, thanks to the supernatural powers of a samaritan cowboy on horseback played by Willem Dafoe.

In a print shop in Le Marais, two young men, one an American employee named Elie (Elias McConnell), the other, companion to a customer, make instant and intensely sensual eye contact. The Frenchman, Gaspard, (Gaspard Ulliel), knowing he has only minutes to impart his feelings, strikes up a conversation that is obviously impassioned. His choice of words reveal a vulnerability and guilelessness, and the American appears interested but unresponsive. After the Frenchman leaves, the owner, who has overheard some of Gaspard’s imploring, wonders why Elie was so unmoved, and the American reveals that, with his limited fluency in French, he understood very little. When the owner offers a translated account, Elie bolts from the shop in hot pursuit of Gaspard.

In “Pigalle,” Fanny Ardant is the sensually earthy member of a wife-husband (Bob Hoskins) theatrical couple trying to resurrect the ebbing passion of their marriage by reenacting the night they met decades before, complete with the doo-wap melody that was playing in the background.

All in all, the episodic construct of “Paris Je T’aime” would have been better served with half the number of narratives, enabling more substantive character and situational development and a more elucidated association and acquaintanceship with the neighborhood settings.


LA VIE EN ROSE (LA MOME) (B-)

I was subliminally aware of Edith Piaf as early as 1949, when I was a wee lad of 12 -- well, actually not so wee after all. A year later, I was six feet tall, shaving every other day, and growing a thicket of hair on my chest.

Americans, mostly New Yorkers, had only recently warmed to the four -foot, eight-inch “kid sparrow,” (La Mome) a slight mite of a woman until she opened her mouth and music soared on the wing of a mighty contralto voice which was, all at once, throaty, nasal, full of joy and defiance, but tinged with grief and world-weariness. Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town” made its TV debut in 1948, and La Mome was an early and frequent guest; over the years, she appeared eight times on the Sunday night program, eventually renamed “The Ed Sullivan Show,” that ruled the 8 - 9 p.m. CBS time slot for more than 20 seasons.

Relatively few American homes had television sets in 1948, but every home had a radio, and the Friday Night Fights were a staple of listening pleasure in blue-collar homes throughout America, including my own. They aired at 10 p.m., Don Dunphy at the mike, hyping the bout, blow-by-blow, and my father commandeered our Philco 90 for those weekly broadcasts, thereby enlisting me as a captive audience, unless, of course, I preferred to be dispatched to my bedroom.

It was in this context that the name Marcel Cerdan took on significance in my life on September 21, 1948, when he TKO’d American favorite Tony Zale with a devastating left hook to the head to capture the middleweight boxing championship of the world. Naturally, daddy had been rooting for Zale, not the upstart foreigner, who, it turned out was Algerian by birth and a Moroccan pig farmer in civilian life. Early in 1949, Cerdan defended his title against Jake LaMotta -- the legendary “raging bull” (portrayed much later on the screen by Robert De Niro) -- and lost. A return bout was scheduled for later in the year, but on October 27, a commercial airliner with Cerdan aboard crashed over the Azores en route to New York, with no survivors. The boxer had been on his way to be reunited with his lover of two years, Edith Piaf.

Cerdan’s death, at 33, was pivotal in the decline and demise of La Mome, even though the tortuous process took nearly 14 years. A highly skilled, rigorously trained pugilist, Cerdan was something of a courtly country squire away from the ring. He was married, but didn’t conceal that fact from Piaf; his innate honesty disarmed the diva. He treated her deferentially and tenderly, taming her feral instincts, providing her with a rare respite from people who were derelict, dismissive, sadistic, opportunistic, sycophantic, and parasitic. Piaf and Cerdan had a rough-hewn commonality, but were non-competitive and mutually respecting. He was in the front row at her concerts, she was ringside at his matches. If only she hadn’t implored him to fly instead of sail to her. Her romantic self-interest haunted Piaf for the rest of her life.

Olivier Dahan’s new biopic “La Vie en Rose” -- it debuted in Europe last February -- is a must-see film, if only for a titanic performance by 31-year-old Marion Cotillard as the frequently betrayed, deeply distrustful, gleefully temperamental and tempestuous, and uniquely gifted chanteuse, a role with which Cotillard will forever be identified -- hopefully, not to her detriment. Hers is full-throttle, total immersion acting, right down to every nuance of body language and flawless lip-synching. She closely resembles Piaf and plays her as the mouse that roared practically into the grave. Jean-Pierre Martins, as Cerdan, looks startling like the boxer from what I’ve seen in photographic images and an astonishing YouTube video of the 12th and final round of his bout with Zale. Martins gives an elegantly persuasive performance as the gentle brute, assured, but understated -- complementary to the simmering intensity of Cotillard’s as Piaf even in their most tender moments together.

However, like so many films of this genre, “La Vie en Rose” is only a sketchy tease, and a confoundingly fragmented one at that -- that, aside from the Cerdan interlude, lays unremitting emphasis on the tawdriest, most tumultuous and unflattering aspects of Piaf’s life, all but ignoring her collegial, sometimes mentoring, sometimes romantic relationships with fellow artists, such as Yves Montand, Gilbert Becaud, and Charles Aznavour, or that, during the repressive Nazi occupation, she dared to tour France with a band that included Jewish musicians. We see Piaf, post-Cerdan, as an alcohol-addled and supermedicated strega whose arthritic hands can no longer maneuver her treasured knitting needles. Only in her early 40’s, she is seen repeatedly in the grip of osteoporosis, stooped over and receiving a daily regimen of morphine injections, frequently crumpling to the stage in the middle of a concert. Yet there is no mention of the spate of auto accidents that have contributed to her premature fragility.

We don’t learn about an early marriage from which she bore a daughter named, ironically, Marcelle until Dahan intercuts a flashback scene very late in the film that feels out of synch and overwrought, an afterthought considering its placement. Piaf is heavily morphined and delirious, recalling a night more than 25 years before, when her husband burst into a saloon where she was singing and accused her of gross maternal neglect. In the next frames, Piaf is seen rushing to a hospital where Marcelle lies dying of meningitis. By inference, the singer has spent most of her life racked by guilt.

Only superficially treated is Piaf’s five-year sisterly relationship during her teens with a fellow street urchin named Momone (Sylvie Testud). Edith sings, Momone passes the beret, and the two are inseparable, until a career opportunity knocks, and Piaf all but tosses her friend into the gutter. We’re not sure whether Edith and Momone are mere birds of a feather bonded by their lack of a nesting place and feeding on the frenzy of partying and perversity in Pigalle, or whether theirs is a more intense lesbian liaison, which would account for Momone’s hysteria when they separate.

I’ve grown accustomed and not adverse to nonlinear film structures over the past decade plus, but Dahan goes overboard with jumpy switches back and forth in time that, while they do convey a troubled, restless life in disarray, don’t ever permit the narrative to settle down long enough for us to fathom fully the forces that molded this enigmatic woman who was so often her own worst enemy. Dahan does give us a heavy enough dose of Piaf’s childhood years, when her mother flies the coop, and her father consigns her to a brothel in which his own mother functions as chief cook and bottle washer. There, Edith finds maternal comfort and nurture in the company of one femme de nuit, in particular by the name of Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner). When Edith’s father decides to reclaim her to assist him in his street performances -- he’s a contortionist -- her dislodgment from her surrogate mother is as wrenching as Momone’s from Piaf years later.

Three years before her death, in a state of exhaustion and despair, Piaf is approached by a pair of young songwriters with a composition they feel ideally suited to her voice and her struggles. She’s disinterested and dismissive until one of them, Charles Dumont, sits down at the piano and begins to play. After only a few bars, Piaf is rapt and reborn. The song is the soaring, life-affirming anthem, “Je ne Regrette Rien” (I regret nothing), and Piaf rises from the ashes one last time to record and perform it on stage. But, knowing what we do about the woman and her life, was this song really an epitaph, or was Piaf, near death at 47, merely raling once more against the hand dealt to her and thumbing her nose in defiance. Methinks she had plenty to regret, and it ultimately did her in.


THE VALET (LA DOUBLURE) (LE VOITURIER) (A-)

Hail the return of the screwball comedy, all the way from France. This is a movie made strictly for laughs -- it’s not a dramedy or a serious film with moments of humorous relief. And wonder of wonders, there are no freaks or geeks among its characters, no scatological situations, so sophomoric raunch, and only minimalist smarm. Just a farcical soufflé cooked up by writer-director Francis Veber (The Closet, The Dinner Game) around the banal subject of adultery and a cockamamy scheme to circumvent its consequences.

Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil) is an industrial magnate whose employees are staging an uprising to protest unfair management labor practices. Pierre is juggling corporate policymaking with his high-profile marriage to Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), a society mover and shaker, who also happens to control 60% of the company assets, and what Pierre thinks is a low-profile affair he’s having with a leggy fashion supermodel named Elena Simonsen (Alice Taglioni). He manages the deception adroitly until a paparazzi photo of the lovey-doveys lands on page one of a Paris tabloid, which in turn lands on the breakfast table in front of the missus.

Pierre insists that another gentleman in the photo, out-of-focus in the background, is Alice’s actual companion, and that he, Pierre, simply happened into camera range inopportunely. Alas, the missus isn’t buying that malarkey, so Pierre swings into action to prove his innocence and save his marriage, and preserve his stake in the family business. He -- actually his attorney -- locates the mystery man in the photo, one Francois Pignon (Gad Elmaleh), who parks cars for members of an exclusive social club and whose childhood sweetheart Emilie (Virginie Ledoyen) has just turned down his proposal of marriage, a rebuff he never saw coming. She says they’re just pals, that she’s never thought of him in a romantic way, and, anyway, she’s stressed out about the debt she’s incurred starting up her bookstore business.

Pierre’s maneuvering catches Francois at a vulnerable moment, but, even then, the young man’s intrinsic honesty kicks in, and he initially declines. It takes an open-ended offer of money -- apparently every man really does have his price -- to get him to cooperate...reluctantly. Francois will pretend to be Elena’s real boyfriend -- even allow her to move in with him long enough for Christine’s suspicions to cool. When Francois names his price -- just the exact number of Euros it will take to pay off Emilie’s debt -- Pierre thinks he has the perfect stooge for the job.

However, Elena is much harder to convince. Pierre keeps reneging on promises to divorce his wife, and Elena is fed up with his stalling tactics and her role as the other woman. Only when he agrees to fatten her bank account to the tune of 20 million Euros in order to verify his intentions does Elena agree to take part in the gambit. And then the fun really begins.

Christine hires a detective with a camera to tail the odd couple who, if anything, play their roles a little too convincingly for Pierre’s comfort. Madcap antics ensue, and the story takes some zany and unpredictable zigzags before settling back into a semblance of sanity in the end, when loose threads are tied together in ways that are blessedly non-formulaic.

The cast collectively is in top form. Autiel, whose peculiarly asymmetrical face looks like it’s constructed of silly putty, is perfect as a caddish buffoon -- he reminds me of Tony Randall in this role, with roundly resounding rants and contorted features that might have been too over-the-top had the madcap setup not been broad enough to support them. Scott Thomas as Christine is the wholly effective antidote to her husband’s bluff and buster; she’s self-possessed, stylish, radiant, and resourceful in the heat of battle. The Pignon character is recurring in Veber films over the years, and, in fact, Auteuil excelled in that role in “The Closet” six years ago. Happily, Gad Elmaleh is a more-than-worthy successor to Auteuil and to Jacques Villeret (The Dinner Game, 1998) as Pignon in this film, eliciting every ounce of our empathy for his disarming ordinariness, his old-fashioned integrity, his high moral ground -- qualities that moderate Elena’s disillusionment with male chauvinism.

Things don’t necessarily turn out the way we expect or hope they will because Veber is no hack filmmaker. At the beginning of this review, I labeled “The Valet” a screwball comedy because it is such a merry romp and hugely entertaining. But aside from Pierre, who appears to be one-dimensionally self-absorbed, none of the other characters are stereotypes, including Elena, who doesn’t at all conform to an airhead archetype. She’s classy, sassy, smart, and motivated. And that just about sums up the movie as a whole. Rent it when it becomes available on DVD in mid-September.


AVENUE MONTAIGNE (FAUTEUILS D’ORCHESTRE) (C+)

The premise seemed promising enough in advance notices, but the execution of Daniele Thompson’s third outing as director is, in fact, feathery and elusive.

French fresh face Jessica (Cecile de France) -- think images of Mary Stuart Masterson in “Some Kind of Wonderful” and Jean Seberg in “Bonjour Tristesse” and elements of Audrey Hepburn characters in “Sabrina” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s -- acts on her grandmother’s credo for zestful living, forsakes her country roots, and lands with a purposeful thud in one of the toniest arrondissements of Paris, determined to sample ample helpings of le joie de vivre.

An innately blithe spirit with no job history, she charms her way into a waitressing gig at a funky bistro called Bar des Theatres on Avenue Montaigne, where her customers are chiefly actors, artists, and writers, whom she has no qualms about engaging in “out-of-the-mouths-of-babes” conversations, a practice her boss frowns upon. Despite her tender years, Jessica also dispenses pearls of wisdom, again based on her grandmother’s teachings. She winds up touching the lives of a bipolar actress at a career crossroads, a concert pianist at odds with the stuffy formalities of his trade, and an aging and ailing art and antiques collector downsizing in anticipation of his imminent demise.

However, these associations are peripheral and insubstantive; the character of Jessica is Thompson’s contrivance (she also wrote the screenplay) for linking together three disparate stories set on the same turf, but the three artsy icons are far too self-absorbed, and, in one case, deeply neurotic to notice much more than her infectious innocence and the vittles and libations she delivers to the venues in which they toil. Jessica, in fact, is rarely seen at her place of employ. A delivery tray seems to give her license to meander at will through a network of unmarked doors that interconnect a theater, concert hall, and gallery, plus attendant rehearsal and dressing rooms, even bedding down therein because she can’t afford the high rents in her chosen neighborhood.

Yet her role is little more than an observer and eavesdropper, until she gets noticed by the collector’s son Frederic, played by Christopher Thompson, in real-life the director’s son. There is, of course, the obvious counterpoint between Jessica’s uncluttered, unfettered existence on the threshold of adulthood, having little more than the clothes on her back, and the weighty baggage, material and emotional, being schlepped about by her trio of new acquaintances, two of whom are trying to reduce their commitments and inventory and simplify their lives.

There’s no denying the collective competence of the cast, led by the enchanting de France, who brings oodles of charisma and vigor to her role, despite being thwarted by a character that’s underwritten. Valerie Lemercier is the alternately fiery and melancholic actress Catherine Versen, who underachieves in a popular TV soap, while rehearsing a Feydeau play she insists on improving upon, and angling for the juicy lead in an historical biopic about Simone de Beauvoir that an American director (Sydney Pollack as himself) is casting.

Albert Dupontel is enigmatically sullen as the athletic hunk in tails and starched collar, itchy in his own skin and longing to trade in his punctilious life on the concert stage for a casual communion with the out-of-doors. Finally, there is Claude Brasseur, as Jacques Grumberg, providing a grounded, albeit poignant, counterbalance to the naiveté, preciosity, discontent, and hyperventilation of the other characters. Grumberg is the benevolent millionaire auctioning off a lifetime collection in preparation for, perhaps in celebration of, his departure from this world.

As this tangy tale winds down, it is Jacques’ handsome and agreeable son Frederic who Jessica has set her romantic sights on, though, with his predisposition for womanizing and philandering, she might be well advised to tread cautiously, lest she taste disillusionment for the first time. The joys of life can be enticing but illusory.


ONCE (A)

“Once” is about as low-budget as musicals ever get, produced by the Irish Film Board and shot entirely in and around Dublin with a hand-held camera for the meager sum of $150,000 -- with no dazzling lighting, backdrops, or effects, no elaborate dance ensembles, costumes, or production numbers, and no soundstage sets. And yet writer-director John Carney, whose only notable feature film credits are “Zonad” (2003) and “On the Edge” (2001), both starring Cillian Murphy before American audiences took notice of him, has crafted a slight film of rare majesty, not so much a musical as a transitionary tale about two people whose lives intersect only long enough for them to forge a tune-based bond that empowers both of them to gain a clearer vision of their former lives.

Carney doesn’t give them names. The Guy (Glen Hansard) is a scruffy, ruddy, bearded, thirty-something street musician, who scratches out a living by strumming and singing his own compositions in an upscale Dublin marketplace, and helping out with vacuum sweeper repairs in his dad’s Hoover shop in a shabby working-class neighborhood. He’s an unassuming and circumspect man of carefully chosen words who finds his passionate voice in the songs he writes, most of which are rock ballads about unrequited or lost love, solidly based on his own experiences. One senses he has a history of romantic misfires, but the most recent disappointment is a relationship ended when the lover moved to London.

One day along comes a Girl (Marketa Irglova), a younger appearing immigrant from the Czech Republic, who peddles long-stem roses along the same byway and who takes a shine to the busker’s music, and, to a lesser extent, the Guy himself. It’s a tossup as to who takes whom under his or her wing, but before long, they’re making music together good enough to get them into a recording studio with a pickup band of three other musicians.
But in between instrumental harmonies and vocal duets, the Guy and the Girl are elevating their lives from the spiritual doldrums through mutual validation, becoming non-sexual soul mates in the process. He soon learns that she has a daughter and mother with her in Ireland and a husband she’s left behind in Eastern Europe. She’s as uncertain about the future of that marriage as the Guy is hopeful she comes around to him romantically, despite limits she has set on their intimacy. He accepts those boundaries in return for as much nurture as he can harvest from the time they spend complementing each other musically.

The dialogue in “Once” couldn’t be more non-confrontational; in fact, the Guy is often tentative and clumsy with the spoken word -- much more articulate in song. The only commotion engendered by this lyrical film is the characteristic clatter of the tunes themselves. I was raised on ballads sung by mellifluous voices, accompanied by strings and horns. These days, songs about love, unrequited or otherwise, are sung by metallic voices, accompanied by guitars and drums. Hansard’s vocals are occasionally reedy and whiny in the upper registers, as emotions are unleashed, but I realize there are at least two generations of listeners who respond to that sound in a very positive way. In his lower registers, I heard color and tonality much like that of the former Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam.

Hansard’s only previous feature film was “The Commitments” in 1991, the same year he formed the popular rock band, “The Frames”. All the more remarkable then is this subtle, unmannered, but deeply stirring performance, one of the most memorable so far this year, a year in which “Once” may be the requisite sleeper hit.


THE LESSER LIGHTS

MR. BROOKS (C+)

Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner) is a savvy, sanguine, eminently successful Portland, Oregon businessman -- he owns a company that designs and manufactures boxes for upscale consumer products like, for instance, Japanese sake. He runs a tight ship, but treats his employees compassionately and has just been named the Rose City’s Man of the Year, though he’s the model of modesty and shuns the spotlight. Earl’s also a model family man, one half of a devoted married couple, with a doting daughter in her freshman year at Stanford.

So what’s wrong with this picture? Nothing absolutely nothing, as far as appearances go, until we learn that every once in a while Mr. Brooks gets in touch with his dark side and succumbs to the irresistible itch to kill. He picks his victims randomly and blows them away dispassionately, just for the pure fun of it. By his definition, his moonlighting activity is an addiction, not an avocation. He even attends the occasional AA meeting, earnestly admitting he’s an addict, without, of course, revealing the exact nature of his habit.

Earl’s as fastidious about planning and executing a slaying as he is about running his business. When “Mr. Brooks” opens, he’s already gotten away with mayhem multiple times, and the authorities, confounded in their campaign to track him down, have labeled him “the thumbprint murderer,” seeing as Earl always leaves behind a bloody thumbprint on the wall of the murder scene. He has a partner in crime, an alter ego -- human spirit, if you will -- named Marshall (William Hurt), who’s kind of the devil that makes Earl do it, even going so far as to hand-pick the victims and chart their comings and goings. Marshall’’s always by Earl’s side overseeing each event, egging his host on with terse commands, rejoicing gleefully after the deed is done.

But, as this on-shaky-grounds narrative unfolds, their string of tag-team successes is seriously threatened by a happenstance they hadn’t foreseen. When Mr. Brooks guns down a young, trophy couple locked in the fervor and ecstasy of copulation, he is unaware that they are ardent exhibitionists who routinely get it on with their boudoir draperies wide open to voyeuristic eyes gazing from an adjacent apartment high-rise. One gentleman with an unobstructed view, one hand cradling a digital camera and the other cradling his turgid member, has recorded all the action, including the gangland-style execution and crystal-clear images of Mr. Brooks firing away, then, realizing his clumsy inadvertence, hastily closing the drapes.

Next day, the voyeur, a fellow named simply Mr. Smith (Dane Cook), presents at Earl’s posh offices with copies of the incriminating photos, but his extortion scheme has a perverse twist that doesn’t involve hush money. Just about the same time, Earl’s daughter Jane (Danielle Panabaker) arrives home unexpectedly in mid-semester, announcing she’s dropped out of school. There are suspicious circumstances regarding her sudden departure from the Palo Alto campus that authorities are investigating. Earl and Marshall wonder out loud whether Jane has inherited the killer gene. Suddenly, Mr. Brooks is scrambling to right his sinking ship, with Marshall at his side barking orders and issuing scornful admonitions.

It’s fun for awhile to watch Kevin Costner in his first true villain role, even if he steadfastly maintains an eerie equanimity, calmly calculating every move throughout the mayhem. It’s Marshall who snarls, goads, and salivates, and Hurt essentially reprises his cameo in “A History of Violence,” an overrated turn that inexplicably earned him an Academy Award nomination. Demi Moore functions resolutely -- taut jaw, pursed lips, ice-cold eyes -- as the ball-busting police detective who’s as obsessive about cracking the thumbprint murderer case as she is in denying her ex-husband the divorce settlement he’s been demanding -- a subplot that appears disconnected until the film’s concluding scenes.

But it’s Dane Cook as Mr. Smith who should get noticed and admired for really delivering the goods on his borderline deranged character -- an engineering professional by day who falls victim to his own opportunistic and nefarious urgings. Once the film takes this malevolent turn, Earl’s daughter becomes an ominous complication, and the police detective’s acrimonious personal life and overzealous investigative tactics take center stage, “Mr. Brooks” becomes a muddle of unfathomable coincidences and consequences, leading to an outcome that is essentially open-ended and ultimately unsatisfying. All told, relatively easy to follow, relatively hard to swallow.


EVENING (C+)

It speaks volumes about this bittersweet, but self-important and drawn-out film that the character that drives its narrative is its most elusive and innocuous -- a young, mostly honorable, but insufferably bland doctor of medicine whose coolheaded tranquility and prom king physiognomy hold captive the idealistic illusions of three other characters for a lifetime -- a lifetime cut short tragically for one of them.

The circumstances of that tragedy -- and the regrets and recriminations it engenders -- haunt the subconsciences of Ann Grant (Claire Danes) and Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer) for a secretive and repressive half-century. As young women from very different social backgrounds who bond in college, Ann and Lila become alienated by events taking place over a wedding weekend in staid, starchy Newport, Rhode Island, in the mid-50’s. Lila is the high-society bride, Ann the lower-brow maid of honor who aspires to a singing career, and Buddy (Hugh Dancy), Lila’s rakish, free-spirited, and somewhat unhinged brother. The three share in common a magnificent obsession with the enigmatic, inaccessible Harris (Patrick Wilson), son of the Wittenborn estate housekeeper, and so, like Ann and despite his medical degree, not of the uppercrust Newport progeny. Either to complicate matters or as a plot device to ameliorate his deviant sexuality, Buddy also has a crush on Ann, dating back to their schooldays -- even carries around a note she once passed to him during philosophy class.

The events of that pivotal evening after the wedding ceremony are told in flashback from the perspective of a septuagenarian Ann, now Ann Lord, bedridden and being attended to by her daughters Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette). In a moment of reflection, confession, or medication-induced delirium, she utters the “H” word for the first time, declaring that Harris was the love of her life and that Buddy loved him, too -- all of this news to the bemused Constance and Nina.

Susan Minot’s book has not translated convincingly to the screen, even though or perhaps because she collaborated on the screenplay with Michael Cunningham (The Hours, A Home at the End of the World), presumably because of the bisexual subtext. There are uncomfortable scenes in which the actors are grappling with dialogue that is either banal and cliched or renders their characters amorphous. And no character is more ill-defined than that of Harris, with poor Patrick Wilson often looking like a deer caught in the headlights. What can be more insipid in this day and age than a leading man having to romance his leading lady, the two out for a moonlight stroll, with this prosaic pronouncement: “See that star -- that’s our star.” Yuk!

The actors assembled for “Evening” call into question the whole process of casting for this intrinsically American story, using powerhouse stars to lure audiences to what is essentially a high-society soap opera, with not enough suds to do the job. Vanessa Redgrave, a grande dame of British theater and film and reigning member now of an iconic acting family, seems to me far too patrician and outsized for the elder incarnation of Claire Danes’s reticent, self-apologetic Ann Grant, who never amounts to more than a twice-married American housewife trying to sandwich in a sometime career as saloon singer. Redgrave’s is a highly mannered performance as she drifts in an out of lucidity -- with pregnant pauses in the telling of her tale that fail to give birth to much that is pithy, profound, or prophetic. In fact, given the celebrity and hefty skill set of the major players, and what could have been a multilayered chronicle of sexual ambivalence, interposing twists of fate, and class demarcation lines, the dialogue is oddly tepid and circumferential, as if the production, largely set in the mid-50’s, were being directed (by Lajos Koltai) as Douglas Sirk would have back then. Euphemisms no longer cut the mustard; sensibilities are no longer delicate.

Richardson, Redgrave’s real daughter, who sounds so much like her mother that, were one blindfolded watching “Evening,” it would be next to impossible to determine which was speaking, reads the Constance character forthrightly, as the happily married, tradition-bound sibling. The restless, self-doubting, unconventional Nina is sculpted to enlist our empathy -- or, more to the point, she enlisted mine, and I am always transfixed when Toni Collette is on the screen. In “Evening,” she is more facile playing American than either Redgrave or Richardson.

However, if I were an American actor, I would be increasingly frustrated by the routine casting of Brits and Aussies as both ordinary and extraordinary, but totally American characters, both in movies and on TV. And there’s no better example in “Evening” than Hugh Dancy as Lila’s n’er-do-well brother Buddy. Dancy so adroitly embraces his rascally, but endearing character, the accent and vocal mannerisms tripping effortlessly off his tongue, one would never guess he was a literature scholar at Oxford. I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I’d rather watch classically trained actors such as Dancy, Christian Bale, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Clive Owen, Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Juliet Stevenson, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Toni Collette, Gary Oldman, Rachel Griffiths, Hugh Laurie, Matthew Rhys, Emily Blunt, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, Daniel Craig -- dare I go on -- who regularly play American than I would most American actors.

There are exceptions, of course, and one of those is Meryl Streep. She’s one of two homegrown acting paragons populating “Evening” (the other is Glenn Close as Lila’s supercilious society matron mom). Streep shows up near the end of the film to reconnect with her dying college chum. In fact, Lila climbs into bed with Ann, and the two reminisce and ruminate about their separate lives since that fateful evening a half-century before. They smooth out misunderstandings, tie up loose ends, all in the space of less than ten minutes of film time. They also achieve some degree of closure about Harris and Buddy -- agreeing, in a vapidly philosophical sequence, that things have a way of turning out the way they should. Oh, really? Then Streep’s Lila, who has become the embodiment of sagacity and circumspection, has these worldly-wise last words: “We are mysterious creatures, aren’t we?” Oh my gawd!


SICKO (C+)

The latest sociopolitical commentary from Michael Moore, about the abysmal state of American health care, begins with earnest promise, but jumps the tracks when the filmmaker gets carried away with his trademark lampooning ploys -- such as a scene in which he shepherds a boatload of 9/11 survivors who have fallen through the cracks of U. S. managed care to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where, it is said, suspected terrorists being held captive are receiving a higher level of medical treatment than American citizens in U. S. hospitals, clinics, and doctors offices.

When Moore and his party are refused entry into Guantanamo Bay, they sail to Havana, where they are greeted warmly and embraced by a health care system that appears to be state-of-the-art, pristine, and benevolent and free in every respect. As he does in Canada, Britain, and France earlier in the film, a disingenuous Moore keeps asking health care personnel how their system works, vis’a’vis the role of health insurers (there aren’t any) and how much treatment costs ( it doesn’t), He knows the answers, we know the answers, and anyone in America who doesn’t know the answers isn’t likely to see this film anyway.

Moore is always preaching to the choir, but this time around, he doesn’t know when to stop with the levity already. And there is something about the Cuba caper that smells of too perfect a setup. Oh, yes, one more thing. Moore grows in physical mass with each successive documentary project. With widespread recognition that obesity is a drag on the American health care system, Moore might have contracted with someone more svelte to narrate “Sicko”.