THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Paul Schrader's criminally overlooked adaptation of Ian McEwan's 1981 novel is breathtaking. 

Working from a screenplay by British master of dramaturgy Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, Schrader draws us into a tourist's eye vision of Venice via young lovers, played by Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson.

Our hopeful romantics are vacationing for their second visit to Venice to decide whether or not to up the ante on their seven-year relationship.

Mary (Richardson) has two children from a former marriage. She naturally seeks the stability that marrying Colin (Everett) could bring.

However, Colin is mercurial to a flaw. His classic British handsomeness makes Colin an object of desire to both men and women in Venice.

Enter Robert (Christopher Walken), an aristocratic ex-pat living with his BDSM abused wife Caroline (Helen Mirren).

Robert owns a local restaurant where he regales his new friends with intimate stories from his childhood as the son of a diplomat.

What transpires involves Robert's and Caroline's web that the couple weave to entrap Mary and Robert in a psychologically transformative act.

Although not a great choice for a date movie, "The Comfort Of Strangers" is a brilliantly crafted psychological thriller.

Natasha Richardson gives a stunning performance, as does Helen Mirren, Rupert Everett, and the incomparable Christopher Walken as a narcissist with a game-ending plan for destruction.

Ian McEwan thoroughly roasts the narcissistic corporate ideology of the rich to a burnt crisp.

Crackle.

Placing "The Comfort Of Strangers" alongside other Venice-set films (see "Death In Venice" and "Don't Look Now") won't do much for making you want to visit Venice.

Win some, lose some.

Straight masterpiece this movie.

Rated R. 107 mins.

 

BREAKING THE WAVES — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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It's impossible to know when you are watching film like "Breaking the Waves" that you are witnessing the high watermark of a filmmaker's career.

Made shortly after Lars von Trier (he added the "von" himself) co-authored with Thomas Vinterberg the strident "Dogme 95 Manifesto" for low-budget filmmaking, "Breaking the Waves" comes with a clarity of vision and social urgency that is an assault on the senses and the intellect. Von Trier leaves no stone unturned.

In her breakout performance Emily Watson plays Bess McNeill, a simple-minded Scottish, Calvinist churchgoer who marries Jan Nyman (Stellan Skarsgard), and oil rig worker who suffers a terrible accident that leaves him paralyzed. Bess McNeill's worldview is hampered by the religious indoctrination she has gone through.

Intimate conversations with God, in which Bess takes on both roles, provide insight into her sincere but ill-conceived thought process. Nonetheless, the love that Jan and Bess share is real as her imagination brings her to God. 

When Jan urges Bess to go out and have sex with other men and report back to him her carnal experiences, she takes Jan's wishes beyond the realm of common sense. In her mind Bess is helping cure Jan from his dire circumstance.

Cinematographer Robby Muller’s documentary shooting style favors intimate close-ups to reveal characters’ inner emotional lives. Muller captures Scotland’s rugged atmosphere as a supporting character to the Shakespearian tragedy on hand.

Although fiercely criticized for its shaky handheld camerawork, the technique gives the film an ungrounded sensibility of floating on roiling waves. Naturally, film and television industries coopted von Trier’s technique so much so that it doesn’t stand out at all.

The film's seven-acts are marked by colorful postcard chapter headings accompanied by songs such as Mott The Hopple's "All the Way From Memphis" for Chapter One — Bess Gets Married or Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" to announce Chapter Six.

Lars von Trier makes a clever attack on organized religion that resonates with Bunuel's famous line, "I'm an atheist, thank God." Emily Watson gives an angelic if earth-shattering performance that is transgressive, cathartic, and viscerally painful. Here is a film that makes you feel like you've read the novel, seen the movie, and lived the life of a protagonist more empathetic than any other. You just might need a stiff drink afterward but you will have witnessed one of the best films of all time. 

Rated R. 159 mins.

GOING PLACES

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Even the grandest of Bouffers are gonna have a hard time swallowing this 1974 nihilist sexual assault romp with Gérard Depardieu and Miou-Miou. An interesting but uncomfortable look at the French post-new wave sex revolution through the story of two sociopaths on a endless road trip to satisfying their desires.

For his second feature, Bertrand Blier based the film on his novel “Les Valseuses” (French slang for “the testicles”).

The swinging balls of the film’s provocative French title refers to 25-year-old Jean-Claude (Gerard Depardieu) and Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere), his 23-year-old partner in crime.

The two roustabouts are petty criminals on a constant bender of robbing women, stealing cars, and sexually assaulting women if not each other. Indeed, there is a scene in which Jean-Claude buggers his friend after breaking into an unoccupied beachside home because “it’s only natural.”

So it is that Bertrand Blier presents a transgressive outlaw mentality unchallenged by any would-be authority figures in France. Crime is merely a way of life.

Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou) serves as the film’s [hijacked] anti-protagonist after being taken against her will by our thugs du jour. Marie-Ange’s primary objective becomes achieving orgasms, much to the dismay of the sexually adventurous Jean-Claude and Pierrot who find themselves woefully unprepared for the task at hand, try as they must.

The two male characters represent an opposite but equal affront to capitalist ideologies. Neither man is intellectual enough to act with any informed nihilist or anarchist agenda, rather these are cartoonish hippies in search of immediate gratification without regard to social norms. They are punks before the Punk movement took hold, albeit with a more focused approach that found expression though music.

Jean-Claude and Pierrot seem to briefly relate on a humanist level when they help Jeanne Pirolle, a recently released prison convict played by Jeanne Moreau. Still, their financial generosity and sexual attention backfires when Jeanne sneaks off to fulfill her own fantasy of psychological and physical escape.     

Although inscrutable to any mainstream reading, “Going Places” succeeds due to the film’s refusal to provide easy answers for its characters’ irredeemable actions.

Here is an unapologetic, if infuriating, cinematic provocation that dares its audience to rationalize the orgiastic behavior on display. John Waters could do no better. Governments, politicians, soldiers, and police are busy committing far greater systematically generated crimes as you read these words.

Rated R. 117 mins.