Canadian Film Review: Saint Ralph (2005)

* * 1/2
Director: Michael McGowan
Starring: Adam Butcher, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Tilly, Gordon Pinsent

There's no such thing as an original story; even Shakespeare got his inspiration from other sources. It's what you do with the idea that matters, it's in how you take the bare bones and create a living, breathing thing out of it. Great films transcend the well-worn elements of their plots. Saint Ralph is not a great film but even if it doesn't transcend its cliches, it at least has good taste in them.

Canadian Film Review: Inconceivable (2008)

*
Director: Mary McGuckian
Starring: Colm Feore, Jennifer Tilly

Mary McGuckian’s Inconceivable is a movie with an idea. It gets so caught up in this idea that it kind of forgets to be a movie. To be a movie you need plot and characters or, at the very least, one or the other. You can’t fool me into thinking that there’s a plot that is being moved forward just because you put in a series of fast cuts and fades to white. Nice try though.

Inconceivable takes the test tube baby industry as its subject, pondering just what it means to create a “designer” baby. Patients can choose the hair and eye color of their child, the sex, and even the sexual orientation. In a sense, they’re leaving nothing to chance. In another sense, they’re leaving absolutely everything to chance. Who knows if they’re actually getting what they’ve paid for – and if they don’t, it’s not like babies have a return policy.

All of the patients are conceiving children with the help of Dr. Freeman (Colm Feore). The patients are given ticks, essentially, rather than solid personalities and are frankly so interchangeable that it's a wonder why the story bothers having so many. There’s Frances (Geraldine Chaplin), well past her child-bearing years but in need of having a son to ensure that she and her daughter (Oona Chaplin) get a share of her comatose and dying husband’s estate; Trixie (Sara Stockbridge) who really, really wants a girl; Kay (Kerry Fox) who has a sick child and needs a baby who can act as a donor; Lottie (Andie MacDowell) whose character trait is that she’s really, really horny; Elsa (Donna D’Errico), a newagey lesbian who wants to conceive with her girlfriend; Tutu (Elizabeth McGovern), a high-strung workaholic; and finally Malcolm (Lothaire Bluteau) and Mark (David Alpay), a gay couple having a child via surrogate. That seems like a lot of characters but don’t worry; you won’t actually get to know any of them. There’s also a character played by Jennifer Tilly, whose name completely escapes me and isn’t listed on IMDB.

The success rate with this group of patients is 100%, which goes beyond being unusual and enters into the realm of the impossible. The patients have kept in touch with each other during their pregnancies and exchange photos of their babies which leads Tutu to notice something very odd: all of the babies look exactly the same. She’s heard of another clinic where is was discovered that the doctor running it was actually using his own sperm and that he has subsequently fathered somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 children through his clinic. She wonders, of course, if Dr. Freeman has done the same thing and launches an investigation against him which leads to a result that is surprising to everyone, but most especially Dr. Freeman.

The screenplay, written by McGuckian, is very repetitive. We see the same scene played out between Dr. Freeman and each of his patients – and when I say the same, I mean the exact same words from him with slight variations in terms of the responses of his patients, depending on the character trait they’ve been assigned in lieu of an actual personality. We see multiple versions of the embryo extraction and later implanting scenes, the same thing, over and over for each patient. We see each patient being injected with the drug to promote the sustainability of the embryo. It gets boring very quickly. The film tries to pick up steam towards the end but by then it’s a lost cause; you don’t care and then it gets slapped with a “happy” ending.

The actors do their best to breathe life and vitality into their characters, but they have little to work with. Tilly is the only one who really succeeds, somehow making the film hold still long enough to allow for her character to take on actual dimensions. I do, however, have one nitpick with her character: she’s shelled out tens of thousands of dollars and endured numerous disappointments in her multiple attempts to conceive at Dr. Freeman’s clinic. After the embryo is implanted, what’s the first thing she does? She goes to bar and has a drink and a cigarette. Of course, that makes just about as much sense as anything else in the movie.

Canadian Film Review: The Wrong Guy (1997)

* * *
Director: David Steinberg
Starring: Dave Foley, Jennifer Tilly, Colm Feore

An ordinary man, framed for a crime he didn't commit, on the run in a chase that will culminate at the top of an American monument - but, no, this is not North By Northwest, though in its own, goofy way, The Wrong Guy is also rather brilliant. It's the kind of a movie where a character can posit a totally crazy theory about the JFK assassination - "His head just did that. I call it the 'No Bullet Theory'" - and not only will it not seem out of place, but entirely sensible given everything else that's going on.

Dave Foley stars as Nelson Hibbert, an executive who believes he’s about to receive a big promotion thanks to the fact that he’s engaged to the daughter of his boss. He’s disappointed when he learns that the boss has a favorite daughter and that the promotion will be going to the guy who is engaged to her. In a rage, Nelson storms into his future father-in-law’s office and discovers him with a knife in his back – a knife which Nelson unthinkingly removes and then tries to reinsert when he realizes what he’s done. By this time he’s covered in blood (he’s also been screaming a lot, which gets the attention of other people in the office) and certain that everyone will think he’s the murderer. Pretending to be casual, he makes his way out of the building (again: covered in blood) and goes on the run. Little does he know that there was a security camera in the boss’ office which captured the murderer in the act, a fact which is doubly funny when you take into account the elaborate means the real killer (Colm Feore) employs to get out of the building undetected.

No one is actually looking for Nelson (his co-workers, in fact, are convinced that he’s still at the office and doing a better than usual job – think of it as the George Costanza effect) but he has a way of ending up at the exact same place as the real killer and, shortly thereafter, the cops always show up. The killer becomes convinced that Nelson is actually a cop himself and decides to get rid of him, but his plans are always somehow thwarted. Eventually Nelson winds up in a small town and is taken in by the Holdens – Fred (Joe Flaherty), a banker who is about to be run off his lot by wealthy farmers, and his daughter Lynn (Jennifer Tilly), a narcoleptic who doesn’t let her condition get in the way of her desire to get behind the wheel of a truck.

The film, written by Foley, David Anthony Higgens, and Jay Kogen is a parody of chase movies generally and North By Northwest specifically. It also parodies the convention of the evil banker running simple farm folks out of their livelihood by reversing the trope and having the farmer be the town’s big time tycoon. “Sure be nice to tear this bank down and plant me a fresh crop of corn,” Farmer Brown tells Fred gloatingly. This is all played completely straight and very dry, which is probably why it works so well. That the characters aren’t aware of how ridiculous they’re being in situations that are equally ridiculous, just makes it even funnier.

There’s a subplot involving the police detective (played by Higgens) who is investigating the murder and spearheading the hunt for the killer which finds him trying to shirk his responsibilities at every turn. All he wants to do is pass the case off to someone else so that he doesn’t have to do anything, but the people around him are doing such a good job that all the pieces fall in his favor and the investigation practically runs itself, dragging him along with it. His indifference creates a nice balance to Nelson’s nervous, clumsy energy and the killer’s single-minded determination.

Directed by David Steinberg, the film is a well paced and clever send up of chase movies. It invests itself fully in the surreal nature of its reality and has the confidence to let the film stay "in character" along with the actual characters. If you happen to see this one in the video store, don't hesitate to pick it up. You're in for a treat.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Bound (1996)

Director: Andy & Larry Washowski
Starring: Gina Gershon, Jennifer Tilly, Joe Pantoliano

The Wachowskis hit it big worldwide with The Matrix, but it’s the film they made three years earlier which holds my deeper admiration. Part noir, part camp, part “look-what-I-can-do” stylistic romp, and all entertainment, Bound is one of the best – and most underrated – films to come out of the 1990s.

The set up: Corky (Gina Gershon) has just been released from prison and moves into an apartment next door to Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and her mobster boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). Violet sets her sights on Corky and soon they’re plotting to steal the mob’s money and pin it on Caesar, effectively removing him from their equation while putting themselves on easy street. They come up with a plan that can’t possibly go wrong… until it goes horribly, horribly wrong and suddenly Corky and Violet aren’t looking to get away with the money, they’re just looking to get away with their lives.

The film walks a tightrope of style and tone. This is a visually stunning film in terms of both cinematography and direction - there isn't a shot that the Washowskis don't make the most of. The important thing is that the style doesn't distract from the story, but instead serves to enhance it, helping to heighten the natural instensity of the story by underscoring certain actions and events (mostly acts of violence). In terms of tone, this is a film that could go very wrong very easily if the filmmakers didn't have such great command and control over the material. Bound consistently goes right to the edge - creeping towards that line that separates the serious from the ridiculous - and then restrains itself, pulling back ever so slightly. It’s fortunate that Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon are two actresses who know how to do camp properly, because the over-the-top moments wouldn’t work if the two played it with an undertone of “God, can you believe I just said that?” nor would they work if played completely straight. It’s a very fine line that’s being walked here. The best example of this comes during the scene where they’re plotting and Corky expresses reluctance about working with a partner because she doesn’t want to get screwed. “I wouldn’t screw you,” Violet says, and the two cock their heads towards each other to give each other a look while the camera swoops in to catch it up close. It’s funny and sexy and silly all at the same time.

Putting Gershon and Tilly together in these roles is simply inspired, with Tilly playing the ultra-girly femme fatale, and Gershon as the Hollywood (read: heterosexually acceptable) version of butch lesbianism (honestly, though, how butch can you be with a name like Corky?). They have fantastic chemistry and each has a great handle on her character, especially Tilly. Violet is a character who is consistently underestimated because of her va-va-voom appearance and her high-pitched voice. “This is the part where you tell me what matters is on the inside, and that inside of you there’s a little dyke just like me,” Corky says challengingly when Violet tries to talk her into bed. “No, she’s nothing like you. She’s a whole lot smarter than you are.” And it’s true. In fact, while Violet may initially seem like little more than an accessory for Caesar, she is in fact the smartest person in the whole movie, the one who seems to have the best grasp of the entirety of the situation even as it continues to shift and change and mutate. She herself is always shifting and changing, not only dressing differently when she’s with Corky as opposed to Caesar, but also speaking in a lower register. Of all the characters, she's the one most capable of adapting to new sets of circumstances.

The shifts and changes faced by Violet and Corky come in the form of a story that is incredibly well-plotted and executed by the writers/directors. They build up to the crime slowly, letting Violet simply prowl around Corky for a while before the plotting is set in motion. We see their plan unfold as they’re discussing it – they’ve thought out the steps, but left little room for the life’s little accidents, as they discover when the plan is actually set into motion and people start dying left and right. Violet and Caesar’s bathtub fills with bodies, police show up and are stalled just long enough to cover up the massive amount of blood on the floor, and then Caesar gives Corky ten chances to tell him where they money is hidden – with each missed opportunity resulting in Violet loosing a digit. This section of the film unfolds at a fast clip, but not so fast that you can’t keep up with it – it runs at an intensity to match the growing confusion and fear being experienced on-screen.

The portrayal of women, specifically queer women, in this film is unusual when you consider that it was written and directed by two men (although, perhaps not, since one of the brothers is transgendered). Not only does it center on two lesbians – neither one of whom ends up with a man in the end – but it centers on two “bad” girls. Bad girls and lesbians hardly ever get a happy ending in mainstream/male dominated cinema – in fact, both usually end up dead because they’re threatening in some way to the male psyche. But here, nearly all the men are killed and Corky and Violet are left together.

“You know what the difference between you and me, Violet?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”

And then they kiss and ride into the sunset in Corky’s red pick-up truck. Brilliant.