Jim McLennan – Page 3 – nastassja.kinski.us

Sugar (2013)

Posted on October 17, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Rotimi Rainwater
Star: Shenae Grimes, Marshall Allman, Austin Williams, Nastassja Kinski

It’s odd that, at the time of writing, this is now Nastassja’s sole feature appearance in over a decade, since Inland Empire in 2006. Two things are particularly strange: it’s little more than a meaningless cameo, and comes in Rainwater’s first feature – I can’t even see anything on which he worked in another capacity, where he might have met her. Still, good on him, especially since this is clearly a work from the heart, and indeed, personal experience. For, in his late teens, Rainwater spent nine months living rough, on the streets of Orlando. He was lucky enough to escape, but never forgot the experience: it informed not only this feature, but his subsequent documentary, Lost in America.

However, passion and writing what you know isn’t enough, in itself, for a feature film to succeed. I’m almost entirely in agreement with the Variety review, which described it as, “A well-intentioned attempt to illuminate the plight of homeless youth,” then said it “falls flat in [a] dramatically inert narrative debut… Its compassion and careful sidestepping of exploitation tropes can’t make up for a fundamental lack of depth and urgency in the storytelling.” As a slice-of-life depicting life on the street, it has an air of authenticity. The problem is its efforts to impose dramatic structure feel so half-hearted, I suspect Rainwater would likely have been better off not bothering at all., as with the documentary.

The movie focuses on Sugar (Grimes), part of a loose-knit group of homeless kids and young adults, whose base is in Venice Beach, California. She has been on the streets for a while, after a car accident which killed both her parents left her suffering from PTSD. Her closest friends are Marshall (Allman), a former Mormon who is her boyfriend, yet has an escalating issue of substance abuse; and Ronnie (Williams), a younger kid who bailed out on the foster system after one too many bad homes. They survive on a mix of pan-handling from strangers, charity from local stores, and the occasional hand out from Bishop (Wes Studi), a charity outreach worker who is trying to build trust with the deeply-suspicious Sugar.

The tepid drama ensues when Sugar’s uncle Gene (the always reliable Angus Macfadyen) shows up in Bishop’s office, offering to take her home. Time to find out whether Sugar meant it, when she said, “Everyone says they wanna help, but nobody really does anything. I wish someone really was there to help.” For one of the themes here is perhaps a strange double-standard of the homeless. They need assistance. They want assistance. But when it’s offered, as often as not, it’s thrown back in the helper’s face. We see that particularly with Kinski’s character, Sister Nadia. She first appears (top) interacting with Ronnie, giving him five bucks to help her hand out fliers for her homeless mission. When Sugar sees that, she heads right over and marches Ronnie away from what she perceives as Nadia’s threat.

This is part of the dilemma we faced when dealing with homelessness: what may be best for them is not necessarily what the homeless think is best for them. It has to be frustrating, and as an outside observer, it felt kinda off-putting, like the casual lies Sugar and her gang told to “normals” to get money out of us. If anything, it feels like Rainwater soft-pedals the harsher elements of homelessness a good deal, perhaps for fear of coming over as exploitative. Sugar’s back story seemed implausible, and certain elements depicted here, came across to me almost like they were promoting urban camping as a lifestyle. You too can spend your days hanging out at the beach and skateboarding! Who needs to work, when you can live off the efforts of others! I get the feeling this is not quite the impact the maker intended…

Sometimes, though, you can see the homeless have a point. Ronnie, for example, steadfastly refuses even Bishop’s help, fearing it’s a trap to get him back into a system, of whose abuse he has first-hand experience. But there’s nothing to suggest Sister Nadia’s motives are anything except pure, or that her charity has a hidden agenda. Not that we get to see much of them, or indeed, her. Kinski’s only other scene of note is near the end, when she sits alongside Sugar on a bench (below). It’s almost like she had a day off, was visiting Venice Beach where she saw the production, and offered to help out. Cue Rainwater frantically scribbling a part for her on the back of a napkin.

Grimes and the rest of the mostly young cast do what they can with the material, and are generally solid enough, and are reasonably convincing, if perhaps a little too polished and articulate. It’s easy to forget their background is more in things like 90210 and High School Musical. The drama, such as it is, comes towards the end of the film. Part of Sugar (or Shelley, as Gene knows her) does want to go with her uncle; however, she is reluctant to leave Ronnie and, to a certain extent, Marshall to their fates. She presents the latter with an ultimatum after she discovers his promise to kick the habit is an empty one, and it’s that which propels things to their final denouement. Not that there’s much tension here either, beyond will she or won’t she go off with Uncle Gene?

While I didn’t hate this, to be clear, it’s striving too earnestly to be worthy, coming over rather too much as the cinematic equivalent of The Road to Wigan Pier. If it turns out to be the end of Kinski’s feature career, there will be a certain irony present. For her filmography will (as far as English-language films go, at least) have ended as it began: with her playing a nun, as in To The Devil a Daughter, 37 years previously. Yet should this be a parting shot, it will be one which does her little, if any, justice.

More Things That Happened (2012)

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: David Lynch
Star: Laura Dern, Karolina Gruszka, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Nastassja Kinski

It says a great deal about Inland Empire, that this 75-minute selection of deleted scenes is no less coherent, and perhaps also works better than the feature from which they were removed. It probably helps that I went in with absolutely no expectation of these “making sense”. But, while there is no real narrative, they certainly share a common look and feel, Lynch having edited them together into a single item that manages to generate a significant amount of unsettling atmosphere. This is mainly due to a disturbing feeling of misogynistic violence bubbling just beneath the surface, close to breaking through at any point.

This is particularly apparent in the first two scenes. The opening one sees the pregnant Sue (Dern) at home. Her husband arrives home, and berates her for the untidy state of the house, as well as for her claim that she’s getting “more pregnant.” The second opens with some seriously intense staring, before settling down into a dialogue between the characters known as the “Lost Girl” (Gruszka) and the “Phantom” (Majchrzak). The latter offers to sell the former a timepiece which will bring good luck, and also to look over her. The price will be $25, and holding his hand for a moment. The way in which this is filmed is particularly unsettling, almost entirely in close-up, which leaves the viewer with no way to escape its intensity.

At least there is actually Kinski to be found here – unlike the main feature, where her presence is at the “Processed in a facility that also handles” volume i.e. negligible. She is sitting with Nikki – the film actress played by Dern – and relates the story of an incident which happened to her in a bar. She meets a married man, and goes back to his hotel room. She calls the man Billy: this is likely a reference to the character by the same name, whose character in the film on which Nikki is working, has an affair with Nikki’s character. Yeah, if this seems excessively complicated… that’s because it is, an almost inevitable result of the multiple levels of reality with which the film plays. Like the rest of these deleted scenes, it doesn’t so much clarify anything, as obscure it further.

I read a theory that it’s actually her character recounting, from a different the opening scene of the film, in which a Polish prostitute goes into a hotel room with her client, which may explains the growing expression of terror on Nikki’s face. Though without any idea of where this deleted scene was intended to go in Inland Empire, it is particularly hard to be sure of its significance. Here’s a transcription of her soliloquy:

I had the most incredible experience. It all started at Al’s. I was sitting at the bar; you know at the back, where the bathrooms are? And there was this guy. He turned around and looked at me and I just lit up inside, you know? He asked me if I wanted a beer and I said, I said, “Yeah, okay, thank you.” And, um, I noticed he was… he had a ring. He was married, but I didn’t care. And then he said he was just passing through and, um, he asked me my name and I told him. And he said his name was Billy. And he said, “Nice to meet you,”and I said, “Nice to meet you, Billy.”And Pete was in the back serving a beer to Sandra and uh, I don’t know, it was like he suddenly, like, he said, um, “I think I’ve met you before.”And I’m like, not falling for that line, you know? But now I said, “I think I’ve met you before.”

And I don’t… I thought I met him before but I don’t even remember where. And then he suddenly he said, like, I wanted him so bad, I don’t know, I was just and I felt he felt the same thing, you know? And then he said, “I want you.”And I said, “Where do you want to go?”And he said he was staying at the hotel. And I said, “At the Harriston?”and he said yeah. And so we were… we just left. And Pete was looking at me like [sighs]and Sandra was eyeballing this man I was leaving with. And then we got to the hotel and I was kind of hanging back in the dark while he was getting his key. Everything wasit was different; we went through the hallway and I didn’t know where I was. Think they must have changed the decor or something. Everything was different, I didn’t recognize any of it. I didn’t know where I was. It was like I was dreaming.

It’s a relatively short scene: Nastassja is present for not much more than four minutes, before the film drifts away into another of its multiverses. Yet it’s still fun to watch; she does a lot of that “peering sideways from under her fringe” thing, which I’ve always found one of her more adorable looks. It’s certainly preferable to the ten minutes of Los Angeles street hookers’ bickering, with which More Things ends. Like most of the feature from which it was excised, it’s very much a case of more being less. Overall, I can’t argue with Lynch, who explained this film thus: “There are things in More Things That Happened that give a feeling that could be like a brother or sister to the film. It’s like if you know a family but you haven’t met the sister yet, you go over to Ohio and meet the sister and it adds more to the feeling of the whole family.”

However, it’s still not a family with whom I want to spent any time.

Inland Empire (2006)

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: David Lynch
Star: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux and, barely, Nastassja Kinski

My relationship with the works of David Lynch over the years has been rocky. Blue Velvet is great, with a huge vote of thanks to Dennis Hopper’s berserk performance. Lost Highway is also very good (and introduced me to Rammstein, for which I’ll be forever grateful). But Eraserhead is likely near the top of my list of most over-rated movies of all time: I find it an almost unwatchable piece of self-indulgent arthouse nonsense. Empire is a little bit like each of the above, but eventually topples over into incoherence masquerading as art. And from the Kinski perspective, it’s a cruel and extremely long-winded joke.

The “plot” – and rarely have quotes been used as deliberately – concerns actress Nikki (Dern), who has won a leading role in a film-within-the-film, On High in Blue Tomorrows, being directed by Kingsley Stewart (Irons) and opposite leading man Devon Berk (Theroux). Almost immediately, the lines between Nikki and her character, Sue, begin to blur, and reality takes a back seat. An early morning rehearsal is interrupted by an unidentified visitor to the sound stage, whom Devon chases and who suddenly vanishes. Sue’s on-screen affair with Devon’s character, Billy, begins to impact the actors’ relationship. And later, when walking to her car, Nikki sees a door in a wall and feels impelled to go through it. She finds herself back on the sound stage watching herself in the previous rehearsal, having become the unidentified visitor.

To this point, it somewhat echoes Lost Highway, with the concept of time being a loop of some kind. However, from here on, you’re no longer so much following the story, as desperately clinging on to it. There’s absolutely no way I can summarize it or even explain it, in any way that will make sense. I’m not even convinced Lynch could do so, and it’s safe to say that the film is very – indeed, almost entirely – open to personal interpretation. It doesn’t help that Lynch is in no hurry to get wherever it is he’s supposedly going, with the film running a hair short of three hours. It likely took me nearer six hours to get through it: I’d watch 30 minutes or so, then have to take a break, and come up for mental air. Admittedly, it perhaps didn’t help that the copy I watched offered no subs for the significant chunks in Polish. But I’ve a feeling that was hardly the deal-breaker.

By the time I got to the fourth installment, without any sign of Kinski, I was beginning to wonder if I’d dozed off and missed her. Or blinked, for there are some cameos that last only a few seconds, such as William H. Macy as an announcer. Perhaps she was one of the rabbits. No, seriously. For one aspect is scenes that appear to be a parody of a situation comedy, involving three rabbit-headed humans, like something out of Donnie Darko. They inhabit a living-room (into which Nikki/Sue later stumbles), exchanging bizarrely meaningless lines like “There have been no calls today,” interrupted by a nonsensical laugh-track. But on checking, nope: the two female rabbits are actually voiced by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, the stars of one of Lynch’s previous mind-melters, Mulholland Drive.

Finally, six minutes before the end, as the final credits roll, we get Nastassja’s “contribution”. Again, quotes used advisedly, because here’s the description of it, taken directly from Wikipedia: “The concluding scene takes place at [Nikki’s] house, where she sits with many other people, among them Laura Harring, Nastassja Kinski, and Ben Harper [Dern’s husband at the time]. A one-legged woman who was mentioned in Sue’s monologue looks around and says, “Sweet!” Niko, the girl with the blonde wig and monkey, can also be seen. The end credits roll over a group of women dancing to Nina Simone’s Sinner Man while a lumberjack saws a log to the beat.” It’s every bit as incomprehensible as it sounds. Kinski has no lines, and indeed, is barely glimpsed in the whole sequence, save for the screen capture shown at top. The words “Is that it?” may have escaped my lips at the end of this one.

It appears Lynch did originally plan to include more about Kinski and her character – referred to as ‘The Lady’ on IMDb but credited, along with Harring, only as “Special Appearance by”. The supplemental film, More Things That Happened, released as an extra on the DVD release of Inland Empire, is a 75-minute slab of various deleted scenes which were edited out of the original movie. But to be honest, the tiny fragment of Kinski which is left, little more than a single shot lasting a couple of seconds, could have been excised entirely, and would hardly have harmed the artistic integrity of the remainder. [It would certainly have saved me from wasting a holiday afternoon] Perhaps there was some kind of contractual obligation here: part of the agreement for Nastassja’s appearance, was that she was guaranteed to be in the finished movie? I’m just guessing.

Despite my grumpy comments above, I can’t truly say the experience was entirely unpleasant, even if Dern’s acting appeared to consist of pretending she was smelling raw sewage for the entire movie. Say what you like about Lynch, he has a vision, and goes full-throttle towards realizing it. Such a cheerful disregard for the audience can only be admired, albeit somewhat grudgingly. The results have a hallucinatory quality to them, like being stuck inside a nightmare. And not just yours, but someone else’s, where there’s not even anything to which your subconscious can relate. I guess, I just prefer my nightmares to be a little better-defined, in terms of plot structure.

À ton image (2004)

Posted on May 21, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Aruna Villiers
Star: Christopher Lambert, Nastassja Kinski, Audrey DeWilder, Andrzej Seweryn

Gynecologist Thomas (Lambert) rescues Mathilde (Kinski) from the side of the road, after her car breaks down, and so begins their relationship. She is more than a bit unstable, having been on anti-depressants, and already lost a son in a previous incident, whose details remain obscure for most of the movie. Mathilde is now apparently unable to have any further kids, but Thomas knows someone – Professeur Cardoze (Seweryn), who is doing some research on the cutting edge of human cloning. Without telling Mathilde, Thomas enrolls her in the program, and the couple are delighted when she becomes pregnant, and has a bouncing baby girl, Manon. The proud parents live happily ever after with their daughter, able to enjoy family life through the grace of modern technology. The End. Sorry? That isn’t what happens? I am shocked – shocked – by this development.

Remember when cloning was the Next Big Thing? Or course, there have been clone movies around for a long time; 1978’s The Boys From Brazil was probably the first to take the idea mainstream. However, there was a five-year period, roughly covering 2000-04, when they seemed particularly fashionable, including things like The 6th Day. What almost every clone film, regardless of era, seems to have in common is their cautionary nature. Whether it’s Multiplicity or Godsend, cloning is rarely if ever depicted as a boon to humanity. Stuff goes wrong, because this is, it appears, firmly filed in the box marked “things with which mankind is not supposed to meddle.” And so it proves here, inevitably.

There are two particular problems, though I’m not sure either have even the slightest credible basis in scientific logic. Firstly, and most obviously, is what appears to be the accelerated rate at which Manon grows up. This is likely necessary for cinematic purposes, and I did enjoy some of the tricks which Villiers found to show the passage of time, such as having toddler Manon crawl round the back of the well in their garden, only for little girl Manon to run out on the other side. It’s hard to be quite sure about the time-frame in question, not least because Lambert and Kinski don’t appear to age a single day, but also because of Manon (DeWilder) playing ahead of her chronological age: by the end, she’s supposedly twelve, but seems to be acting more like someone in their late teens.

The other issue is that Manon appears have all her mother’s memories as well. At first, this cloneiness manifests itself relatively innocently, in nightmares during which Manon appears to relive the circumstances surrounding the death of her sibling, and a fondness for dressing in the same clothes as her mother – as well as performing (what can only be described as “moderately creepy”) dress-up musical numbers for Thomas, shown below. However, as she matures into adolescence, the same unstable streak which her mother had, begins to develop in Manon, and it becomes increasingly clear the daughter is intent on using this knowledge of Mathilda against her, to replace her in Thomas’s affections.

It’s perhaps this aspect which is one of the reasons why the film has received only limited distribution, not apparently receiving an official DVD release in the US or UK. [I ended up having to subtitle the film myself, based off a combination of Google Translate, and my schoolboy French!] While hardly explicit, and being produced by Luc Besson’s Europacorp studio, having a 12-year-old character attempting to seduce her father is still the kind of thing guaranteed to provoke tabloid “BAN THIS EVIL FILTH!” headlines, and the fact the DeWilder was 15 at the time of shooting isn’t likely to help matters much. This is very much the kind of approach to the topic of clones and their consequences, which would only come out of French cinema, and likely helped restrict its appeal in other territories.

Though overall, it’s not too bad, I’d say – save for a climax which topples over from the implausible into the entirely absurd, set around the back-garden well mentioned earlier. There’s a struggle between Manon and Mathilda, while Thomas lies unconscious nearby, having been whacked with a shovel earlier in proceedings. But the way the script finds to end things is so abrupt, it smells of desperation on the part of the film-makers. I’d be curious to know if the novel by Louise Lambrichs, on which the film was based, does better in this department. However, it doesn’t seem to have received an English translation either, and neither my French nor my patience are up to the task of investigating further.

Kinski is good in her role as the damaged Mathilda, drifting slowly from delight at being able to have another child into horror, into the realization there is something terribly wrong, and that Thomas has been far from honest with her. She projects the necessary air of fragility, and I could see the story going doing an alternate route, where her suspicions are rejected by her husband as paranoid delusions, stemming from her mental state. I’m not as convinced by Lambert. His iconic role as the immortal Connor MacLeod in Highlander makes it a little bit difficult to accept him as any kind of scientist. and the performance isn’t good enough to make the viewer take him seriously.

The film occupies a bit of an awkward middle-ground: the topic is pure sensationalism, but Villiers, who also worked on the script, apparently wants us to take the subject matter seriously. She never quite manages to get the audience – or, at least, me – to go along with her on that. I sense I might have enjoyed it more, if there had been a more lurid and exploitational approach, because that’s likely what the concepts here deserve.

À ton image (2004) gallery

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À ton image (2004)

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The Lady Musketeer (2004)

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Steve Boyum
Star: Susie Amy, Michael York, Gérard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski
a.k.a. La Femme Musketeer

I once made the mistake of trying to read the original Three Musketeers novel. Let’s just say, it quickly became clear that Alexandre Dumas was getting paid by the word for his story. I didn’t finish it. The various films magde, I’ve generally enjoyed a lot more, particularly the seventies version, which also starred York, the nineties one with Kiefer Sutherland, and even the 2011 adaptation directed by the guy who did Resident Evil. This is fine as well, being a cheerful romp that was originally a Hallmark mini-series. It’s partly a reboot, partly a sequel, and partly a re-imagining, yet manages to pull the disparate elements together and ends up being an entertaining 171 minutes.

The heroine is Valentine D’Artagnan (Amy), daughter of the renowned Musketeer (York), who has retired to the country and lives a quiet life. Valentine has bigger dreams, as well as all the swordsmanship (or swordswomanship) skills her father can teach, and heads off to Paris with a letter of recommendation. Meanwhile, the shenanigans around the court continue as they did in Dad’s time. Now, it’s young king Louis XIV on the throne, with the conspiring Cardinal Mazarin (Depardieu) seeking to exercise control over the king, courtesy of a letter which casts doubt on the monarch’s parentage, and thus, legitimacy.

This is where Nastassja comes in, for she plays the Cardinal’s top spy, Lady Bolton, who succeeded in obtaining the letter from an English noble, the Duke of Buckingham. However, making her way towards Paris is Maria Theresa of Spain: if she gets there safely, and weds the king, all Mazarin’s plans go up in smoke, and it will also end the war between France and Spain. He sends his forces out to make sure Theresa never arrives. Tasked with ensuring she does, are three young Musketeers (who just happen to be the sons of famous fathers), along with Valentine, who is falsely accused of murder by Lady Bolton, after the king’s mistress discovers the letter as well as its contests, and needs to be silenced by Bolton (as shown at top).

It’s interesting to see this sitting next in her filmography to Kinski’s performance in a sixties update of Dangerous Liaisons. For I sense that Lady Bolton would have got on quite well with the Marquise de Merteuil, both being big fans of intrigue, deceit and plotting. Though Bolton is likely a better hand with a throwing knife, shall we say, and is more interested in politics than personal vendettas. She’s perhaps not quite as memorable as Faye Dunaway in the seventies Three Musketeers, who played the equivalent character of Milady de Winter. But it’s likely more in line with the cast here, which is not as stellar as its predecessor. Though in its defense, this wisely isn’t trying to be.

There is still good entertainment here. I loved the way the original trio of musketeers (including John Rhys-Davis from Lord of the Rings, as Porthos) have become a theatrical troupe, touring the country to re-enact their adventures for the locals. Also how they end up rescuing two of their sons from an unfortunate, noose-shaped situation: I’d have been quite happy if this had been the film’s main narrative, as was done in The Return of the Musketeers. But it’s only one element: as you can imagine from the above, and its almost entire separation from the plot described earlier, there are a lot of moving parts to the storyline. This is where the extended running time works in the movie’s favor: the various facets get a chance to breathe, rather than feeling crammed in.

It does have hints of a Europudding recipe here, illustrated by Kinski’s role: she’s a German actress, playing a character with an English name, hanging round the French court. Meanwhile, Amy’s accent as the heroine is less South of France, and more Sarf London, though it… drifts in and out considerably, shall we say, over the course of proceedings. The main problem is likely the blandness of the younger actors. Amy is by no means the worst offender here though: Valentine is a feisty enough character to be fun, even if the concept here requires credibility stretching at epic levels. No, the dishonors here go to the next generation of the three musketeers, who are utterly forgettable, especially when compared to veterans like York, Rhys-Davis, Depardieu and Kinski.

Filmed largely in Croatia (another slice of Europudding?), the makers get good bang for their buck, with the country providing some convincing historical locations. The pretty scenery is shot attractively by veteran cinematographer David Connell, but unfortunately, he seems much less adept at capturing the action. I mean, you’re basically doing The 3 Musketeers. There is going to be copious quantities of swordplay. Swashes will be buckled here. But in general, the fights fell victim to the curse of modern action movies, being shot too close and edited too fast. This might make sense when you’ve got Michael York, then well into his sixties and likely requiring a stunt-double for some action. But the younger versions? Get people who can handle a sword, sit the camera back a bit, and let the viewer appreciate it.

All told, however, I can’t complain much, if at all. It’s a concept which is clearly intended purely for entertainment, and this renders spurious most complaints about historical inaccuracy. Especially when they are as pedantic as one review I read, which complained that the English nobility were wearing, “The court fashions of at least ten years later.” I feel safe in assuming that most viewers of a Hallmark channel TVM, will have limited expertise in the area of 17th century clothing, and thus gaffes in this department are unlikely to impact enjoyment of the production to any significant degree. Those of us less inclined to obsess over such things should have fun with this ripping yarn. As an indication of its merits, even if a relatively small part for her, this is one of the very few Kinski-made-for-television entries which I’ve actually retained on DVD.

Dangerous Liaisons (2003)

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Josée Dayan
Star: Catherine Deneuve, Rupert Everett, Nastassja Kinski, Leelee Sobieski

The 1988 version of this, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, is one of my all-time favorite films. The two leads give absolutely brilliant performances: I think Close’s may be the greatest I’ve ever seen by an actress, or close – no pun intended – to it. It sets the standard to which any other adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 18th-century novel will inevitably be measured. And that’s regardless of whether or not it shares the same milieu: the six film adaptations (not including this TV mini-series) have tended to update or modify it in various ways, the settings ranging from contemporary New York to 1930’s China. However, I always find myself comparing their versions of the Marquise de Merteuil to Glenn Close.

In this case, events unfold in 1960’s France, and follow the same general structure as the “classic” version. The Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Deneuve) and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont (Everett) are aristocrats who amuse themselves by toying with people’s affections, creating and destroying relationships almost on a whim. de Merteuil enlists Valmont’s aid in obtaining revenge on her former lover, Gercourt (Andrzej Zulawski), after she discovered he is now engaged to her young goddaughter, Cécile (Sobieski). She tasks Valmont with seducing Cécile, in order to wreck the engagement. But Valmont is diverted by the challenge presented by Madame Marie de Tourvel (Kinski), a virtuous and happily-married woman, whose husband is out of the country on business.

de Merteuil seeks to focus Valmont’s mind, promising to sleep with him for one night, once he has completed his corruption of Cécile. However, Valmont finds himself genuinely falling for Marie, a change that brings down the scorn and wrath of the Marquise de Merteuil. She seeks to destroy their relationship, both out of spite, and so that Valmont will focus on her task. After she also reneges on her promise after he has completed his end of that bargain, war is declared between the former allies. The results are a war that potentially will end up destroying them both, as well as those in their emotional vicinity too.

The change in setting works perfectly well. It’s a story that is easily adaptable to any time and place where there are the “idle rich” – those with nothing better to do than play vicious games with other people. Technically, the production design is well above what you might expect from the phrase “TV miniseries”. It looks luscious: Jean-Paul Gaultier was involved in the costume design for the Marquise de Merteuil, and it’s likely also heaven for fans of classic cars. It sounds pretty damn good too. Frequent David Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti provides the music, some cues in which reminded me of Jerry Goldsmith’s ominous yet melodious score for Basic Instinct.

It’s when we come to the performances that the series is most… I was going to say “underwhelming,” and that isn’t fair. In a vacuum, most of them would be entirely acceptable. It’s just, as mentioned above, that there’s this whole comparison thing going on, to the Stephen Frears’ version – and it almost never stands to Dayan’s benefit. If we break it down to individual roles, and compare the leads here to that version, that might help explain what I mean.

Catherine Deneuve < Glenn Close
Rupert Everett <<< John Malkovich
Nastassja Kinski > Michelle Pfeiffer
Leelee Sobieski = Uma Thurman

Everett is the biggest problem, perhaps the result of him being the person most obviously acting in a second language. Deneuve, of course, is a native; Sobieski’s father is French, and Kinski’s background as a polyglot should be well-known. Everett seems to be aiming to portray Valmont as emotionally dead, delivering most of his lines as a result in a flat monotone. There are times when this is effective, such as when he’s breaking up with Cécile, telling her repeatedly, “It isn’t my fault”. Though even here, it feels little more than a pale shadow of Malkovich’s iconic “It’s beyond my control.”

Deneuve does rather better, displaying icy control throughout: that she still falls somewhat short, is less indicative of her own shortcomings, than the monumental awesomeness which was Glenn Close. I may be biased with the Pfeiffer comparison, but I found Kinski’s portrayal as the principled – to the point of saintly – Marie de Tourvel fractionally superior. This is a character which has to be so righteous, she’s capable of converting even the utterly amoral Valmont into a devoted admirer, willing to give up his wicked ways. Kinski just seems more plausible here, though Pfeiffer’s case is perhaps hampered by my not having seen her version until after Batman Returns, where she was… not so righteous, shall we say!

The three episodes run a little more than four hours in total (there is also a condensed versions available, it appears). This is something of a mixed blessing. I can’t say there’s significantly more wallop here, and since it’s spread out over twice as long, the overall impact is likely diluted and lower key, particularly in the second-half. [The solution to the problem of there no longer being duels in 1960’s France, doesn’t quite satisfy either] What the expanded length does allowm us room for more background information: for instance, it seems a good deal clearer here what both Valmont and de Merteuil have to gain by cuckolding Gercourt, and why the former agrees to the plot.

All told, it’s probably good enough to rank second among the four version of the story I’ve seen. It places ahead of Valmont, mostly thanks to Deneuve, and also of Cruel Intentions, where Sarah-Michelle Gellar showed her talents were better suited to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Scooby Doo than staging the revenge-pocalypse. Yet it still inevitably sits behind the Close/Malkovich masterpiece, for that included not only an actual performance from Keanu Reeves, there was also a future Doctor Who, in Peter Capaldi. So file this under worthy rather than necessary, since it leaves me mostly feeling a strong desire to dig out and watch my copy of the 1988 version.

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Paradise Found (2003)

Posted on February 21, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Mario Andreacchio
Star: Kiefer Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, Chris Haywood, Alun Armstrong

Biopics of 19th-century painters aren’t my usual fare – but by coincidence, I watched this biography of Paul Gauguin the same week as Desperate Romantics, a British series about the the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which shared several of the same strengths and weaknesses. Both feature a lead star with baggage: Romantics Aiden Turner was better known to us from Being Human and, now, Poldark, while Kiefer Sutherland… Well, let’s just say, every time Gauguin became upset (and that happened quite a lot), I kept expecting him to yell, “Where’s the bomb?!?” Jack Bauer, you have a lot to answer for.

They play equally fast and loose with facts for the sake of drama – though Romantics was at least up front about it, opening with a disclaimer that the Brotherhood “took imaginative licence in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit.” Much the same probably goes here: as ever with films based on actual events, real life is rarely cinematic, and one or the other has to give. For instance, the movie depicts Gauguin in Tahiti largely as “going native”, living in a ramshackle straw hut, fighting poverty and colonialist influences. While perhaps true temporarily, what does Wikipedia say about his life on the Pacific island?

[Gauguin] was to spend the next six years living, for the most part, an apparently comfortable life… During this time he was able to support himself with an increasingly steady stream of sales and the support of friends and well-wishers, though there was a period of time 1898–1899 when he felt compelled to take a desk job in Papeete. He built a spacious reed and thatch house at Punaauia in an affluent area ten miles east of Papeete, settled by wealthy families, in which he installed a large studio, sparing no expense. He maintained a horse and trap, so was in a position to travel daily to Papeete to participate in the social life of the colony should he wish.

But where’s the drama there? Similarly, the relationship with his wife, Mette (Kinski) is altered to fit the demands of the movie. This culminates in a scene, on a return trip to Europe by Gauguin, where she tells him he needs to go back to Tahiti, and walks away, tears in her eyes – the implication clearly being something along the lines of, “If you love somebody, let them go.” There’s no evidence anything even remotely resembling this touching incident ever took place. Their relationship was certainly strained, more or less from the moment Gauguin gave up his day job as a stockbroker in order to devote himself to art. But by the time the painter made his first journey back, the pair were irreconcilable, and communicated with each other only through a mutual friend.

Another interesting direction is to concentrate on Gauguin’s relationship with Camille Pissarro. While accurate enough – Pissarro was one of Gauguin’s main influences – I’m a bit surprised they didn’t opt for his connection to the much better-known Vincent Van Gogh. Their relationship was close, and had its share of drama; indeed, there have recently even been suggestions Gauguin was the man actually responsible for cutting off Van Gogh’s ear, with a sword and in a drunken rage. But I guess that friendship was perfectly well-covered cinematically already, in Lust For Life, which had Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, and Anthony Quinn, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Gauguin. Probably best not to try and compete with that.

The structure is a little odd too, constantly zipping back and forth in time – it begins with his arrival on the beach in Tahiti, then quickly leaps back 17 years, to his life in Paris when he was a well-off art collector, rather than a poor artist. It bounces back and forth repeatedly for the rest of the film, and this seems to serve no particular purpose over a more linear telling: it’s not as if there’s a twist ending or something. On the plus side, the film looks lovely, with Geoffrey Simpson’s cinematography capturing some wonderful Pacific scenery. It’d be a great commercial for the Tahiti Tourist Board, except for the fact that those scenes appear to have been filmed in Queensland, Australia. [And the part of Paris, meanwhile, seems to have been played by the Czech Republic…]

I also liked the film’s depiction of the relationship between Paul and Mette, far more than the sequences after their break-up, which deliver a very tired portrayal of colonialist attitudes and the “noble savages” they oppress. There’s an honest realism in the husband-wife partnership, that rings true. To be honest, I can see Mette’s point: Paul’s decision to throw away a secure job and solid income to pursue his dream of art, is a selfish one because it doesn’t take into account the impact on her and their four children. The film also doesn’t explain why he was unable to paint and be a stockbroker, at least until establishing there was indeed the hoped-for market for Gauguin’s work. But I guess, artists don’t always think things through logically like normal people (see also: Van Gogh, severed ear of).

All told, it’s not a disaster, and Sutherland is probably better than I would have expected in a historical role. Admittedly, this is mostly based off my prejudices regarding him, I think the last period piece in which I saw him was The Three Musketeers. Oh, hang on: I just remembered he was in Pompeii, but we’re likely all be better off if we can forget that one. Kinski, of course, seems like a veteran of a thousand 19th-century dramas, and wears the crinolines as well as you’d expect from a seasoned professional. When it’s Gauguin butting heads with a caricature of a Catholic priest, rather than Mrs. Gauguin, it isn’t as effective, and it’s the script which is clearly the biggest problem here, not the performances or production values.

.com for Murder (2002)

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Nico Mastorakis
Star: Nastassja Kinski, Jeffery Dean, Nicollette Sheridan, Huey Lewis

Have to say, I had been dreading this one. For this is the lowest rated of all the Kinski performances on the IMDb, scoring a woeful 2.7 out of ten. But I finally bit the bullet, sitting down to watch it. And dear god, it’s awful. I think 2.7 might be an over-estimate. Of course, its main problem is the subject matter: if you position your film on the bleeding edge of technology, there’s a very good chance it’s not going to date well. This has certainly not stood the test of fifteen years, right from the flashing sign in the opening credits, “Have modem, will travel.” I couldn’t honestly tell you the last time I connected my computer to a modem.

Similarly, the central aspect of the Internet round which this revolves is chat rooms. Totally text-based, mind you, not Facetime, Chatroulette or whatever, and so something which feels positively Neolithic. Partly to get round the tedium which would result from a film where you’re watching the lead character type messages on their keyboard, they give the heroine, Sondra (Kinski), a voice-to-text converter, and the comments of everyone else in the chat room are also read out in bleepy electronic voices. Her sister, Misty (Sheridan), is not so lucky, so she engages in that other cinematic conceit: people who speak aloud whatever they’re typing. Not something I do either.

Things do not improve once you get past this. Sondra, in a wheelchair after some leg-injuring incident that is never explained, is left alone to occupy her hi-tech, voice-activated house, when her husband, Ben (Roger Daltrey, for some inexplicable reason – if you’ve read this far, you’ll know this isn’t even the most questionable rock star cast in the film) goes off on a business trip. Poking around his computer, she guesses his password and discovers Ben has been cheating on her in cyberspace. She goes into the same room, meets his virtual mistress, but also gets into a flame war with some troll, who decides to show her who’s boss, by killing the mistress and sending Sondra a video of the event.

Misty has come over for a visit, and the two try to send the video on to the FBI, but it’s encrypted – which apparently means, it turns into a cartoon animation of Frankenstein, among other creatures. Not that Sondra knows what “encrypted” means, and has to have that laboriously explained to her by Agent Matheson (Lewis. Yep, that one, who with his News gave us the pop classic, The Power of Love. While not his first foray into acting, this was pretty close to his last, the IMDb listing only a minor role in 2007’s Graduation thereafter). To crack the file, they call in a computer tech – only for this to end up being the madman (Dean), whom they have now brought inside the house.

I could go on at much greater length about all the subsequent stupidity which unfolds, such as Sondra believing that she can over-ride the house’s voice-activated security systems by yelling “Shut up and do it!” at the computer. In the interests of brevity, suffice to say it all ends up with the Goethe-spouting psycho wearing night-vision goggles, and Sondra trying to blind him with a camera-flash, a shameless rip-off of Hitchcock’s Rear Window (the opening, meanwhile is a Psycho rip-off, from the killer’s perspective, with a side order of Peeping Tom). To the script’s slight credit, the characters do at least acknowledge this – except it then continues on to stage its own, far more ludicrous alternative. If you’re not snorting derisively when you figure out what’s happening, you’re a far more easily-pleased viewer than I.

Every character in this film is unutterably dumb, with the possible exception of Ben, since he leaves after five minutes – but given how easily Sondra guesses the password he has used for the “American Love Online” website, he likely is not the smartest tool in the box either. But the film exists purely due to this stupidity: if the victim, killer or even the cops possessed everyday smarts, the movie would be done and dusted inside 20 minutes. It doesn’t help that the killer actually appears to be two people, one a hacker, the other the actual psycho. The former straps lights to his fingers, wears far too much eye-liner, and keeps jars of fetuses in his apartment. He may be the more normal one of the pair.

I lost track of the number of occasions I realized I had given up paying attention at all to the film, and had to rewind it back to where I had drifted off. Probably eight or nine, at least. About the only scene that makes any impact is one where Matheson is speaking to another agent, and she does a surprisingly accurate description of what would, a few years down the line, be known broadly as the Dark Web. Everywhere else, the film propagates a depiction of technology which is about on a par with the depiction of marijuana found in Reefer Madness. Oh, and B-movie queen Julie Strain turns up briefly as an exotic dancer. She may be the only cast member who should not be embarrassed by this.

Kinski was also given a co-associate producer credit here, and I really hope this was some kind of honorary or courtesy title. Because if she was actively involved, in any significant way, in the creation of this, rather than simply being a player for hire, then her culpability in the wretched results becomes a great deal higher. For quite where the supposed $11 million budget went, is almost impossible to say. Director Mastorakis (shown above with his lead actress) described his relationship with Kinski as “equivalent to chewing razor blades,” but I’m inclined to treat his opinions somewhat skeptically, since he also said of the movie, “This is a classical thriller. Even Internet-illiterate people will understand this story.”

The problem is, Internet-literate people – almost everyone these days – will find it cringe-inducingly terrible instead. Here’s a three-minute version of the film put together by the good folks at Everything Is Terrible! It should provide more than enough evidence to allow you to appreciate why the film’s position at the very bottom of the Kinski barrel, is entirely warranted.

All Around the Town (2002)

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Jim McLennan

Dir: Paolo Barzman
Star: Kim Schraner, Andrea Roth, Michael Shanks, Nastassja Kinski

I will raise my hand and say I have never heard of Mary Higgins Clark, the author on whose book this is based. Turns out she’s something of a Big Deal, with Wikipedia telling me her books have sold over 80 million copies, and her debut is now in its seventy-fifth printing. So it’s clearly my ignorance that’s the issue here. However, that said, there’s nothing here that would lead me to be interested in picking up any of her works, as this made for television adaptation [it looks like around seventeen of her novels have made their way to the screen, mostly the small one] has a story that strains disbelief, even by the standards of potboiler fiction.

After a lurid opening pre-credit sequence, telling us this is one of the “Mary Higgins Clark Mysteries,” (but which feels like it has strayed in from late-night Skinemax) things kick off in 1985 New Jersey, when four-year-old Laurie Kinmount is abducted from the street outside her home. Fast forward to the present day, where Laurie (Schraner) and her sister Sarah (Roth) are dealing with the sudden death of their parents in a car accident. Turns out Laurie was found two years later, with little or no memory of what happened, and has been dealing with the mental scars ever since. While she’s smart and is now studying English at college, she has particular difficulty forming relationships with men.

This proves a problem with regard to her English teacher, Alan Grant, who is receiving hot and steamy letters from a mysterious unknown woman – much to the chagrin of his wife, Karen (Kinski). Alan eventually realizes the handwriting is a match for Laurie, but when confronted, she angrily denies it, in an argument that draws too much public attention. Which is unfortunate, because the next day, the teacher turns up stabbed to death, with a knife taken from the Kinmount house, and Laurie has no memory of what happened. For it turns out her psyche has reacted to the trauma of the abduction by splintering into multiple personalities. One, Debbie, is based on her four-year-old self, another, Kate, is a super protective persona inspired by her mother… and as Margaret Cho once said, then there’s the ho, Leona. Guess which one was writing the notes, and lurking outside Alan’s window?

It’s up to her sister, who is conveniently a public prosecutor, along with forensic psychologist Justin Donnelly (Shanks), to figure out the truth about what happened. Meanwhile, the creepy husband and wife responsible for the abduction more than fifteen years previously, who now run a self-help empire, are not too happy for anyone to be probing into the mental barriers they constructed in their victim. I have to say, I think it’s this aspect of the plot which made me most skeptical. Piling it on top of the multiple personalities, seemed like several bridges too far, and especially since it seemed very underdeveloped. didn’t add much to the overall progress of the film. Much the same goes for Laurie’s stalker-esque boyfriend. Maybe these elements played better in the book?

Despite Kinski being front and center on the cover, and first named in the credits, that’s likely because she’s the only name in this most people will recognize. While it turns out to be pivotal, her role is relatively minor, playing the wronged wife, who runs a travel agency and is highly suspicious of her husband. Karen comes over as rather whiny – especially considering she’s too busy with her career to be with her husband during the week, I’d have said a little more sympathy towards him was likely deserved. Of course, the unaddressed question is the inevitable one: if you were married to Nastassja, would you really contemplate infidelity?

As the actual lead, Schraner is fairly impressive. While she could certainly be accused of chewing the scenery on a number of occasions, it’s not uncalled for in the circumstances, given her character’s obvious mental instability. Watching her switch between the various personalities is kinda fun, to the point that I wished they’d gone further down this road, perhaps even having Gollum-like conversations between them. Oh, well. The rest of the cast are reasonable enough, and it’s the script which represents the main problem, since I can’t say any of the twists turned out to be particularly surprising or credible.

It just about managed to retain my interest, though I will confess to having dozed off right at the very end, and had to rewind the final two minutes, in order to catch the “thrilling” conclusion. Which was little or more plausible than the rest of the film, to be honest. Still, as a trashy (albeit chaste – this was obviously made for network TV, complete with pauses for commercials) example of pulp fiction, it was entertaining enough. Though it’ll hardly make its way onto the DVD sleeve, “I’ve seen worse,” is likely my overall conclusion here.