|
LiT is the cinematic equivalent of a lovely rambling E/N post: I found it to be self-indulgent, angsty, and whiny. And for a character study, it sure has unlikeable characters. Johanssen comes off as a spoilt brat: here is a gorgeous girl with her life in front of her on a vacation in one of the most vibrant cities on earth, and she mopes around the hotel room because nobody understands her. Bill Murray's perpetual hangdog expression grows tiresome after about 5 frames. The minor characters are portrayed by Coppola with a smug, holier-than-thou condescension (see the lame broadsides directed at the vapid Hollywood actress and the witless husband character) that I found extremely alienating. When a plotless mood piece fails to engage me with it's characters it is pushing poo poo uphill to gain my favour. This is not the fault of the actors though: Johanssen and Murray do nice work with a script that is really quite woeful. For a film that is hailed as being understated, the dialogue seems crashingly obvious: "I don't know what I'm supposed to be!" - thanks for the insight. "I'm lost!" - Hint: we're not talking about carpet samples any more. And then come the Jap jokes. They speak funny! They are short! I kept waiting for a buck-toothed guy in thick glasses to pop up and say "Me rike ee velly much". I would have thought, given her pedigree, that Sophia would have seen The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now enough times to get a decent grasp on how pacing, story and character are essential to a film: you can't just put 2 hours of navel-gazing on the screen and expect audiences to be engaged. But no: almost every scene is dragged on interminably as the already thin script is stretched beyond it's elastic limit. And then she cuts to yet another shot of them staring off into space. And hey, I'm all for ambiguity, but the brain-dead final scene of Murray mumbling inaudibly just screamed of Coppola's yearning for indie cred. A few points save the film from being a complete write-off: nice cinemetography, decent soundtrack, and the work of the leads. Hardly enough though to outweigh the film's crashing failures just about everywhere else. 1.5/5 legstump fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jun 27, 2004 |
#
¿
Jun 27, 2004 12:30
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 03:19 |
|