Mike Barker's A Good Woman Is a Good Movie

A Good Woman
(Mike Barker, USA/UK, 2004, 93 minutes)

Marital bliss is a great burden to place on two people;
sometimes a third person is needed to lighten the load.
--Oscar Wilde

It never fails to amaze me how many movies get off to a good start and then turn bad (or at least mediocre). Either that or they fail to live up to the promise of their opening act--let alone their opening credit sequence. 

I can only assume it's because a lot of directors feel that the first act is the most important. Some of the world's worst filmmakers can craft a compelling beginning, but an ending? That's the tricky part. 

For my money, even Steven Spielberg, with all his years of experience, almost always fumbles his endings. Of his recent films, Catch Me if You Can is the only exception that comes to mind (granted, I liked the ending to A.I., too, but I seem to be the only one). I often get the impression that he's more concerned about leaving the audience happy than satisfied. But I only like happy endings when they're earned. All of this is to say that A Good Woman is one of those rare films that gets better as it goes along. 

For the first two-thirds, in fact, I was concerned that maybe Britain's Mike Barker (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) wasn't the right man for the job and that the cast, notably Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets), wasn't up to the task.

Though Barker's direction isn't bad, I expected a more upbeat approach. Based on Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, A Good Woman is stuffed with witty epigrams. The lines are so good they almost sell themselves, but to really bring them home, the actors need to keep things light. 

Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson, Wilde's bad guy) and Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore from Stephen "Wilde" Fry's Bright Young Things, an Evelyn Waugh adaptation with a light touch) come across as effortlessly funny. Mrs. Erlynne (Hunt, who slung many a zinger on Mad About You) comes across as a considerably darker character. Despite her best efforts, her quips never seemed as clever, but by the end, I no longer cared. Cast against type as a predatory female "of a certain age," Mrs. Erlynne was married once--but didn't take to it--and now makes her living by sleeping with rich men. 

As the film opens, New York's upper crust has had enough of her, so she sets her sights on the wealthy Mr. Windermere (Mark Umbers, blandly effective). He's married, but that's never stopped her before, so she travels from the States to the Italian coast to pursue her prey. Shortly after arriving in Amalfi, she gets her man and he pays all of her expenses. Meanwhile, Darlington takes after Mrs. Windermere (Scarlett Johansson) as Tuppy takes after Mrs. Erlynne. They've heard the rumors about Mr. Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne, and both feel these women would be better off with them.

I won't say more about the plot than that, because it's in the last act where all the threads come together and what had seemed like faults become strengths. There is, for instance, a major revelation I didn't see coming, although it makes sense in retrospect. Granted, I laughed a few times during A Good Woman (as did the rest of the audience), but not as often as I should have considering the piquancy of the dialogue. And I wouldn't consider it a fault that Johansson wasn't funny as she wasn't given a single comic line. Rather, Meg Windermere is the story's one true innocent, which is to say, a character Wilde could admire, but not one he could relate to. It's with the Lord Darlingtons and Mrs. Erlynnes that his sympathies lie. 

Consequently, it's debonair playboy Darlington--a real romantic, as it turns out--who gets to utter the classic line, "All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." The play may be called Lady Windermere's Fan--and a fan does make a few crucial appearances--but it's really about Mrs. Erlynne. She may not be a "good woman" in the traditional sense of the phrase, but she's Wilde's kind of dame and, unlike the sweet and simple Meg, there's more to her than meets the eye. 

While I feared that Hunt's Oscar-caliber seriousness might sabotage the film, her graceful ability to pull off the final scenes saves it from being a Masterpiece Theater-style period piece with lovely scenery, pretty costumes, and an empty head, but something deeper. It isn't a major film, but that near-perfect ending makes A Good Woman very good indeed.

*****

A Good Woman opens on February 3rd. Opening two weeks later is Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, which David Jeffers wrote about back in November. Next to 24 Hour Party People, which also features Steve Coogan, it's Michael Winterbottom at his most irreverent. Doesn't add up to a lot, but it's fun while it lasts. Scarlett Johansson image from the IMDb.  

George Butler's IMAX Film Roving Mars

ROVING MARS

(George Butler, 2006, US, 40 minutes)

The New York Times previews an IMAX film, in 3D, about the odds-beating Mars Rover program. Space and 3D: two great tastes that would go great together, if there was any way to actually experience depth perception beyond 100 yards in a vacuum.

Spencer and Viv and I had the pleasure of viewing the Ron Howard / Tom Hanks jernt aboot ye Luna, which is also a space-themed 3D IMAX film, and I think that Spence and I also screened "Space Station 3D" chez IMAX. Seriously, it's the best.

Image from Common Sense Media.

A Q&A with I AM A SEX ADDICT's Caveh Zahedi

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Mikio Naruse series at NWFF

Spencer, overdue as I have noted in the past for an account here, highlights a particularly interesting bit of global obscurantist cinema chez NWFF upcoming:

One of my duties as a volunteer projectionist at the Northwest Film Forum is to introduce the films. Which means sometimes I gotta (er, or at least should) bone up ahead of time. Starting there this week is a remarkable 10-film retrospective of works by the great (albeit under-recognized in the West) master Mikio Naruse, in honor of his centenary. (He died in 1969.) I confess I’ve never even heard of the man or his films, even though he was the first Japanese filmmaker to be reviewed in the New York Times (a full 14 years before Kurusawa’s Rashoman).



Please note that the Jan. 27 screening of the ultra-rare silent films Nightly Dreams (Yogoto no yume), and Flunky, Work Hard! (Koshiben gambare) will be accompanied live by the most capable Aono Jikken Ensemble (that’s pronounced, more or less, AH-no JEE-ken). Most of the films in the series play one night only, so get down on it, yo.

He kindly follows up with some linkies.

Holy shit! Japanese silents! I may have to be medicated!

Not so well preserved

FOM Spence has an interesting rant about the preservation of the fillum. He's threatened to get an account over here. i think it's high time.

The Lost City: The Ten Commandments

As Spencer Sundell and I listened to Dennis James introduce The Ten Commandments at The Paramount this afternoon, I was amused when Dennis quoted David Jeffers' long and wonderful essay on the film that he published earlier this week on SIFFBlog [now Seattle Film Blog-ed.].

This bemusement turned to pleasure when Dennis in turn introduced David on stage to do the expert intro to the film.

Image of Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 The Ten Commandments from TCM.  

A Purely Cinematic Experience: Theo Angelopoulos's Beautiful The Weeping Meadow

THE WEEPING MEADOW
(Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 2004, 178 minutes)

I would like the world to remember my work as a musical moment, as a musical phrase, suspended, which may reach some people. The important thing in my life is what I do, my work, what I see, feel, what I dream of.--Theo Angelopoulos

In The Weeping Meadow, Greek master Theo Angelopoulos (Ulysses' Gaze, Eternity and a Day) takes an elegant, impressionistic look at 30 years of Hellenic history. The first part in a proposed trilogy, the story centers around Eleni (played as an adult by Alexandra Aidini), orphaned as a baby, and Alexis (Nikos Poursanidis), her adopted brother. 

The film begins in 1919 when the two are children, fleeing with their family from Odessa to Thessaloniki. A few years later, Angelopoulos reveals that a romance has developed between the two, but he opts not to portray it. Instead, he returns to the teenaged Eleni just after she has given birth to twins, who were promptly put up for adoption. 

Along the way, their mother dies and father Spyros (Vassilis Kolovos), crazed with grief, insists on marrying his adopted daughter. After taking her vows, Eleni, still clad in her wedding dress--which will reappear later--runs away with Alexis and they spend the next several years hiding from Spyros. These vows, incidentally, are not shown. Not long afterwards, they get their children back. This transaction also takes place off-screen. So, why did their adoptive mother agree to return the boys to a couple that can barely take care of themselves? It's impossible for me to say.

This is a pattern that will be repeated throughout the picture. 

Something significant transpires, but Angelopoulos either alludes to it or focuses more on its after-effects. Other developments include a voyage to America for Alexis and a sojourn in jail for Eleni for harboring an insurgent. This cinematic subterfuge, if you will, makes Angelopoulos's twelfth feature as strikingly original as it is frustratingly distancing from all that he depicts.

There's a lot to be said for beauty, though, and The Weeping Meadow, shot by Angelopoulos regular Andreas Sinanos, is undeniably beautiful. That said, it's a rather ugly kind of beauty, like the indelible image of a tree bedecked with the bodies of slain sheep. Further, the skies are never sunny, but always overcast. The palette is unrelentingly neutral. 

In the press notes, Angelopoulos explains that, "The landscape you see is not an external one, it is an internal landscape." He's also fond of long takes and long-shots; in fact, they're his signature. This makes for some stunning sequences, but the avoidance of close-ups--until the final, tragic scene--kept me at arm's length from the protagonists. 

I never got a good look at the faces of Eleni and Alexis and I would have liked to. In fact, I needed to in order to understand them better and to sympathize with them more. This is not a reflection on the actors, all of whom are quite good--especially Giorgos Armenis as their insurgent friend and protector, Nikos the Fiddler--but on the way in which they were filmed. Too often, I felt as if I were watching symbols rather than people. 

Eleni and Alexis may well stand for all Greeks in exile, but I don't see why they couldn't have been granted greater dimension. Not once do we see them eat or laugh; they rarely even talk. We never see them make love either, thoughy the affection between the two is never in doubt. Granted, many American films, both independent and mainstream, often show and tell more than is necessary--too many close-ups, too much exposition--but the opposite approach poses its own set of problems.

Misgivings aside, I was engaged by The Weeping Meadow and the three hours passed relatively quickly. It helped that the score by frequent Angelopoulos collaborator Eleni Karaindrou is so hauntingly lovely. And it isn't mere window dressing, since Alexis is a musician. 

Angolopoulos: "Music in my films does not accompany the narrative musically. It is a dramaturgical element, it narrates, it participates. It is an integral part of the films' text. Without it, there would be a lack of something essential. In this sense music is an actor in the movie, a living element." Based on this film, I'll buy that--it was my favorite character! That isn't necessarily a bad thing, though I doubt it was his intent.

For those looking for a purely cinematic experience, The Weeping Meadow is essential viewing. Theo Angelopoulos is not attempting to duplicate reality or to create yet another conventional historical epic. Much of what takes place is perfectly possible, yet eminently improbable. He presents, instead, a personal approach to history. His history. Further, the films of this Palme d'Or-winning director are rarely screened in Seattle and this may be one of your few chances to see his work on the big screen.

The Weeping Meadow plays at Northwest Film Forum (1515 12th Ave) Jan 13-19, Fri-Thurs at 7pm and Sat.-Sun. at 3:30pm. Images from Eye Filmmuseum, Mubi, Sight and Sound, and Theo Angelopoulos.