Category: Filmography

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Alyson Hannigan, Nastassja Kinski, Jennifer Esposito, Todd Field
a.k.a. Rip It Off

There’s a quote from Hannigan about this movie; I can’t find the original source, but it’s worth bearing in mind with regard to this misconceived slab of misandry, disguised as a heist movie:

“It was a nightmare to shoot: the producer and director were constantly fighting… It was completely unorganised. Alexis [Denisof] was also in it and he and I would go into each other’s trailers and go, ‘We’ve made a huge mistake, this is the worst thing ever!’ It just went terribly, terribly wrong.”

The sad thing is, when it’s not engaging in unsubtle man-bashing, it isn’t bad. The final third, where the casino robbery finally happens, only to collapse into a series of unfortunate events, is tense and well-staged enough to be interesting. Just a shame you have to sit through the first hour to get there. The original planners of the crime are two Russian criminals. Sergei and Yuri (Brian McCardie and Denisof), using inside help from a casino employee named Troy (Steve Harris), who knows he’s shortly going to be unemployed. The two Russians have girlfriends, Lexi (Hannigan) and Misha (Kinski), who might be more than good friends themselves, and are increasingly unhappy with their lot, particularly the appalling Sergei, who is an unpleasant and brutal piece of work.

When they give Yuri an ultimatum – it’s Sergei or them – he basically goes “bros before hoes”, and casts them out. The disgruntled women bump into Misha’s old friend, Helena (Esposito), and decide to extract revenge through Helena’s ex-husband, police officer Jack Toretti (Field). However, rather than arresting the criminals, Jack and his partner team up with them, and the women are cut out entirely. Even more aggrieved, the trio decide to turn their ex’s against each other, snare Jack with a honey-trap of sex and drugs [allowing the director to give a small role to her long-time partner, Sophie B. Hawkins] and carry out the plan with Troy, all by themselves. For what else could possibly go wrong? Uh, how about,  virtually everything?

Structurally, it’s a mess. The opening scene makes it seem that Jack is going to be the focus of the movie, since it opens with him being chased naked through the streets by the cops. Then the movie shifts into a flashback, and he vanishes almost entirely for the rest of the first half. Thereafter, the film thrashes around, between Lexi, Misha and Helena, unable to settle on providing any one of them with particular depth. It’s never even explained, in any convincing way, why even the least picky of women would want to be in the same room as Sergei, let alone have a relationship with him. [And McCardie, from Glasgow, makes a thoroughly unconvincing Russian – at least Denisof has some appropriate ancestry on his father’s side, though I’m not sure his accent is any better for it]

While the alternate title is a clear attempt to confuse viewers with the rather more successful female robbery film, Set It Off, the film’s closest cousin is perhaps Bound, with which it shares the considerably more niche “lesbian heist” genre. Though it comes nowhere near achieving anything like the same sense of steamy noir as the Wachowski Brothers Sisters Siblings managed, instead wandering off in poorly-considered directions like Lexi’s briefly important heroin addiction. This suddenly arrives out of nowhere, leads to a couple of portentous and/or pretentious scenes, then vanishes back into the obscurity from whence it came, never to be mentioned again.

Kinski likely comes out of the mess which is the first hour best, seeming the most well-rounded member of the trio – though that is hardly a glowing endorsement comparing to the seething mass of dysfunctional humanity which populates the movie. Whether through writing or performance Misha’s character seems to consist of more than the word “bisexual” written on a cocktail napkin, and appears to be at least somewhat smart. Though again, you are left wondering how the hell she ended up with losers like Yuri and Sergei. There’s an untold prequel there, though based on Hannigan’s comment earlier, she would have to be even more heavily drugged than Lexi, to get her back onto a movie set with the creators.

As previously noted, things become both more coherent and more interesting once the action kicks off and the robbery plan is put into play. Nastassja seems generally to have shown a curious aversion to firing guns in her filmography, even remaining relatively pacifist in cheerful action fodder like Crackerjack (though she wields a mean cooking pan there). There’s no such aversion here, as the image on top demonstrates, when the intended slick, quick in and out raid degenerates into a strongroom gun battle. And even after they prevail, there’s no honor among thieves, and the gang has one or two nasty surprises as they try to take their ill-gotten gains and make it… [Gasp!] …beyond the city limits.

The ins and outs of the casino business, and how the security measures could be bypassed, would have made for a much more interesting film than the soap-opera nonsense which bogs this down. I’ve no problem with having female leads in such an effort, and even if you want to make an ambiguously gay relationship movie, by all means: go ahead. Just don’t disguise it in the trappings of Ocean’s 11, and staff it with supporting actors from Buffy the Vampire Slayer plus a low-rent version of Melissa Etheridge. Because such a bait and switch is unlikely to impress any viewer, even if they’re actually looking for an ambiguously gay relationship movie starring supporting actors from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. That’s probably about as uber-niche a market as it is possible to get, and disappointment for everyone else is likely close to unavoidable.

Dir: Allan Moyle
Star: Nastassja Kinski, William Baldwin, Hart Bochner, Jordy Benattar

It’s odd how synchronicity kicks in. 15 years after this was released, its tale of a sleazy, multi-millionaire businessman, who uses his power to sexually harass a beautiful woman, has suddenly acquired relevance as this ugly Presidential campaign unfolds. Weirder still, the businessman here is played by William Baldwin – whose brother, Alec, was seen later the same night I watched this, portraying Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Moving rapidly away from politics, the target for Julian Grant (Baldwin) is Grace Needham (Kinski), whose marriage is currently on shaky grounds. Her husband, Matt (Bochner) lost his job, went into a downward spiral and now sits around the house, drinking. Even when friends give them a vacation to Miami Beach, he refuses to go, so Grace takes the trip by herself. Which is where she meets Julian, who is also at the resort by himself. After a little dining and sailing, they have a briefly passionate encounter on the beach, which Grace immediately regrets. Returning to her home, she’s convinced the best solution is to follow the title’s advice, especially since things seem to be improving again, with Matt finding a great job. However, she’s dismayed when she realizes that his new boss, and the man responsible for her husband’s position, is Julian. For he’s not prepared to regard what happened as a one-night stand, and will stop at nothing to pursue Grace.

Well, he does appear to draw the line at boiling the family pet. For this is best described as a gender- and class-reversed version of Fatal Attraction, with the man being the psycho, and also doing so from a position of power, and the woman bitterly regretting a moment of weakness. This is perhaps the result of a female script-writer, though I have a feeling stuff like the utterly gratuitous shower shortly after Kinski’s arrival at the resort may not have been her idea. It’s approximately 12 minutes in, if you want to save yourself some time. Though I have to say, I’m all but certain both it and the sex scene with Baldwin are body-doubles. Which would be perfectly fine, if they’d chosen someone of similar stature, but as the screen captures below show, it appears the stand-in was rather more busty than Nastassja, to the degree where even I noticed, and I’m usually pretty oblivious to these things. Really: what’s the point, especially for such a meaningless scene.

To be fair, the rest of the film isn’t as shallowly banal as you might expect – especially given I filled the first 400 words of this with political ramblings and a discussion of gratuitous nudity. If you put it alongside Fatal Attraction, it stands up reasonably well, with Kinski being a more sympathetic character than Michael Douglas portrays, and Baldwin less bat-shit crazy than Glenn Close. There are still some mis-steps here, however; it just doesn’t ring true for a supposedly loving mother to abandon her daughter and go swanning off to Florida on vacation, necessary though it certainly is to the plot. But most of the plot elements that flow from this are, at least, somewhat credible, which is enough to make it above average for the erotic thriller genre. Admittedly, the final face-off likely doesn’t deserve even the “somewhat” version, with a car chase which leads to a cliff-top battle, that then implodes into not much of a resolution at all.

One nice angle I did appreciate, is that Grace is a former model, who now works for a fashion magazine, and there are nods to this visible in the background, that provide a throwback to Nastassja’s earlier time as a cover-girl. There are some magazine covers with pics of a younger Kinski, as well as what looks like a Warhol-esque print, which I hadn’t seen before. Finally, the Richard Avedon snake print is on someone’s mantelpiece, making for a dryly amusing bit of meta-Kinski, such as when Grace is talking about having been pushed out of the industry by younger models. Given the body double mentioned above, this is also somewhat sad, and potentially ironic, though its use could very well have been at her own insistence. I also note a cropped and rotated fragment of Avedon’s classic photograph becoming part of the DVD sleeve. Counterpoint: I really did not like her haircut here, which looks like a bad wig on more than one occasion, and doesn’t do her any justice at all.

This could be described as the finale in Kinski’s “poor romantic decisions” trilogy. This began in Blind Terror, then continued in Cold Heart, both of which also focus on Nastassja falling for the wrong man, and were made the same year as Say Nothing. While perhaps a stretch, it’s tempting to read into the common theme, something about her personal life, since around this time, she was “at war” with her first husband, Egyptian film producer Ibrahim Moussa. Still, like the other two, Nothing is probably somewhat better than I expected, even if my opinion says as much about the low expectations I had going in, as anything. The movie, like its predecessors in the trilogy, makes solid use of Kinski’s vulnerable quality, which has been a staple of her career going back, at least as far as Tess. The script could certainly have been improved, particularly in the final act, yet overall remains watchable, if not exactly memorable.

Dir: Éva Gárdos
Star: Nastassja Kinski, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Goldwyn, Kelly Endrész Banlaki

“Nastassja is amazing. I met her several years ago when Bonnie Timmermann first gave her my script. When I showed her a picture of my arrival, she understood the drama of the story. She has a lot in common with the character, as a European woman and someone who has gone through many changes in her own life. And, of course, her natural warmth and beauty make the character very complex and rich.”
— Director Éva Gárdos

In which a bratty teenager runs off back to her Eastern Bloc roots, and discovers that life is not always greener on the other side of the Iron Curtain. I may be somewhat misinterpreting the point here, and it’s certainly not all that happens in this. It’s more likely the “bratty teenager” aspect is the one with most personal resonance. Though at least our daughter never had to be locked in her room or took to shooting holes in the bedroom door, like the character here. I’m grateful for that.

I’m also getting ahead of the film here. It begins in 1950’s Hungary, a dark time when the jackboot of Soviet totalitarianism was cracking down hard on any form of dissent. Husband and wife Peter (Goldwyn) and Margit Sandor (Kinski) decide to escape across the border to the West. Their elder daughter, Maria, is just old enough to be part of the escape, but it’s too risky for newly-born Suzanne, who will take a different route. However, that falls through, and Suzanne spends her first five years being brought up by a foster family in the country. Her real parents have reached California, where Margit wages a letter-writing campaign to everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to Dag Hammarskjöld, seeking their help to get Suzanne to America.

It eventually has the desired effect and Suzanne (at this point, played by Banlaki) is swept away from her fosters and on a plane to America, where she has to cope with suddenly having a big sister, burgers, Coca Cola, and not simply being able to wander around at will, like she did in Hungary. Fast forward a decade, and she (now, Johansson) has become an archetypical surly teenager, not enhanced by a belief her mother abandoned her. This evinces itself in smoking, hanging out with boys and shrieking “I hate you!” at her bemused mother, who has no idea how to cope. Her reaction involves calling a locksmith, which is what causes Suzanne to blast her way to freedom.

Eventually, her more level-headed father agrees to let Suzanne return to Hungary, and visit her foster family. While delighted to see her, they are now living in a Budapest apartment, and Suzanne gets to experience first-hand the failures of Communism. However, she also discovers the specific reason why her mother was unable to live in the country any longer, and gains a new-found appreciation for what her parents went through in order to give her a better life. So, it all ends in hugs between mother and daughter, because America is the bestest country in the world ever, am I right?

Sorry, guess my cynicism slipped through again. The film doesn’t truly deserve that – or, perhaps, it does – as it genuinely seems to believe the rose-tinted view on display. Witness how the Sandors are, one second, crossing the border from Hungary with suitcases, filmed in ominous black-and-white, and the next, they’re magically living in full Technicolor, occupying a wonderful home in California, with a car and all mod cons, even though she’s a waitress and he’s a door-to-door salesman of vacuum cleaners. Damn, if I realized emigrating to America was so easy, I’d have done it fifteen years sooner.

Fortunately, there are a few things which save it from collapsing entirely into a large tub of saccharine. Gárdos, largely inspired by her own experiences, it appears, treats everyone involved with respect and empathy. You understand both where the mother is coming from, and why the daughter feels betrayed – their actions make sense on an individual level, it’s the clash between them which leads to the dramatic tension. The performances are also uniformly excellent. First off, I don’t speak Hungarian, but both Kinski and Goldwyn seemed entirely convincing when doing so – those familiar with the language, appear equally impressed.

The emotional heart of the movie, however, is likely Banlaki, who is entirely adorable as the moppet growing up in total ignorance that her family is not her family. Watching the angst on her little face as she was torn away from them, then flown half-way around the world to a completely alien culture, and a language she couldn’t speak, was heart-rending. It is a necessary trauma for the purposes of the film, since it help you understand the teenage Suzanne’s subsequent rebellion into whiny self-pity. Johansson certainly nails that aspect, though the director claims she toned the character down: “Many times people involved in the film asked me, ‘Were you really as bad as Suzanne’ and I have to admit that; no, I was even worse!” [I also note the presence of another young future star, Emmy Rossum (Christine in the Phantom of the Opera film), playing her teenage comrade in arms, Sheila.]

Gárdos was better known as an editor, and this was her feature debut. As such, it’s not a bad effort, despite my cynical. Perhaps a little earnest and somewhat heavy on the portrayal of Communism as Reagan’s “Evil Empire,” though given the director’s background, losing no love for the Soviets is probably understandable. This reminded me somewhat of Kinski’s earlier The Ring, which was also about a family seeking to make a new life for them, by emigrating from post-war Europe. That was rather more melodramatic perhaps, and I likely appreciated this better (despite what some of my more snarky comments above may imply!). There’s a solid aura of quality here, enhanced in particular by an evocative score from Cliff Eidelman, and it’s a welcome step up for Nastassja.

Dir: Peter Chelsom
Star: Warren Beatty, Garry Shandling Jr., Diane Keaton, Nastassja Kinski

Or, “Lifestyles of the rich and noxious,” as I increasingly felt like it should have been titled. Because there’s not a character here with whom I felt the slightest connection. My political views don’t exactly tend toward the anarchist generally; yet, by the end of this, I was fully prepared to man the barricades and eat the rich. #ClassWarNow. It starts in a striking fashion, with architect Peter Stoddard (Beatty) lying in bed, watching a naked Alex (Kinski), as she plays the cello – complete with fetching sound-hole tattoos on the small of her back. Hang on, wasn’t she also a sexy cello player in Exposed? Anyway, you certainly have my attention. Now what?

Turns out this was his first infidelity, after decades of relatively happy marriage to interior designer Ellie (Keaton). But he’s not the only one having a midlife crisis, as the marriage of his best friend, Griffin (Shandling), is also on the rocks after his wife Mona (Goldie Hawn) spots him having an extra-marital tryst at a motel. What neither Mona nor Peter know, is Griffin is actually gay. In short order, this leads to Peter having a fling with Mona, then a trip to Sun Valley for him and Griffin, in an effort to get away from it all. But this only leads to further affairs, with heiress Eugenie Claybourne (Andie McDowell), and also a hardware store clark, Auburn (Jenna Elfman). These issues then end up following Peter back to his home in New York, and colliding at an awards gala.

If you’re thinking this sounds tedious, you are right on the mark and I am doing my job with the apathetic synopsis above. For this is one of those cases where the production was rather more interesting that the film itself. Even before it came out, the film was described as being accompanied by “a pervasive sense of doom like none that has attached itself to a major Hollywood release in a long time.” The results were perhaps even worse, as you’d expect given a release postponed more than a dozen times, with the film eventually seeping out almost three years after production began.

There’s general agreement on the main cause: the film went into production without a finished script. However, this was merely the tip of a nightmarish iceberg of problems. Gerard Depardieu was originally supposed to play Griffin, until he hurt his back and had to be replaced. Reports have the director and star clashing over artistic direction – it was Beatty’s first purely acting gig in a quarter century and he seemed reluctant to stick to that job. Film canisters were stolen and ransomed. Jenna Elfman’s hair fell out. Shooting was unable to finish in the allotted time, and the actors left to work on other projects. Disastrous test screenings led to rewrites and reshoots.

Just not enough rewrites and reshoot, it appears. The film stumbles, right out of the gate. When the first thing you see is a man cheating on his wife, any moral audience member generally loses sympathy for him, and the movie offers little or no reason thereafter to change that opinion. It appears the original script had both he and Ellie being unfaithful, which would at least have made the film’s conclusion somewhat credible. But it appears that symmetry was lost in the rewrites, as did any reason why women, literally half Beatty’s age [at the point of release, he was 64 and Elfman 29] throw themselves at him.

Random plot points stick out all over the place. Alex is pregnant! Oh, never mind: Peter’s not the father. Please carry on. Charlton Heston shows up, playing a gun nut, with a foul-mouthed, wheelchair-bound wife. Oh, hold my aching sides, for I fear they may split. The film seems to think that throwing recognizable faces on screen is the equivalent of the wit and sophistication shown by Golden Era screwball comedies, hoping to skate by on the success of previous pairings e.g. Beatty and Hawn in Shampoo. Or perhaps its aiming for some kind of Woody Allen, Big Apple vibe – the presence of Keaton certainly suggests this.

The end result, however, is a comedy without significant laughs, and a drama without any drama at all. Kinski does at least come out of it relatively unscathed. We’ve discussed her unsuitability for humor previously, and wisely, she’s left out of the film’s increasingly desperate and flailing attempts in this department, though only her cello-playing sticks in the mind [. I’ve never seen Shandling in anything of note, and there’s nothing here that would make me want to change that situation. But it’s Beatty who embarrasses himself worst here, an aging Lothario playing a reluctant aging Lothario for the non-existent amusement of the viewer. While there’s no denying Beatty’s talents elsewhere, he’s horribly unsuited to this ill-conceived and poorly executed exercise.

Kinski has had her share of commercial failures over her career: One From the Heart and Revolution being the most notable. But this is perhaps the biggest flop of them all. Town & Country cost an estimated $90 million, not including distribution or marketing. Its worldwide box-office take: slightly below $10.4 million. It still crops up in articles about the biggest box-office bombs of all time, while Warren Beatty has literally not been part of another feature in the 15 years since. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the film, that its star immediately gave up making movies. Especially when this was the same man who had doggedly chosen to persevere in Hollywood after Ishtar – which, incidentally, cost about $40 million less than Town & Country, while taking more at the box-office. In this case, the popular audience appears to have got it right.

Dir: Dennis Dimster
Star: Josh Holloway, Nastassja Kinski, Jeff Fahey, Hudson Leick

One of the benefits of having a psycho in your movie, is that they can do anything necessary for the plot and it’s okay. They’re psycho, y’see: so if they don’t behave rationally, or in the way a normal person would, it makes perfect sense! There’s certainly a prime example of the species here, in Sean (Holloway). He’s locked up in the loony bin after having come perilously close to killing his last girlfriend. But working with his shrink, Dr. Phil (Fahey) – seriously, the psychiatrist’s name is Phil Cross – who has been financed by Sean’s rich father, he’s deemed sane enough to be released into society.

Here, I’ll also mention there are two types of movie psychopaths. Type A are the creepy ones, about whom you can immediately tell something is wrong immediately: the Norman Bateses. Then there is Type B, the suave and charismatic manipulators: the Patrick Batemans.  It’s the latter category into which Sean falls. And, hey whaddya know. he immediately ends up working for Dr. Cross’s wife, Linda (Kinski), who runs a movie production company. For what are the odds that he would casually run into her partner, Julia (Leick) at a coffee-stand and charm her into offering him a job? Actually, if you’ve seen many of this kind of thriller, you’ll know the answer is, “about 100%”.

You’ll also be unsurprised to learn Linda’s marriage is on shaky ground, she suspects her husband of having an affair, and thinks Phil is only staying with her for financial reasons. Something something trust fund. It’s not long – pausing only for a gratuitous shower-scene, but more on this aspect in a bit – before she and Sean are conducting a torrid affair. However, for Linda at least, this comes with a large side-order of guilt, particularly after she realizes Phil wasn’t having an affair at all, and all his skulking around was cover as he secretly bought their dream cabin. So she decides to end the relationship, which does not sit well with Sean, causing the “psycho” aspect of his nature to kick in.

You may be detecting some cynicism in the above, and not without cause. However, it isn’t entirely without merit, since there’s at least one twist which I honestly didn’t see coming. I probably should have, as it’s necessary to the plot, yet the scripts keeps that revelation on the back burner until almost the very end. The finale does require the other aspect of cinematic insanity mentioned earlier. Some of Sean’s late choices appear to be ones apparently mandated by the script-writer, rather than flowing naturally from the situation and/or his character. But it’s alright, ‘cos he’s a psycho. And you know what they say: “He who sets the psychopath, gets the psychopath.” Ok, just me then.

The cast aren’t bad, even if none of the roles require much more than stock genre tropes. In addition to Kinski, a particular bonus for me was Hudson Leick, whom I recall being very fond of, back in the days when she played the uber-villainess Callisto in Xena: Warrior Princess. Nothing quite as gloriously OTT here; though let’s face it, hard to top lines like, “Such a pretty day for a blood bath,” appropriate though it might have been. Holloway, in an early feature role, well before becoming known for Lost, does the charming madman thing effectively enough. Fahey’s role isn’t as significant as his billing might appear, and we never do address the elephant in the room. You’re married to Nastassja Kinski; what could possibly have gone wrong?

This seems cut from much the same cloth as Blind Terror, also from the same year, in which Kinski also hooked up with the wrong guy. And with the exception of some gratuitous nudity, this could equally well have played on television. Speaking of which, the obligatory quota of flesh is met, both through the shower-scene mentioned above and several sequences of Linda and Sean bonking. Except, it appears not to be Kinski at all, but more likely a body double, going in particular by the obvious way her face is never shown in those shots. It’s rather disconcerting, and since these scenes aren’t necessary – they appear perfunctory to the point of contractual obligation – you’re almost left wishing they hadn’t bothered. Note: the image on the sleeve of NK with her hands tied above her head does not appear in the film. Though bondage fans may be impressed by the fairly detailed knotwork when Sean ties up Julia. Maybe he has a touch of OCD as well.

Kinski’s performance is decent enough, putting over an aura of paranoid vulnerability that’s reasonably effective. It’s odd that the film is supposedly told from Sean’s perspective, as the final shot makes clear, yet it is not consistently so. Aspects are also revealed, of which he’d have to be completely unaware, such as Julia’s shifting doubts as to her husband’s fidelity. It seems she’s the character with which the audience is supposed to empathize, yet Dimster wants the illicit thrill of associating with the cold, dead heart of Sean as well. I would definitely say he falls short of managing to pull that feat off, and he would have been better trying to have his cake or eat it.

But the basic plot did a fairly good job of sustaining my interest for 90 minutes, and if you’re looking for a low-budget flick along the lines of Fatal Attraction, you could certainly do much worse. It’s not exactly ambitious; there are hardly more than half a dozen speaking roles in the entire film. Yet knowing your limitations is one of the important aspects of straight-to-video work, and wisely, the makers here remain inside what’s available with their resources. The money apparently was spent mostly on a solid cast, and they probably help to elevate the (frankly, tired and over-familiar) material, beyond what it deserves.