The women

Casa de los Babys

(2003)

Well, I've confirmed one suspicion anyway: when I first saw John Sayles's treatment of genetic imperialism at the late lamented York Square Cinema, the English subtitles were missing from the first couple of reels not because Sayles was forcing us stumblers in Spanish to deal with the uncertainly of communication that partly defines the relationship between the U.S. women in the film and the residents of the unnamed Latin American country to which they come to adopt babies. No, it was because the distributor mistakenly sent the York Square a couple of reels sin subtitulos, and the theater's management was too dim to get the error corrected.

Actually, I confirmed two suspicions, the other being that it didn't really matter much if you got every single word of that stretch: Sayles is pretty inscrutable regardless. The film is certainly not an endorsement of exploiting poverty in the name of saving one baby at a time from it, but neither does it shy from the undeniable truth that well-intentioned people of means are in fact able to provide advantages that are out of reach to any of the past-adoption-age children we see squeegying windshields and huffing paint fumes. The sometimes unsubtle Sayles is content to leave us in the middle of complexity here--which is sort of satisfyingly frustrating.

Les parapluies de change

Potiche

Crit

OK, I've now seen a movie open with Catherine Deneuve jogging. That scene evolves into a nature scene from a Disney animated feature--if Disney had shown rabbits humping. I only wish that after that I had had as much fun as Deneuve, but I'm afraid I just don't get why you'd make a film in 2010 that's not just set in 1977 but seems to have been made then, complete with bad music (I've also now seen Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu dancing at a disco; I didn't know whether to laugh or weep) and clumsy feminism (the title is slang for "trophy wife"). In fact, it almost feels like late-'70s TV--you expect the laugh track to kick in at any moment. The stars ensure that it's not altogether without charm, but even a French comedy needs more than charm, or at least more than a little charm.

Another turn

The Others

(2001)

This is a first-rate scary movie, in part because it's hard to say as it goes along who's the scariest: the mostly unseen "intruders," mother Grace (Nicole Kidman), or young daughter Anne (Alakina Mann). (Anne's brother Nicholas [James Bentley] is far too wimpy to be scary, and the servants [Fionnula Flanagan, Eric Sykes, and Elaine Cassidy] are mysterious but not really scary. We won't discuss the missing-and-presumed-dead-a-couple-of-years-after-the-war father.)

A couple of minutes into this I thought, "Hey, I never thought about this when it was in the theaters, but wasn't there a film many years ago, based on Henry James's novella of the supernatural The Turn of The Screw, in which children and domestics also featured prominently?" Well, no, actually--I was thinking of The Innocents. But it turns out, according to Wikipedia, anyway, that Turn was indeed an influence cited by this film's writer-director Alejandro Amenábar.

The madwoman in the attic

Jane Eyre

Crit

Just finished reading the novel--for the first time in my long book-reading life--this week, so I have it as fresh in mind as possible, and am in good position to judge the filmmakers' decisions in squeezing a fat Victorian novel into 2 hours. Give director Cary Fukunaga an A+ on capturing the tone of Charlotte Brontë's insistently intellectual effusion of emotion. Also very nearly perfect is Mia Long-Polish-Surname as Jane: regular readers (both of them) know that I give high marks for wordless acting, and although Jane is as verbal as a good Victorian protagonist must be, Fukunaga exploits Wasikowska's brilliance in making her face a seemingly unchanging mask that nonetheless conveys precisely what she's thinking and--more to the point--feeling.

One narrative choice makes the sprawling material much more tamable: we begin with Jane's flight from Thornfield and collapse at the door of Moor House. Then we flash back to her childhood, her time at Lowood (which is, sadly, portrayed as unremittingly hellish, but I understand the need to elide the angelic Miss Temple--for that matter, the whole Lowood segment might well have been cut, but for the loss of Amelia Clarkson, a fine match for Wasikowska as young Jane), and thence to Thornfield and all that happens there. Or lots of it, anyway.

The hints of a presence upstairs are much condensed, as is the role of Blanche Ingram as the presumptive future Mrs. Rochester, and that's a shame, but the one really odd choice by the filmmakers is making Bertha, in her one brief appearance, not the haggard witch into which she is supposed to have descended in more than a decade of confinement but the ultrahot Valentina Cervi, who shows her insanity mainly by having unkempt (and really sexy) hair. OK, she does spit a fly at Jane--that's a nice crazy touch.

Haters of hackneyed narrative devices of 18th- and 19th-century novels will be pleased to see that the one huge coincidence of the novel is missing (though that has the effect of making Jane's economic gesture less arguably a product of her cool logic, and its beneficiaries' acceptance of it less believable), displeased to see the wildest metaphysical device present (though in a much muted form).

In all, a very faithful--and, more important, very good--adaptation of a justly loved literary work. But seriously, if you, like I a month ago, have never read the novel, do. And how'd I do, by the way, avoiding or at least finessing spoliers? I tried really hard.

Trailer

• The Conspirator--Huh! I've been watching Ken Burns's The Civil War again, so I'm particularly receptive to a drama about the treason trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright). Unfortunately, it stars James McAvoy, whom I still just don't get, as her unwilling defense attorney.

Respect the streak

Bull Durham

(1988)

Can I just tell you how much I've been needing baseball this spring? Maybe it's to do with the but-if-it-had-to-perish-twice winter we're still trying to get out from under (forgot to check today, and I'm not going out there now just for this, but as of yesterday there was still a little pile of January snow next door), but I think it's something even more elemental than that. Expectations for my beloved team are the lowest they've been in years, so it's certainly not because I assume triumph that will salve the disappointment that my beloved basketball team has left me and my beloved football (you know: with the feet) team now seems destined to leave me. And it's certainly not that I expect to lose less money this year on resale of my unused tickets than I did last year. Maybe it's that my team is in its 50th season and I'm in the late innings of my own game. Anyway, I've been savoring the prospect of my annual screening of this, holding off until the end of the season's first weekend--on the day that my team's winning pitcher is someone who, like Crash Davis, has been observed reading a book without pictures.

This film is not perfect, but rare is the poem longer than a sonnet that's perfect, and this film is a poem.

Technical fall

Win Win

Crit

I was aware that the weight limits had been refined since I was covering the Grafton High School Bearcats wrestling team in West Virginia almost 3 decades ago--a team coached by (I am not making this up) Orville Wright. (Incidentally, here's something occupying memory space in my brain that could, in theory, be devoted to something useful: early-'80s high school weights? 98, 105, 112, 119, 126, 132, 138, 145, 155, 167, 185, and heavyweight [technically called "unlimited"].) What I didn't know, but trust to be true, and not just something tossed in for purposes of plot, is that a match no longer proceeds from the lowest weight through heavy but rather starts at a weight chosen at random--a clever and significant improvement.

So what about the movie? Well, you know what a fan I am of Tom McCarthy as a director, and what's good here is very good, not least the performance of the young real-life state wrestling champion Alex Shaffer, whose deadpan genuineness made me think of a young Sean Penn (Spicoli minus the haze, as it were). But I had serious problems with the inciting incident of the story, wherein the protagonist, an idealistic lawyer played by Paul Giamatti, does something grotesquely unethical (and significantly immoral and almost certainly illegal as well) for money, something that nothing else we see of his character suggests that he'd be capable of. And then, after he spends about 5 screen minutes late having to be apologetic and ashamed in front of everyone whose opinion matters, everything turns out all right. Plenty to like, but finally disappointing.

Trailer

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan--Golly, looks schmaltzy.

Gipsy swans

Strictly Ballroom

(1992)

My daughter has been at me to watch this for years--though the "why tonight" is that I both needed a DVR deaccession candidate (something that had been on the hard drive for more than 2 years) and something short, so that I could watch it ahead of the Mets' opener. This fit.

The verdict? Well, it’s very Baz, very young Baz, for better and worse. The first act is cliché-packed, with little to get our attention other than the rare female lead ugly duckling who really starts out . . . well, unattractive.

That would be Fran, and the plot, the central duo’s dance routine, and the film kick in when we meet her Romany family, and they take her partner Scott into their flamenco heart. It started to tug at me then, and by the final act, I couldn’t resist. Good goofy Bazfun.