 |
| DIRECTED BY |
| Roman Coppola |
| STARRING |
| Jeremy Davies |
| Angela Lindvall |
| �lodie Bouchez |
| G�rard Depardieu |
 |
Roman Coppola has a ridiculously large amount of technical flare for a filmmaker at such a young age. This is evident in �CQ�, his first film - a dexterously stylized satire on the film industry. Coppola doesn�t treat this material with the biting irreverence that we may expect from a quintessentially youthful filmmaker, however. He develops his �film within a film� (in this case, a late 60s-style science fiction schlock picture) as an homage rather than an attack. But I couldn�t help but feel disappointed that, through all of these interesting originalities, Coppola had to go with the typical device of having the �film within a film� be as laughably cheesy as it is and not the least bit intriguing. Unfortunately, this does detract from the appeal of the actual film itself.
Jeremy Davies is slowly but surely working his way up to �unjustly overlooked� status, because over the past few years he has been consistently pumping out interesting performances; �CQ� is no exception. He plays Paul, the wayward young filmmaker, with a timid stoicism but also manages to convey the feeling that he�s about to blast into emotive overdrive at any moment.
Sometimes Coppola goes overboard with his visual stylization, crossing over into music video territory when it seems like a more practical directorial method could have gotten the job done more tactfully. And some may say that this bad taste is actually intentional because of the satirical nature of the �film within a film,� but to me ridiculousness is ridiculousness � either way you dice it.
I still have to hand it to Coppola for writing the screenplay, which is definitely witty. And then there�s the character of Paul, who is initially presented very interestingly but when the film begins to explore the clich� of him being love-torn between this girl and that girl; well, it�s just a letdown. The film itself is by no means a failure, however; even if it is disappointedly uneven, Roman appears to be well on his way to furthering the respectfulness of the Coppola name within Hollywood.
