Movie Maker Issue #48
Truth About Jonathan Demme
The director of such iconic gems as Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia
returns with a New Wave spin on an old classic by Phillip Williams
Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme has never shied away from exploring
the often shadowy and troubled contours of the American story landscape.
He’s been equally successful at revealing a rich universe of uniquely American
eccentrics who engender both laughter and compassion, covering the nation’s
story in sunshine and in rain as well as anyone. His latest picture, The
Truth About Charlie—a loose reshaping of Stanley Donen’s 1963 film, Charade—reveals
Demme’s playful side.
Demme’s own story of how he “fell backwards into this business” is a
gem not to be skipped over. After a stint in London as a rock journalist
in the late ‘60s, Demme launched his career with Roger Corman, where he
learned the basics of moviemaking from the godfather of B movies himself:
always get your day’s coverage and keep the audience entertained.
“I’d been a publicist in New York before moving to London,” recalls
Demme. “Roger Corman made Von Richthofen and Brown for UA in Ireland, and
they called me up to see if I would go over to be the unit publicist. As
fate would have it, that was just at the moment that Roger was starting
up New World Pictures, and he was in desperate need of screenplays. He
was stuck over there in Ireland and suddenly here was this avid film buff,
who could write press releases, in his office. And he asks, ‘Wait a minute,
you want to write a script? I’m starting up this company…’ And I said,
‘Sure.’ (laughing). He said, ‘Do you like motorcycle movies?’ And I said,
‘Yeah, especially your The Wild Angels’. So he said, ‘Okay, why don’t you
take a crack at it?’
“There was a particular moment when I fell madly in love with movies…
it just turned me on my head… I thought—oh, my god, look at what movies
can do!”
Collaborating with friend Joe Viola, who had a career directing commercials
in London, Demme cranked out a motorcycle flick based on Kurosawa’s Rashomon.
After a cursive read through their first draft, Corman immediately proposed
that the two come to California and make the picture, with Joe directing
and Jonathan producing. A couple of years later, Demme was tackling directing
duties himself, steering several Corman releases through the pipeline:
Caged Heat, Crazy Mama and Fighting Mad.
Not surprisingly, Jonathan Demme has encountered his share of setbacks
over the years, including the 1984 release Swing Shift, a film which was
disastrously retooled by the studio. Still, the general arc of his career—which
includes celebrated performance films like Stop Making Sense and Storefront
Hitchcock—has been marked by an enviable marriage of commercial successes
and personal milestones.
In part framed as an homage to the films of the French New Wave, The
Truth About Charlie saw the director take on a less formal style of directing—an
approach very much in tune with the guerilla aesthetic in vogue during
the Paris of the early 1960s. “Stanley Donen shot Charade in Paris in 1963,”
notes Demme. “Three blocks away, Claude Chabrol was shooting something.
François Truffaut was a couple of blocks in the other direction.
They were all out there with their handheld cameras grabbing it, cinema
verite style. We wanted to do that. So we thought: let’s pretend that we
are doing the New Wave version of Charade.”
The Truth About Charlie stars Mark Wahlberg—a likeable, streetwise counterpoint
to Cary Grant’s urbane, silver-haired fox—and the gifted Thandie Newton,
taking a much deserved break from tight corsets and long gowns to play,
as Demme puts it, “a fully-rounded, modern person.” With Tim Robbins and
a devilish Stephen Dillane rounding out the cast, the picture also contains
delightful cameos by such New Wave alum as Charles Aznavour (Shoot The
Piano Player) and Ana Karina, Godard’s frequent muse.
Though cut from new cloth, Demme’s film embraces Charade’s penchant
for blending and bending genres. At its core, however, it is a romance
which depends heavily on the audience’s investment in the relationship
between Wahlberg and Newton. In his first interview with MM, Demme gives
us the lowdown on Charlie, Roger Corman’s golden rules and what made Beloved
the medicine audiences didn’t want to take.
Phillip Williams (MM): What attracted you to The Truth About Charlie?
Why do a remake of Charade?
Jonathan Demme (JD): I had finished Beloved and was working on a couple
of scripts, and we screened Charade at the office one night for fun. As
the picture unfolded, I thought what a splendid opportunity
[it would be] to go to Paris and make a fresh, entertaining piece based
on this movie. I knew that Universal held the rights to Charade and my
working relationship has been with them for the last couple of years. The
more I pictured Thandie Newton in situations like [the ones in the picture],
the more excited I became.
I wanted to work with Thandie very badly after having such an exciting
experience with her on Beloved. I think she is a brilliant, brilliant actress,
and also a very extraordinary person. Those were the triggers: Thandie,
Paris, and also the mixing of genres. I love mixing moods in movies. It’s
one of the things that made Something Wild so enjoyable to me.
MM: There are a few playful links between Something Wild and Charlie.
In both cases, of course, the lead character is named Charlie, and in both
cases you actually brought your soundtrack playfully into the film by having
the performer on-screen for the end credits. Were you thinking about Something
Wild while making The Truth About Charlie?
JD: I wasn’t thinking about Something Wild much, but I was thinking
about Shoot The Piano Player, which is a film I am madly in love with.
It’s a film that I saw for the first time in 1965, when I was madly in
love with movies already. It just turned me on my head. There was a particular
moment where that happened, even: the two bad guys that are following Charlie,
they get pulled over and one of them is put on the spot—the question is
put to him, ‘Are you telling the truth?’ And he says, ‘I’m telling the
truth, so help me God. And if I’m lying, may my mother fall dead.’ And
the movie cuts to an old woman, clutching her chest and collapsing to the
floor. I just thought, oh my God, look at what movies can do! In this kind
of serious, tough, gripping, romantic melodrama, suddenly there’s a moment
such as this!
I guess, by extension, that’s one of the things that made the New Wave
movies so exciting to young cineastes like myself back in the ’60s when
I was seeing them. [They had] this outrageous mixture of moods and genres.
Charade is like that—I’m talking about the Stanley Donen one, which really
did manage to be a terrific mystery, a terrific romance and a terrific
black comedy… One of the things that I did want to emulate in The Truth
About Charlie is that way that Charade, early on in the movie, signals
that this is going to be a movie that will be one thing one minute and
something else the next. In Charade a dead body comes rolling down the
hill in the opening sequence and it cuts to a gun being aimed at Audrey
Hepburn—with heavy, melodramatic music—and then a stream of water comes
out…
MM: …from a toy gun!
JD: We borrowed heavily from the original there. We have Charlie with
the look of growing fear on his face backing away from the camera, and
we cut to Thandie, apparently in a situation of jeopardy. She falls out
of frame and is underwater, [when in fact] a little kid was backing her
up to the swimming pool; she was playing with him.
MM: Were you concerned about being criticized for remaking a classic
film?
JD: I’m not too concerned about that. Charade is Charade. We can see
it at retrospectives for all times.
We haven’t done anything to Charade; it’s just as fabulous as
[it was] the year that Stanley Donen made it. Now there’s this other
picture that would not have existed were it not for Charade—hopefully [one
which] has a life all its own and is a pleasurable experience, too.
MM: Was there anything about the film you knew you wanted to change?
JD: The funny thing is that, as I watched the movie that night and we
were all sitting around, I thought: what a cakewalk. You could just take
this script and run out and shoot it. But you don’t want it to be a cakewalk
by trying to duplicate everything the original did. I wanted to capture
the spirit of Charade and have that same kind of playfulness, but I wanted
to see if we could come up with our own fun way of treating certain aspects
of Charade.
More than anything, I didn’t want to duplicate the relationship between
Reggie (Audrey Hepburn) and Joshua (Cary Grant) at all. I thought, first
of all, there’s no such thing as another Cary Grant, so I wanted to try
and turn that totally upside down. [I wanted] to make the guy not elegant—make
him a rough-edged, street smart, maybe boy-next-door type.
Or maybe bad boy next door. And I wanted to have him be the one who
quickly falls for her.
MM: As you went into the shoot, did you have a sense of the sort of
visual take you wanted to employ? Or did you choose your camera angles
and so forth as you went along?
JD: It depends. I work a lot—and have for the past several pictures—with
storyboard artists as much as possible up-front for any scenes with action
or any kind of visual complexity to them. I love to have a plan going in.
We may stick to the plan or we may [stray] from it, but at least we have
a plan. If it’s other kinds of scenes—stuff not involving complicated visuals—then
I love to go out and watch rehearsals and come up with the angles on the
spot.
We went back and looked at tones of the Truffaut movies, especially
A Woman Is A Woman, and there we saw something that we really loved:
exterior scenes that look like news reels, like documentaries. There’s
the real Paris, real Parisians on the street—no extras; a fantastic sense
of the city. Also, we looked at the Wong Kar-Wai movies which are films
that have obviously been inspired, in their way, by the New Wave, especially
Godard. And we looked at Run Lola Run a lot; we were really excited by
the use of subliminal flashes in that movie. So our picture has its own
motif of impressions of what people are thinking.
MM: As part of a long list of directors who got their start with Roger
Corman, do you still put the principles you learned from him to use?
JD: Roger’s golden rules, once they’re in your head (for me anyway)
become just the way you think when you get out on the floor. So on the
visual side of things, yes. All of Corman’s golden rules are exploited
to a maximum in the New Wave films.
MM: What are his golden rules?
JD: Always be seeking ways to move the camera, because that keeps the
viewer’s eye stimulated. He stresses that you make sure that the movement
is well motivated… and if you’re in a situation where you can’t move the
camera, get a variety of angles so that you can cut and keep the eye engaged
through editing.
MM: You got to direct by producing films for Corman first?
JD: I produced two movies that Joe Viola directed: Angels: Hard As They
Come, which was the motorcycle movie. Then we went to the Philippines and
made The Hot Box. That was a deeply committed film about American nurses
being kidnapped by a revolutionary movement and coming back radicalized
and joining the revolution—and having lots of shower scenes along the way!
MM: Naturally.
JD: When we were shooting The Hot Box we had really bad weather and
fell very far behind schedule. It became necessary to have a second unit
and I became the de facto second unit director. I went out with this wonderful
young Filipino cameraman and a bunch of soldiers to do some battle shots
and instantly fell in love with this process of making my own shots up.
When we returned to California, I asked Roger if I could have an opportunity
to direct one myself and he said, ‘Okay, write a prison movie and we’ll
see how that works out.’ And I wrote one, and that became Caged Heat. I
did two other pictures for Roger: Crazy Mama and Fighting Mad, starring
Peter Fonda.
It was a fantastic experience, working with Roger. Obviously he’s presenting
you with these opportunities that would not have presented themselves under
any other circumstances. I think he was a brilliant teacher and a great
encourager. And also an honorable guy. I love Roger, for a myriad of reasons.
MM: Melvin and Howard came soon after that, did it not?
JD: Yes. I got a chance to do a non-exploitation movie with Citizens
Band, which was a movie they were doing at Paramount. One day
I saw the list of the 23 directors that had turned the script down.
Paramount really wanted to make the movie because they thought that, with
the CB craze at full steam, a CB movie could do very well.
Paul Brickman had written a really charming script, the conceit of which
was that there were no car chases—none of the things you would expect from
a CB movie. Instead it was very character-driven, with people talking to
each other on their citizens band radios.
Smokey and The Bandit made a billion dollars and we made nothing. [laughs]
But it was a great chance to get into non-action material. I had fallen
in love with the idea of directing actors and hungered to work much more
with actors instead of action. It was a great cast. We had a great time
doing it and we were invited to the New York Film Festival, despite the
fact that the film tanked horrendously—and famously—at the box office.
MM: Then was Melvin and Howard your way to show that you could make
a hit?
JD: In those days—and I don’t know if I’m talking about myself or the
business—it seemed like if you had a chance to direct a good script and
you did your best and it turned out well that, regardless of the outcome,
you’d be okay. I still believe that the only way to advance your work is
to seek out ways of doing good work. So with a screenplay like Melvin and
Howard, I just wouldn’t have been concerned about ‘then one day it will
be in movie theaters and people will have to go out and see it.’ [laughs]
For me, it was just a great opportunity to go out and film a great script.
Melvin and Howard did better than Citizens Band did, but then again
all movies have done better than Citizens Band! [laughs] But Melvin and
Howard got a lot of notoriety: it won a lot of awards and was in different
film festivals; it was good for everybody concerned.
MM: To me, Melvin and Howard is one of the classic films of the ’70s:
it has the kind of pacing and very natural performances we saw much of
then. The 1970s seemed to be a period when a certain type of film was being
made, where a lot more of America’s story was being told.
JD: I know what you mean. That was when Five Easy Pieces was made. It
was a time when there was a belief within the industry that any good picture—any
really good picture—had the possibility of doing well at the box office.
That’s why it was an exciting time.
I feel that there were two occasions where I had uniquely good luck
in being able to make movies that, certainly on paper, were hard sells
in terms of [generating] high end results: Melvin and Howard was one of
them—the story of this very poor family in pursuit of the American Dream.
The other one was Beloved, which is this harrowing look at our country’s
legacy of slavery.
In both situations, I just thought I was so lucky to make them. With
either of those pictures, it was never being made because it clearly has
the makings of a blockbuster. They were both made because the material
was unusually rich and there were important relationships involved in both
situations.
MM: Were you surprised by the reception that Beloved received? It didn’t
do as well as hoped for at the box office.
JD: It had a complicated reception. It’s funny, because I feel that
what we’ve read about Beloved in magazines and the newspapers may present
one perspective on how the movie fared and what the movie’s story was.
But, the thing is, I love the movie and I’m so proud of it and I thank
God and Walt Disney—and Oprah—that I was able to make that picture. I love
that it’s part of our American movie literature, but
I think that we ended up selling that picture with an evident degree
of ‘it’s take your medicine time, America.’ I think the intentions behind
that attitude were pure, but it probably just wasn’t a smart approach.
Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter
in Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Also, the picture probably opened much too wide. If we had the opportunity
to market it again, we would have been much more low-key about it: open
it up smaller and give it a chance to find its audience.
MM: You moved back to New York after making Swing Shift in 1984. Was
the move a result of your studio experience with that film, or something
more complicated?
JD: Yes, I was laid very low by the turmoil of Swing Shift and I wanted
to go home. [laughs] I guess I needed to get out of town and freshen up
a bit.
MM: Does living in New York provide anything to you as a moviemaker
that is unique? How might you describe what’s going on with production
in the city at the moment?
JD: The New York filmmaking community is small, but it is a community.
Most everybody knows each other. It’s so great. When we were mixing The
Truth About Charlie, I’d go into the building and in that same building
are Sidney Lumet’s offices. Sidney Lumet is working there! So I feel like
there will always be a film community in New York. And from what I understand,
it’s tough all over. People who work on movies—whatever the department—we
get to do something special when we gather together to make pictures. We
all feel that way. Everybody works their asses off. It’s a real drag that
it’s so hard to find the gigs and that you don’t get to stay home enough.
MM: What’s up next for you?
JD: I’m involved with three movies at the moment: one is The Truth About
Charlie, which comes out in October. On the home front, I’ve been working
on a documentary for a couple of years about a friend of mine named Jean
Dominique who was a Haitian radio journalist. He was assassinated outside
his radio station two years ago in Haiti. He was a great man, who always
wanted to be an agronomist, but wound up being a brilliant journalist.
We showed it at the Maine International Film Festival as a work in progress
and it was very well received. And I’m one of the producers of the new
Spike Jonze picture, Adaptation, which is a script that we developed at
[my company] Clinica Estetico. It’s based on Susan Orlean’s book, The Orchid
Thief.
MM: And Charlie Kaufman wrote the script?
JD: Oh, yeah. The hero, by the way, is Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter
who is trying to write a screenplay based on The Orchid Thief. [laughing]
It’s amazing—a great film. I have learned so much about filmmaking watching
the dailies and watching Spike put this movie together. It’s been such
a blast for me.
And Richard Price (The Color of Money; Sea of Love) has a fantastic
idea for a movie, which is an opportunity to team up with Jodie [Foster]
again. It’s an urban thriller with supernatural overtones. He’s great;
he’s also a very prolific novelist. Another reason that living in New York
is great! MM
October 30 - November 5, 2002
Village Voice
Twisting the Naïf by Michael Atkinson
Once the cool, multiculti arbiter of secular Hollywood idiosyncrasy,
Jonathan Demme hasn't visited the Daft Side since the late '80s, when the
elastic, accelerating irreverence that pervaded Handle With Care, Melvin
and Howard, Something Wild, and Married to the Mob gave way to serial-killer
gloom, AIDS tearjerking, and Toni Morrison. At first blush, The Truth About
Charlie, his self-inspecting remake of Stanley Donen's 1964 gloss Charade,
seems a return to youthful form, a spry skip through Cary Grant-land with
a heart full of movie love. But the affectionate loopiness that once seemed
congenital to Demme's perspective has a tough time emerging from between
the badly dated cutesy-pie mystery scenario and the newfangled Hollywood
post-production effects.
Charade fits into Demme's old structural habits—an innocent taking an
uncertain walk on the wild side. The new film is saturated with a French
new-waviness (clips from Shoot the Piano Player, cameos by Agnès
Varda, Anna Karina, and Charles Aznavour) that gave me a craving for something
nouvelle, not a half-hearted Hollywood co-optation. Demme merely evokes
French stereotypes (an Anaïs Nin diary, the Hotel Langlois), just
as he's always used "other" cultures as colorful tourist traps without
ever attempting to understand them.
In the my-new-dead-husband-was-a-spy? Audrey Hepburn role, Thandie Newton
has the requisite recipe of English delicacy and spunk, but the extra dimensions
we pray for once she starts whining about "this sordid mess!" never materialize.
The decidedly un-urbane Mark Wahlberg has a gift for faux sincerity, but
unsurprisingly, the sparsely used background characters are juicier; the
negligence of Ted Levine's self-acupuncturing cardiac case is criminal.
The entire cast is encouraged to lighten up too little too late in a frenetic
nightclub scene emceed by Karina's cigar-voiced chanteuse. After years
of daunting success and dull issue-pondering, Demme seems to be second-guessing
his own cock-eyed humanism, except where it counts least: The end credits—rife
with camera acknowledgment and complete with a Hannibal Lecter razz—stand
as the spirited silliness Charlie should have been.
October 30, 2002, 9:00 a.m.
- National Review
If It Ain’t Broke . . .
The problem with The Truth About Charlie. By Gina R. Dalfonzo
In the first full-length scene in Stanley Donen's 1963 romantic thriller
Charade, Audrey Hepburn meets Cary Grant at a ski resort. As one might
expect, the chemistry is instantly hot enough to thaw the slopes. Their
conversation is a 101 course in classic movie flirtation; she chatters
away about whatever comes to mind, switching effortlessly back and forth
between coyness and eagerness, and he, looking equal parts bewildered and
intrigued, gets in a zinger or two whenever she has to stop for breath.
In the first full-length scene in The Truth about Charlie, Jonathan
Demme's new remake of Charade, Thandie Newton meets Mark Wahlberg in the
Caribbean. They exchange a few perfunctory pleasantries, only one of which
draws a laugh (a line taken directly from Charade). Yet it wouldn't really
matter if they were performing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet,
because the camera whirls drunkenly around and around them until all the
viewer can think about is where to get some Dramamine in a hurry.
The difference between the two scenes is representative of the difference
between the two movies. By his own account, Demme was so fond of Donen's
film that he decided to "paraphrase" it — apparently on the old principle
that each man kills the thing he loves. The idea was to recreate the movie
in the French New Wave style that was popular at the time Charade was made.
So The Truth about Charlie is full of odd camera angles, fantasy sequences,
incessant close-ups of extras staring at the lead actors for no reason,
and direct references to Demme's predecessors in the genre (the film ends
with a shot of director Francois Truffaut's grave). But for the garden-variety
viewer, all the sophisticated techniques can't cover up the lack of a few
very basic things — for instance, characters and a plot.
In Charlie, as in Charade, a young widow is chased through Paris by
a trio of crooks (three menacing thugs in the original, two mild-tempered
men and a lesbian with a heart of gold in the remake) who think she has
the money they helped her husband steal from the U.S. government. To stay
alive, she has to find the money, as well as decide whether to trust a
shady stranger who keeps offering to help her. There's nothing wrong with
the story, except that Demme seems determined to obliterate any traces
of suspense and excitement from it.
Thus, when the thieves try to corner Newton on a train, one of them
begins to choke as he reels through the smoking car. We later find out
that the smoke wasn't really what choked him, but the scene serves its
purpose. By the end of what looks like an epic-length public-service announcement
against the tobacco companies, we barely remember why the man got on the
train in the first place. And after a long series of similarly unfocused
scenes, by the time Charlie reaches its ridiculously drawn-out climax,
it's difficult to remember why we ever cared what happens to these confused
and confusing people.
The actors caught up in this mishmash aren't half bad, though (except
Tim Robbins, who plays most of his scenes like an automaton and then attempts
to go from emotional rigidity to full-out nervous breakdown in nothing
flat). The problem is that they're not permitted to do anything that might
distract attention from the director's relentless experimentation. Newton
is luckier than Wahlberg — once in a while she gets to try out the kind
of playfulness that permeated Hepburn's performance, and she does it well.
As for Wahlberg — well, it's not his fault that he isn't Cary Grant. And
he manages to be rather appealing in the scenes where he plays protector
to Newton's lady in distress. But Grant was allowed to give as good as
he got when Hepburn threw him a caustic remark. (He was probably the only
man in the world who could say, "Why don't you shut up?" in a way that
made women go weak in the knees.) When Newton says something cutting, or
even appears mildly miffed, all Wahlberg can do is stutter and look as
if he's been shot through the heart.
Charade is high on the list of the most popular classic movies, and
the secret of its longevity is really very simple: two accomplished stars
— backed up by a stellar supporting cast — and a great script. Though the
mystery is treated with almost unrelenting grimness, the romance interwoven
with it is a lighthearted romp, turning every conversation and every possible
obstacle between the characters into a joke. Even the kind of age gap usually
taken for granted in the movies is played for laughs. (The first time Hepburn
gets openly romantic, as they travel upstairs in an elevator, Grant protests,
"Now listen, I could already be arrested for transporting a minor above
the first floor.") What people remember about the movie today isn't usually
the succession of murders or the solution to the mystery, but Grant taking
a fully clothed shower in Hepburn's bathroom, or her dreamily poking his
dimple and inquiring, "How do you shave in there?"
Unfortunately, the kind of interaction that made Charade work so well
is too often viewed as anachronistic and artificial by today's moviemakers.
(Name the last romantic comedy you saw, besides My Big Fat Greek Wedding,
that had one memorable romantic or comic line in it.) Add to that a director
who's so busy showing off his cleverness that he hardly lets the actors
do any work at all, and you have a remake that shouldn't have been made.
In fact, sad to say, you have a film that can't even stand on its own.
Friday, October 25, 2002
- Globe & Mail
Heavy hand spoils good-time Charlie By LIAM LACEY
Rating: **½
Over his career, director Jonathan Demme has offered among the best
contemporary examples of a variety of genres, from screwball comedy (Something
Wild), the biopic (Melvin and Howard), horror (Silence of the Lambs) and
the concert film (Stop Making Sense).
His current film, The Truth About Charlie, belongs to a recognizable
if not well-defined category of movie, the remake of a classic from the
sixties. From the virtual taxidermy of Gus Van Sant's Psycho to the Mel
Gibson-starring travesty of Point Blank, it's a road often taken but littered
with wrecks. Film buffs who are interested enough in the originals to get
the in-jokes are unlikely to be pleased with the copy.
The Truth About Charlie is a substantial reconsideration of the original
Stanley Donen-directed romantic thriller, Charade, which was shot mostly
on sets and almost had the feel of one of Donen's buoyant musicals. Hepburn
played a woman about to divorce her recent husband who discovers he has
been murdered. What's more, he stole money during the war and double-crossed
three army buddies. Now they've come to Paris to get it back from his widow.
Grant played the charming stranger she meets, who keeps coming to her rescue.
The various levels of charade are revealed with the deadpan sense of farce.
Demme has updated his cast to Thandie Newton (MI-2, Besieged and Demme's
own Beloved) in the Hepburn role and Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role.
Newton, as Regina, is a charming, breezy and credibly wide-eyed merry young
widow and, while not exactly Hepburn, she's a pleasure to watch. Even in
a beret and designer threads, Wahlberg tends to look a bit thuggy, but
he's game in trying to keep step with his mercurial partner.
The most significant innovation is Demme's conceit of treating the film
as if it were made by a director from the French New Wave. Now it's a Paris-set
romance in the playful spirit of the director's almost-namesake, French
director Jacques Demy. New Wave references abound: Charles Aznavour is
shown in a brief clip from François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player
and then pops up to sing a musical number. Jean-Luc Godard's former wife
and star Anna Karina pops in to sing a cabaret song, in a fantasy sequence
where the various characters switch partners in a tango.
Though it seems to be stuck with one eye closed in a permanent wink,
The Truth About Charlie isn't trapped in the cinematic past. With a multiracial
cast, an international spy-caper flick with Mission Impossible and John
Woo overtones, and a series of comic turns, fantasy sequences and sly humour,
it should be a fresh delight.
Unfortunately, it's not. Where a melting little meringue is wanted,
Demme delivers a big, doughy sticky-bun of a movie, stuffed with little
currants of other films. Partly of the problem is that the actors, especially
Tim Robbins as a mysterious government agent, are so self-consciously knowing,
they spoil the fun. Any suggestion of real suspense is lost with Demme's
typically serpentine structure mitigating the lightness of tone the movie
needs.
On the positive side, there are some entertaining casting decisions.
These include a coolly compelling Christine Boisson as a chain-smoking
woman detective, who first confronts Regina with the news that her late
husband, Charlie, was not the man she thought he was.
The trio of desperate thugs on Regina's trail include a guy with a heart
condition (Ted Levine), a black lesbian (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a tall
slender Korean man with glasses (Joong-Hoon Park). They're a welcome contrast
to the usual three burly guys with facial stubble and leather jackets who
seem to get work in every other thriller.
Dateline: Friday, October 25,
2002 - Cinescape
Great city, outdated script By: ABBIE BERNSTEIN
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is a remake of CHARADE, the 1962 comedic thriller
in which Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn romanced and suspected each other
all over Paris, under the direction of Stanley Donen. Director Jonathan
Demme accentuates the considerable charms of the City of Light, which are
unfading, but times have changed when it comes to McGuffin-driven plots,
something that the script by Demme & Steve Schmidt and Peter Joshua
and Jessica Bendinger doesn’t seem to have fully grasped. Conventions that
were beguiling and suspenseful when the original was made depended a lot
on being fresh – which they were in 1962. Audiences in 2002 have come to
expect a few more twists that CHARLIE simply doesn’t provide.
While on vacation, Regina Lampert (Thandie Newton) flirts with cute
American Joshua Peters (Mark Wahlberg). Regina is married but feels guiltless,
as she plans to tell her husband Charles (Stephen Dillane) that she wants
a divorce when she comes home. Charles stands Regina up at the airport
– typical of the behavior that’s made her decide the marriage is a mistake
– but Joshua considerately gives her a lift to her door. Upon returning
to the lavish Lampert Parisian apartment, Regina is shocked to find the
place stripped to the floorboards – and two police detectives waiting for
her. Charles has been murdered. Just as shocking, the ostensible art dealer
from Switzerland turns out to have had a handful of passports in different
names with different nationalities. Reeling from this news, Regina is soon
trailed by three menacing characters and approached by U.S. government
operative Bartholomew (Tim Robbins), who tells her that Charles made off
with a fortune several years ago and now his old partners want their hands
on it. Joshua keeps turning up to offer assistance.
Wahlberg plays Joshua as a reasonably nice young man who’s not a very
good liar as opposed to the dashing stranger that the genre generally requires,
but this wouldn’t be such a problem if we were made to care at all about
the caper. However, the puzzle pieces are presented to us in such a desultory,
haphazard way and our heroine Regina has so little interest in figuring
out what’s going on that it’s impossible to be caught up in the plot –
if the main character doesn’t really care, why should we? This leaves us
with individual scenes which have a certain amount of quirkiness and beauty
(again, hard to go wrong when shooting in Paris) but aren’t colorful enough
to distract us from the fact that we’re never terribly engaged by the story.
There is a lightness of tone and some nifty touches – Charles Aznavour
appears in person for an onscreen serenade when someone puts on a CD of
his music – but almost no real laughs.
Newton, however, has the kind of grace and spirit that allows her to
carry the film to a certain extent – we may not be interested in the goings-on,
but we can tell why the other characters are interested in her. Robbins
is fairly droll as the gruff, deadpan secret agent and Christine Boisson
is enjoyably skeptical as the primary police investigator on the case.
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is painless, but it works better as an inexpensive
Parisian vacation than as a narrative experience. |