REVIEWED - FORTY SHADES OF BLUE: In A career that has spanned 50 years, Rip Torn is one of those working actors willing to take the roles on offer, writes Michael Dwyer
He's not noted for his discriminating choices, as his recent hammy portrayal of King Louis XV in Marie Antoinette demonstrates. Still prolific at the age of 75, Torn seizes on one of his juiciest parts in Forty Shades of Blue, playing Alan, a Memphis record producer celebrated for his soul music output decades earlier.
Alan recalls two of Torn's most memorable screen characters, being as self-obsessed and temperamental as the pill-popping country singer in Payday (1973) and as demanding and blunt-spoken as Artie, the TV station chief in The Larry Sanders Show. Here Torn meets his match in his co-star, Dina Korzun, the Russian actress who played the single mother seeking asylum in England in Last Resort. She is riveting as Alan's much younger Russian lover, Laura, the mother of his three-year-old son.
The scene is set for dramatic fireworks when Alan's estranged adult son, Michael (Darren Burrows) arrives from California. Laura is resigned to Alan's propensity for adulterous affairs, although she never raises the subject. Michael was on the verge of splitting up with his girlfriend until she recently became pregnant. As we expect, an emotional triangle is formed as Laura and Michael are drawn to each other.
Director and co-writer Ira Sachs takes a low-key approach to this melodramatic scenario, relegating some of the more interesting developments off-screen as he concentrates on the film as a chamber piece and character study.
In that respect, the film is effectively subtle. Korzun expressively captures Laura's loneliness and sense of being an outsider as she wanders through an expensive store or the plush home she shares with Alan. When Alan berates an engineer in his recording studio, Michael takes evident pleasure from pressing the mute button, silencing his father's latest outburst.
The moody atmosphere is emphasised in the original score by Dickon Hinchliffe of The Tindersticks, which alternates with soul classics on the soundtrack.
