Stranger Than Fiction
March 3rd, 2007
A Charlie-Kaufmannish metafiction with Will Ferrell as tax man who hears a voice in his head and realizes it’s a narrator anticipating his death. And just when he’s hooking up with Maggie Gyllenhaal! It shouldn’t take him two hours to locate the writer plotting his demise, and the movie didn’t need to be as dull as it is. Even with a setup this far out there, it’s possible to write convincing characters, but Zach Helm didn’t even try. With Emma Thompson as the blocked author, Queen Latifah as assistant sent by the publishers to get her to write (really?!) and Dustin Hoffman as English professor who helps Ferrell figure out what kind of story he’s in. A few cute moments but plodding and predictable overall.
Stranger Than Fiction. Marc Forster, 2006. **
Perfume
December 7th, 2006
Tom Tykwer’s nose isn’t the problem here, his ears are: the tone of his Süskind adaptation is all wrong. It’s been a long time since I read the novel, but somehow Süskind managed to sell the outrageous tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the strangely gifted 18th-century murderer. Perfume is a strange fable, a dark fairy tale, a bad dream. Tykwer tells it as if he’s remaking Amadeus: swelling music, ponderous voice-over, extras, costumes, the works–and not a whit of humor.
As a procession of images that illustrate the novel, Perfume is handsome enough, and newcomer Ben Whishaw does a fine job with the rather thankless role (his nose gets all the close-ups.) Worried father Richis (Alan Rickman) glowers and gnashes his teeth, and his daughter Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) is suitably delectable as the red-headed object of Grenouille’s olfactory obsessions. Only Dustin Hoffman, as the Italian perfumer Baldini, is allowed the occasional moment of warmth or levity.
At two and a half hours, Perfume lumbers, creaks, and stubbornly insists on its own importance where it should have been breezy and sly. As straight historical thriller, the story of the monstrous Grenouille is completely preposterous; a more knowing attitude and a less somber tone might have helped to make it work on screen. It’s surprising that the director of Run Lola Run didn’t make a movie that’s lighter on its feet. Opens December 27.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Tom Tykwer, 2006.**
[tags]2 stars, film, tom tykwer, ben whishaw, rachel hurd-wood, perfume, france, fable, noses, patrick süskind, german, dustin hoffman, alan rickman[/tags]
