because you can't have too much entertainment... September 2000

(She's) A Difficult Read
Nurse Betty Dir Neil LaBute. Starring: Renée Zellweger & Morgan Freeman
POLA X Dir: Leos Carax Starring: Guillaume Depardieu & Catherine Deneuve

Usually when you sit down for a flick you come out with a fairly standard reaction. You hated/liked/admired/loved... there are of course variations but generally people have fairly solid predictable reactions to things. However, sometimes you don't know quite what to make of a film. That's a good thing! Being uncategorizable / unmarketable / or (even to some degree) unpopular usually means that you're trying for something that not every one tries for - you're saying something not everyone says - you're visualizing things other people can't see. All of the arts need difficult projects to invigorate the audience. The cinema desperately needs it each and every September when summer has run its course and audiences are (at least the theory goes) using their gray matter again. I hope you're in that space now too. If you are there's two difficult reads in theaters that you might want to check out.

Our first puzzling girl is Nurse Betty. Is this a shallow film or a deep one? Is it Neil LaBute's softening sell out or Rene Zelwegger flirtation with something to tarnish her sweetness and light? Is it funny or awkward? Is it ridiculously illogical or hilariously wide eyed? Will you hate it or love it? That depends but I will give you a clue. If you adored In the Company of Men & Your Friends and Neighbors you might just hate this. If you hated those films you will probably hate this. If you were glad you saw those films but were completely sickened by them you will probably love this. But I'm sorry -perhaps I'm projecting. I belong to, you guessed it, the latter category and I'm pleased as punch about this film. The odd couple combo of Zelwegger and LaBute worked surprisingly well for me. Rather than an oil/water thing this mix of ingredients actually made the whole thing taste better. Nurse Betty ended up clarifying my feelings for the director's previous brutal work. It's not as much of a departure as people think.

For one thing, Betty will make you rethink the uber misogyny of LaBute's first two films. If this is any indication, he might actually be one of those mythical man-hating feminists. In his first two films the men were out to destroy the women but that conquest proved to be the damnation of the men. If you think about the plot and characterizations in this new film, the attempted destruction is still there but it's actually redemption that the character's are seeking through innocent Betty. Kinnear needs her to redeem his talent, Rock needs her to solidify his wildcard rep, and Freeman (in a clever spin on the wise mentor roles he usually plays)...well, his need for redemption is practically in bold type and italicized. But it all works. It works well. Zelwegger especially holds it all in place in a difficult central performance. Betty is, as you may have heard, a kinder film than you might expect but it is certainly not soft in the head. Neil LaBute is, I'd wager, also a character himself in this fairy tale quest for redemption. Nurse Betty has answered his career prayers.

Speaking of confusing women...crossing the Atlantic in what will be a very select and limited run is Pola X. In this wild Parisian import by French cinema's long absent bad boy Leos Carax, a mysterious gypsy named Isabelle is stirring up a lot of trouble in the already troubled mind of Pierre. Like Carax's notorious Les Amants De Pont Neuf (which helped construct the cult of Juliette Binoche) it's absolutely gorgeous to look at -vibrant memorable imagery, exciting visual/emotional connections, and an entire cast of beautiful people. Among them are Gerard Depardieu's son Guillaume (previously seen on these shores in All the Mornings of the World) and the great Catherine Deneuve who is just having one hell of a year. We've already seen her in Est-Ouest, Time Regained, and Place Vendome. Her work here is her best yet this year (although she's also in Dancer in the Dark which opens next week. Whew.) In Pola X she's a ravishingly blond rich widow with a short temper and rather innappropriate maternal instincts to say the least. The film's major infamy at this point in puritan USA is that this film is rumored to contain a 100% bonafide sex scene. It does. I am a fairly jaded moviegoer but I'm also American so even though I don't want to be a prude those instincts are genetically encoded in me. Still, the scene works within the structure and the meaning of the film -you can't argue that it's just in there to be in there.

As for the said meaning --the subject matter itself... there's several possibilities. I thought it was the insanity brought on by love/lust. My memories of Carax's madly romantic Pont Neuf had me stuck in that mindset. I thought it was that same subject matter mixed in with a little price of the artistic life angle. Upon leaving the theater I discovered that my companions had quite different perceptions. My friend thought it was a political allegory about east -west relations and about the hated Gypsy subculture in racist Paris. And finally, trumping our perceptions, my boyfriend definitively remarked that it was about the inevitable intersection of art, sex, and death. Replaying the film in my head I get the feeling he's absolutely correct. But, in our defense, my boyfriend doesn't have to read the subtitles and he used to live in France. That gives him an unfair critical advantage. For him it wasn't such a difficult read but for the rest of us we'll need to use our minds again.

Betty and Isabelle are troublesome women... but confusion and provocation can open up all sorts or interesting narratives and be great catalysts for art. Nurse Betty and Pola X are both challenging, and heavily interpretable films. This is a good. Very good. Summer is over. The fall film season has arrived to rescue our minds.

-Nathaniel

Missed some reviews or commentary? Go here