The Conspirator

The Conspirator   Abra-sham-Lincoln

Director Robert Redford

Starring Robin Wright, James McAvoy and Tom Wilkinson 

 

I’m sorry, I’ve been spoilt. I’ve watched Al Swearengen feed dope fiends to Chinese pigs and Cy Toliver put out cigars on a whore’s left hand, all the while pontificating on life’s existential dilemmas of the hopelessness and fatalistic nature of maggots swimming in dead women’s eyes . The Conspirator chases up the same muddied alleyways of the late nineteeth century world of Deadwood, but seems to fall considerably short on the master work that has come before it. Give me any day of the Christian week, a strung out hustler being drowned in a bathtub over a period melodrama with too many tv actors and an even greater surplus of fake moustaches.

The Conspirator follows hard on the Hollywood tradition of painting by numbers. It is a well intentioned and an oft times, almost substantial reach into civil war complications and contradictions that make up the better angels of American ideology. Better to sacrifice a life for an idea, better to sacrifice a brother tomorrow for a mother today, better to fight for an impossibility and die, rather than live in emptiness and submission.  Unfortunately The Conspirator simply falls too short of its grand ideal.  Although it tries hard and as mentioned, nearly succeeds in portraying a gritty, nineteeth century landscape, all too often the illusion is ruined by the lighting, which looks like it is off the set of Six Feet Under as well as a barrage of lowbrow actors including Justin Long, Tom Wilkinson and Irish favourite Colm Meaney. The opening scene, which is supposed to set the tone for the film, looks like a parody outtake from a parody film, where you expect a director to yell cut and walk across screen yelling into his Blackberry at an unseen camera assistant.

I wanted to love this film as much as it’s poster but alas “Thus always to tyrants” and the tyrant in this case is Robert Redford, who has turned nationalist passion and bloodthirsty conviction into stale courtroom melodrama. It’s like an episode of LA Law without good writing or Corben Bernstein. The one redeeming feature of the piece is an unrecogniseable Robin Wright (nee Penn) who I last saw slow dancing with Irish gangster Terry Noonan in the near perfect State of Grace (1990). She is fantastically wasted. She is like a few actors we all see now and then, wandering amidst what looks like the prehistory of a film age yet to be ushered into the mainstream. There’s very little reality here, the standards are appallingly low. The dialogue is pedestrian, the actors seem to be chosen to simply make do and one of the most dramatic episodes of the formation of modern America is reduced to paltry and predictable slops.

The Consirator is okay. Okay like a Sandra Bullock movie is okay. It turns at the right moments and has a decisively cute arse, but when you get stuck in and have a good look, there’s little more than a Southern tale fondling with its own importance, but ultimately delivering none of its intended promise. If you’ve never seen any television or film in your life, The Conspirator will probably make you cry, if you have seen any television or film before, it’ll do the same.

Potiche

Potiche (The Trophy Wife)-Bring Your Mum

Directed by Francois Ozon

Starring Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini

 

Young gentlemen of Perth, have you been meaning to take your mother out for a nice lunch and pay her the attention she so richly deserves. Have you been thinking her kind hearted ways of consummation, delivery and decades of painful tutelage entitle her to a day-out with her self loathing, slightly intellectual and melancholy son? Well this is your moment to treat that woman to a small portion of what she not only deserves but what she is entitled to. That is a rare French farce concerning female political liberation, enchanting seventies soundtracks and watching Gerard Depardieu do the wild thing in a rural French provincial nightclub.

Potiche is a little charmer of a film. This is no A Pure Formality (1994) or Cyrano de Bergerac (1990). This is a film version of a stage play that at times appears like a pantomime. The seventies setting renders the unusual film a bit like a porno without the sex scenes until of course we are greeted with sex scenes in the form of a flashback of a young Gerard and Catherine Deneuve playing the cardboard cut out characters of the wealthy besotted Mayor and the even wealthier housewife to the insane and determinedly capitalistic factory owner, Luchini. From the opening it appears as it will be nothing more than a door slammer and landing crosser film, which will do little than bore the audience to small French tears. However it leaves the genre heavy introduction of the film and takes us into the plot which we care only slightly about. But caring slightly, is enough to take us through the rest of this little and intriguing picture.

It has suggestions of Clue (1985) in that although it's entertaining it never ever draws you in emotionally as the characters never appear genuine. We are watching high French soap comedy, with legendary actors in every role. Gerard Dep' looks like the largest man alive. And again if you are the aforementioned young man taking your mother out for an afternoon, you will be pleased that your mother will, at the very least, be more concerned for Gerard's health than yours. He looks like a man mountain who is in desperate need of a slow starting treadmill and a creative wig master. He also happens to be brilliant in every scene. A highlight which includes taking Travolta in Pulp Fiction at least half way to the cleaners.

There really isn't much to say about this little gem. Be careful what you expect because it isn't much more than a beautifully executed set design, wonderful costuming and again, some brilliant acting. A criticism may be, would it not be better to take actors of this caliber and production values of this expense and make something truly powerful and meaningful with the same resources. However it is what it is. And for what it is, it is enjoyable. It is by no means brilliant, but it is also by no means awful. It simply is what it is. A colourful, light, velveteen pantomime and another reason to wish the great, over weight Gerard, was in more scenes. Happy mothers day in advance.