"Vertigo" (General) IFC, Dublin.No new film released this year comes near the towering achievement that is Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo, which withstands and richly rewards repeated viewing like very few other films. It is re-released today in a restored version that heightens its spellbinding power, and a few minor technical glitches do not detract in any significant way from the movie's visceral charge.
An enthralling and powerfully emotional meditation on sexual yearning and obsession that borders on necrophilia, Vertigo features James Stewart in his most expressive and complex performance as Scottie Ferguson, a San Fransisco detective who retires from the police force when his intense acrophobia precipitates the death of a colleague.
Ferguson reluctantly takes on a freelance assignment from an old friend who hires him to pursue his wife, Madeleine, whom he describes as "a suicidal neurotic". The enigmatic Madeleine is played with a luminous screen presence by Kim Novak, who stepped into the role so effectively when Vera Miles, who was originally cast, became pregnant. Ferguson is gradually revealed as a man who is paralysed by fears - not just of falling from heights, but also of falling deeply in love.
To divulge any further of the narrative would not be fair to readers who have not yet savoured this heady and hypnotic experience. However, it can be said that, to emphasise that this is much more than a suspense picture, Hitchcock shows some of his cards to the audience at a much earlier stage than might be expected - and before Ferguson is made aware of the same information, which makes the movie all the more fascinating to observe.
Infused with an eerily surreal, dreamlike mood and unsettling blurrings of normality, Hitchcock's film is captivating all the way from Saul Bass's opening credits to its chilling conclusion. The painstaking restoration injects a new depth into the fluid, inventive camerawork of Robert Burks which regularly echoes Scottie Ferguson's growing sense of disorientation, and into the brilliant, brooding score by the gifted Bernard Herrmann.
"My Best Friend's Wedding" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCI, Dublin.
A dark-toned romantic comedy in which Julia Roberts is resturnede to stellar status and Rupert Everett achieves a career-making comeback, My Best Friend's Wedding is directed with panache by P.J. Hogan, the Australian who made Muriel's Wedding, and this time employs Burt Bacharach music as effectively as he used Abba songs in his earlier wedding picture.
Julia Roberts plays Julianne, a food critic who recognises a major missed opportunity when her sportswriter ex-lover, Michael (Dermot Mulroney) invites her to Chicago for his wedding, asking her to come four days early to hold his hand through the prenuptial celebrations. Michael's fiancee is the charming Kimmy (Cameron Diaz), who innocently asks Julianne to be her maid of honour - unaware that Julianne has decides to wreck the wedding plans. "If I didn't hate her, I'd adore her," Julianne tells her editor and best friend, George (Rupert Everett). "But it's my life's happiness, so I have to be ruthless." However, she does not reckon on the engagingly good-natured appeal which helps Kimmy survive her secret rival's schemes. A classic example comes when Julianne sets up Kimmy to sing in a karaoke bar, but even though she hasn't a note in her head, Kimmy pulls off an endearing rendition of Dusty Springfield's I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself.
A witty and disarming comedy which left me with a broad beam on my face, My Best Friend's Wedding benefits from P.J. Hogan's sure-footed direction which wisely eschews sentimentality and from the sparkling performances he elicits from his leading players, with the exception of Dermot Mulroney who is saddled with a thankless one-note part which makes one wonder why either woman might want to marry him.
Julia Roberts is on dynamic form as the fiercely determined Julianne, while Cameron Diaz, who becomes more interesting with her every role, is wonderfully winning and effervescent as Kimmy. However, the movie's scene-stealing star is Rupert Everett who plays Julianne's gay mentor with splendid aplomb and impeccable timing. At 38, Everett has been re-discovered by Hollywood and already there is much talk of a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his performance.
"Career Girls" (15s) Screen on D'Olier Street, UCI Tallaght
After the relatively epic scope of Secrets and Lies, Mike Leigh returns to a much smaller canvas with his new film, which is less than 90 minutes long and revolves around two characters. In many ways, though, Career Girls is just as ambitious as the last film. Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) and Annie (Lynda Steadman) are two old college friends who haven't seen each other for six years. When Annie comes down to London to spend a weekend with Hannah, the two gradually renew their friendship, intercut with flashbacks of their life together as students.
As part of the improvisatory work which goes into making his films, Leigh famously works with his actors on each production to create a personal history for each character, and it's hardly surprising that this method often gives rise to storylines in which the past is constantly threatening to erupt into the present. Here, though, the use of flashback, and the improbable coincidences which occur over the weekend, foreground the artificiality of the filmic narrative.
In the course of the two days, Hannah and Annie meet the three most significant people from their shared student life, in a way which both disrupts the aggressively drab "naturalism" of the story, and accurately reflects the role of coincidence in modern urban life. The first, Adrian, is a fellow-student whom they both slept with, but who doesn't remember either of them. The second, their former flatmate Claire, jogs obliviously past them as they walk in the park, and the third, Ricky, whose sexual advances Annie rejected many years before, appears at the end for the sort of cathartic climactic moment which has become the director's trademark.
It's a pity that Leigh's predilection for caricature is indulged in the flashback scenes - Hannah and Annie's teenage tics and peculiarities are exaggerated to an extreme degree. This is particularly unfortunate because underneath the overacting is a convincing depiction of the inchoate, formless nature of life as a young adult. The "contemporary" characterisations of the now 30-year-old women are more persuasive, with the two former friends warily circling each other.
In the past, Leigh's portrayals of middle and lower-class life have sometimes seemed contemptuous and even snobbish, but Cartlidge's and Steadman's performances here are compelling. Sometimes bleak, sometimes irritating, Career Girls is a flawed but highly ambitious film, which asks serious questions about the stories we make of our own lives.
"Spawn" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs
Those who believe that modern cinema is a nauseating brew of gratuitous violence, moronic storylines and adolescent humour will find much to support that view in this fantasy/horror offering, directed by Mark Dippe, a former alumnus of George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic. As you might expect from someone with such a pedigree, Spawn, based on Todd McFarlane's cult comic book of the same name, is replete with special effects, but it might have been a good idea to spend a little more time and money on the script.
Michael Jai White is the eponymous hero, a government assassin who returns from the dead and finds himself enlisted in the devil's army by Clown (John Leguizamo), an obese Mephistopheles with a scatological sense of humour. Meanwhile, Cogliostro (Nicol Williamson, stooping very low to make a buck) represents the forces of good (interestingly, while the Devil and Hell feature prominently, there's no sign of their opposite numbers).
Back in the world of the living, Spawn has to cope with corrupt government agent Martin Sheen, whose nastiness is matched only by the hamminess of his acting. Along the way, we get the usual quota of blood, guts and very big machine guns. A risible mix of Robocop, The Crow and Clive Barker's Hellraiser series, this is the sort of thing that gives cheap tasteless Gothic trash a bad name, even in circles where it's appreciated. When it isn't confusing, it's idiotic; when it isn't idiotic, it's boring - in every sense a hellish experience, best avoided.
