The festival finally escaped its doldrums yesterday, which was as interesting
and engrossing as last Saturday--featuring the Johnny Depp and Wim Wenders
fiascos--was dull and depressing.
Quick notes on some of the films I've caught: "In
the Company of Men," by Neil Labute, is too tricky for its own
good, but nicely skewers the mentality of male yuppies, who deserve all
the skewering they can get. "The
Forbidden Woman," by Philippe Harrel, is a clever but minor exercise
that tells its story of a love affair entirely through the eyes of its adulterous
male character, whose off-screen voice is supplied by the filmmaker himself.
"Mrs Brown," by John Madden,
is a fine example of "Masterpiece Theater" moviemaking at its
dignified best, telling the fetchingly filmed tale of Queen Victoria and
the bearded boyfriend who made her life more comfortable after her royal
husband's death. (American journalists take note--this is English territory,
so leave the period off the "Mrs" in the title. No punctuation
please, we're British.) Finally, the long-awaited "The
Truce," by the respected Francesco Rosi, is ponderous and pretentious,
anchoring its story (based on Primo Levi's memoir) in the highly debatable
assumption that we don't already know World War II and the Holocaust were
very bad events that made a lot of people very unhappy. John Turturro's
earnest acting isn't nearly enough to outweigh this condescending premise
and its sadly clunky execution by Rosi et al.
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