Reminder: Cinecast #6 will be up Saturday night. We'll review "Fever Pitch," share some listener responses to last week's "Sin City" discussion, and count down our Top 5 Sports Movies.Rebecca Miller's new film "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," which Adam and I both liked and reviewed on the most recent Cinecast, is currently showing in select cities across the country. For many, however, the first chance to see it will be on DVD later this year. In the meantime, Miller's previous film
"Personal Velocity" (2000) is already available on DVD. "Personal Velocity" is less a single, cohesive film than three short films based on stories written by Miller, which she adapated to the screen and directed. Adam and I both saw the film recently and wanted to share our thoughts.
Sam: According to a 2002 Salon.com article, only 4% of Hollywood films are directed by women. Only three women have ever been nominated for a Best Director Oscar, and none of them has won (Jane Campion and Sophia Coppola were both awarded the Best Original screenplay Oscar -- for "The Piano" and "Lost In Translation," respectively -- as a kind of glorified door prize). When a group is so marginalized by an industry, it becomes hard not to judge the work of one as a mandate on the work of others.
A couple of years ago, I watched two recent celebrated films directed by women -- Nicole Holofcener's "Lovely and Amazing" and Jill Sprecher's "13 Conversations About One Thing." These films were praised to the skies. And I hated them. In both cases, I found them pretentious, lacking subtlety and full of overwrought acting. Years later, when it came time to take a look at "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," all I knew of "Personal Velocity" was that a woman had directed it. And for all I knew it was no different than "Lovely and Amazing" or "13 Conversations." This is a problem. Not unlike if I saw "Being John Malkovich" and "Three Kings" and decided not to see "Memento" because, "Oh, you know, it's one of those new GUY directors doing one of their GUY movies."
Well, I finally saw "Personal Velocity" and I was blown away. I can't remember the last time I saw a film in which the characters belonged so completely to a place and time. They didn't serve the agenda of the writer; instead, they were being observed by the writer, with sensitivity, and without judgement. And the acting is outstanding. Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk not a typical draw for you? I swear to you, you have never seen them like this. Their acting has an honesty and immediacy that you just don't see very often. You leave each character's story abruptly, before you're ready. But by the end of the film, you're left with an incredibly rich experience -- like you've spent the afternoon reading the Summer Fiction issue of "The New Yorker." All these perfectly observed lives, still so present in your mind. I highly recommend it.
Adam: Like you, Sam, my expectations were pretty low for "Personal Velocity," and I came away pleasantly surprised. As you'd expect from a second film, "Jack and Rose" is more ambitious in its scope and presentation -- although it, too, is a 'small' film in that it has only a handful of characters and was shot mostly in the same location. But PV is more dynamic somehow. At the risk of sounding like a studio hack, PV is actually a bit exhilarating ("Exhilarating!!" –Adam Kempenaar, Cinecast); by that I mean simply that it feels riskier, even with "Jack and Rose's" provocative subtext.
Miller sets up this very traditional, tranquil family scene at the beginning with Delia's story (Sedgwick), and just when you start to settle in, she shocks you out of your siesta with a jaw-dropping moment of violence. Delia makes a fairly benign comment to her husband about him failing to do something he said he would do, and the camera lingers on him as he looks at her with a look of ... what, exactly? Hatred? Embarrassment? Frustration? He clearly feels emasculated, but just what is he going to do about it? Well, he does something alright, and from that moment on I knew I had to be prepared for anything.
As you pointed out during our last show, the film appropriately feels like a short story. One of the major reasons, of course, is the narration that was surely lifted almost verbatim from Miller's stories that inspired the film. Narration can be tricky and is often misused. It works best when the filmmaker is playful with it, the way Don Roos uses it for ironic effect in "The Opposite of Sex," for example, by having Christina Ricci directly address the audience. Miller's narration provides insight into her characters' deepest desires and motivations the same way an omniscient narrator in a novel does; or, in a dramatic context, the way a Shakespearean monologue functions. It's highly stylized and unnatural from a cinematic standpoint, but it's fascinating to listen to.
Considering your distaste for the treatment of women in "Sin City," you must have loved the way this film empowers women. All three stories are about women forced to examine their lives and ultimately decide who they want to be. And all three succeed, more or less, without the help of men -- or, perhaps, in spite of them. I’m still considering what the three vignettes add up to in the end, if anything. It seems to me that Delia and Greta (Posey) move forward by going backward -- by embracing who they used to be and what emboldened them before their husbands sucked the life from them. For Delia it's her sexuality; for Greta, ambition. But in Paula's story (Balk), her state of mind and outlook on life is much different at the end than it was in the beginning. She goes on a greater emotional journey, and yet, I found her story to be the least effective. It didn't fit thematically as well with the other two stories, similar to Dwight's in "Sin City."
Sedgwick really is phenomenal here. She has a tough task, and not just because the role demands a lot of look-at-me histrionics. Getting back to the narration, Delia is described in such a heightened way that it’s almost impossible for any woman to embody her. In a short story or novel it would be fine because we can conjure her up in our imagination. But Sedgwick has to pull it off for us to buy it, and she does – Delia's overpowering sexuality, her shame, her toughness, her vulnerability. I was surprised by Posey as well. She's still playing a variation on the neurotic bitch role that made her the queen of independent film there for awhile, but there's a softness here that I hadn't seen before. In others words, she's less bitchy.
Some other recommendations inspired by the last two shows: "My Dinner With Andre," "Vanya on 42nd Street" (both with "Melinda and Melinda's" Wallace Shawn) and "The Front," (1976) in which Woody Allen stars as a cashier who helps blacklisted screenwriters by submitting their work in his name. Funny, with a great performance from Zero Mostel (once blacklisted himself), but ultimately a serious indictment of the House Un-American Activities Committee's witch hunt in the '50s.
It seems that Sam has gotten himself a few new fans thanks to his critique of "Sin City" and its misogynistic depiction of women (for the record, I still disagree). Thanks to everyone who emailed in comments. We'll share some of them on next week's show -- and I will continue my defense of the film.
