Daily Archives: June 21, 2009

The Answer Man

Film Reviews

In The Answer Man, Arlen Faber (Jeff Daniels) is the hermetic author of Me and God, an internationally bestselling book that in the late 1980s redefined spirituality for an entire generation. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of his still wildly popular tome, a Q&A dialogue between the Holy Creator and a man wracked with pain, Arlen faces an editor (Nora Dunn) who’s looking for some public accessibility after indulging his seclusion for two decades.

In this crucible, Arlen’s back seizes up, and his sheltered life suddenly intersects with two people who slowly begin to erode his caustic worldview. First there’s Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci), a bookstore owner fresh out of rehab, and searching for both stability and meaning in life. Then there’s Elizabeth (Lauren Graham), a massage therapist and single mom who puts up a facade of progressive properness for her 7-year-old son — feeding him protein shakes and classical music as she herself sneaks cigarettes and rock ‘n’ roll — even as his behavior at school indicates he’s starting to feel the effects of his absentee father.

Owing to Daniels’ starring role as a cranky, screwed-up intellectual, first-time writer-director John Hindman’s film will doubtlessly spawn comparisons to Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and there are some similarities between the two erudite works. Honestly, though, the point of comparison that first leapt to my mind was As Good as It Gets, another movie in which ingrained personality issues mark and color a fitful romance between an older man and a younger single mother. There’s also a pinch of Finding Forrester, in the reluctant bloom of a gruff flower kept too long indoors.

In the most immediate sense, though, there’s plenty of fun, philosophically-tinged pleasures all around the edges of this barbed, humanistic, romantic comedy, both in the dialogue and the tenor of its performances. There’s some smart, quietly affecting work from both Graham and Daniels, and Pucci gets to showcase a bit more of an adult sensibility than he has in movies like Thumbsucker and The Go-Getter. But The Answer Man will also connect with those who have a soft spot for “show-up-wounded”-type love stories, adult and otherwise. We are all hurt or searching, the film essentially posits, but it’s how we focus ourselves and help others that most defines us.

If there’s a substantive knock, it’s that the Hindman’s end game feels, in varying amounts, pat, rushed, and false. It’s not entirely cheaply cathartic, but portions of the movie’s finale don’t jibe with what we’ve been told about the deeply rooted spiritual impact of Arlen’s book, and overall it doesn’t quite work. Even The Answer Man doesn’t have all the answers, it seems. But that’s OK. Life is an imperfect journey. (Magnolia, R, 95 minutes)

The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The 1970 German sex comedy The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn may have one of the greatest, all-time cheekiest titles of its under-respected sub-genre. A pleasure, then, that the film — a good-natured mix of ribald set-up, mock-offended patter and solid setting and production design — delivers on its promise, delivering an adult-themed tale that doesn’t aim to merely achieve blush at any cost.

Directed by Franz Antel, aka Francois Legrand, The Hostess… is set in Europe in 1814, against a backdrop in which soldiers scour the countryside for provisions both material and carnal. The story centers around bombshell redhead Justine Del Ber (Teri Tordai), a traveling French actress who thinks on her feet and escapes a sticky situation along with Ferdinand (Harald Leipnitz), a fellow actor. Together, they flee into the countryside, and seek refuge in the small burgh of Tursa. Overseen by the moralistic Baron Bierrechalet (Jacques Herlin) and his Committee of Decency, Tursa has taxes for everything — fornication, dancing, singing, drinking, bathing and even “previously lost virginity.” Plenty of people don’t like it, but seem powerless to overthrow the current system of governance.

Justine, though, has other plans. She and Ferdinand take possession of a local inn, change its name to The Innocent Lamb, and set it up as a mock-convent — a gathering place for everyone sick of the government’s incursion into their private lives. Ferdinand saves young Marika
(Andrea Rau) from the roving hands of the Baron’s lackey, and give her a position as chambermaid, and before long The Innocent Lamb is the hottest spot in town. While the Baron tries to find a noblewoman to marry, and consolidate his power, Justine and Ferdinand try to assist in the return of Count Valeriano Trenk (Glenn Saxson), the rightful heir to the area, who currently lives in Vienna. Later, Justine works up a scheme to trap the mayor in his own web of taxable behavior.

Co-written by Carlo Fuscagni and Kurt Nachmann, The Hostess… indulges in the sort of wild theatricality one might imagine, and is also powered by tongue-lolling, wolfish dialogue (sample: “I’ll let your britches down, but not you!”) that one can easily imagine in little thought bubbles alongside R. Crumb cartoons. Yet it also drops reference to the historical stageplay The Innkeeper, and generally does a good job blending behavioral comedy with a smidgen of historical satire. In fact, there aren’t many sex scenes, per se; most of the nudity is just a result of private behavior momentarily publicly exposed, and the bulk of it comes late in the movie, when Justine slips the Baron an elixir and rigs an “emperor’s new clothes”-type scenario. The cast is uniformly winning, and the production value fairly high, which helps mitigate some questionable visual framing. Rosalba Neri, Poldo Bendandi, Paul Lowinger and Paola Arduini also star.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn comes presented in anamorphic widescreen, with optional English subtitles and a motion-animated menu screen. Its only legitimate supplemental feature, however, is a 31-photo, self-playing slide show of production stills; some sort of historical contextualization, in the form of cast member/crew interviews or talking head analysis, is sadly lacking. Nevertheless, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase via Half, click here. B (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Surveillance Trailer Spotlights Societal Rot

Trailer Watch

The trailer for Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch’s first film since Boxing Helena, is online, and does a pretty job of selling the movie’s Rashomon-like, B-movie egg scramble of n’er-do-wells, corrupted authority figures and vengeful sociopaths. Maybe too good a job, almost. I mean, only in the sense that the trailer comes across as streamlined, hook-y and conventional, while the final product is — in keeping with the writer-director’s surname — a bit more wildly unhinged. Full review to follow later in the week, along with some interviews probably early next week, coinciding with its limited theatrical release. Surveillance is currently available via VOD, by the way.

LAFF: Passenger Side

Film Reviews, Musings

Writer-director Matt Bissonnette’s Passenger Side had its world premiere at the L.A. Film Festival Friday evening, with a handful of boutique distributor reps in attendance amidst the three-quarters-full crowd at the Mann Regent in Westwood.

A low-fi, California-set road flick of indolent, occasional charm, Passenger Side centers on Los Angeleno Michael Brown (Adam Scott, above right), an exasperated copywriter/unsuccessful novelist whose birthday begins with a telephone call from his estranged, drug addicted older brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette, above left, the director’s brother). Tobey is without car, and needs Michael’s help ferrying him around on a series of mysterious but apparently vital errands. To this end, Michael puts his nebulous birthday plans on hold to embark on a sketchy Southland odyssey that crosses paths with a randy transsexual, a drunken party girl, a desert-dwelling pie server, an immigrant with lopped-off fingers and all other manner of oddballs.

It may sound positively Lynchian, that mix, but Bissonnette (Looking for Leonard, Who Loves the Sun) is much more interested in the rhythms of honest, forward-leaning conversation, and constructs his movie as a snapshot of swallowed fraternal standoffishness, where obvious mutual regard has been worn down by the cutting winds of life, and each brother’s disapproval over some of the other’s choices. In press notes the filmmaker describes Passenger Side as being about “the complex bonds created when opposites are bound together by life, family and blood… and also about different ways that a life can be lived: from the supposed safety of the sidelines, or deep in the middle of the mess.” With that in mind, Passenger Side is in some ways a (much) more plugged-in companion piece to Gus Van Sant’s willfully meandering Gerry; here, though, it isn’t modernity or so much man’s relationship to nature itself under the microscope, but the accumulated baggage that comes with dreams gone off-track, and how that can warp decision-making and breed stasis.

The problem is that Michael remains too much of a cipher; with no backstory as arguably turbulent and self-destructive as Tobey’s addiction, we’re left to get bits and pieces filled in along the way. While Scott’s engaging performance mitigates this somewhat, there is the lingering feeling that he’s just somewhat of a grumpy jerk. A bit more (non-familial?) shading of his personality would have helped nail down the character more concretely.

There’s also a girl at the center of Passenger Side, but the manner in which she looms over the narrative — played for a big twist at the end — feels lacking, or perhaps just overly coy. Damningly, there’s also no sort of exacting chronological/topographical honesty or logic, which undercuts at least a bit the way the movie plays to a film-savvy crowd, either comprised of Los Angelenos or New Yorkers who know the City of Angels and surrounding areas at least a bit. Events unfold in Los Angeles, and see Michael and Tobey then drive to Glendale, to Joshua Tree, back to Los Angeles, to Long Beach, back to the San Fernando Valley, and then to Hollywood. Given the timeframe, this is something of a stretch. Also, at one point theoretically leaving the Valley, we see the pair instead driving west past Universal City, presumably because it provides a more scenic backdrop.

The film’s chief selling point is the rapport between Scott and Bissonnette, which is delightful — powered by the
sort of masculine-sardonic patter that disaffected brothers, either
real or in feeling/name, use to keep each other at arms’ length. Leaning on ex-Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-founder Mac McCaughan as a musical consultant, Bissonnette also constructs a fantastically evocative soundtrack for the tape deck of Michael’s beat-up, mid-1970s BMW. It’s those details that give Passenger Side the weight of knock-about authenticity, even if one wishes its conversational patter were a bit more honed toward the end target at which it’s aiming.

For more information on the film, which screens again on Thursday, June 25 at 4:30 p.m. as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival in Westwood, click here.