January 21.2000 -
Just aaft.37
K i i ft
t
T he T alented M r . R ipley
A
lthough this film has been playing for sev
eral weeks now, the queer angle wasn’t
played up in advance, so some readers
may not be aware of its gay appeal.
Though Patricia Highsmith’s novel The
Talented Mr. Ripley had been filmed before (as
1960s great French import Purple Noon), the
clear homosexual responsiveness of its protago
nist wasn’t brought to the fore. There’s no mis
taking it in the current screen adaptation,
directed by Anthony Minghella (The English
Patient ) and starring Matt Damon as Tom Rip
ley, Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, and
Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood. Cate
Blanchett and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, supe
rior actors in this company, offer comic relief in
tiny, though pivotal, roles.
It’s the late 1950s, before widespread sexual
liberation and student rebellion. Tom Ripley is
asked by Dickie Greenleaf’s rich father to go to
Italy to retrieve his son, who’s squandering his
allowance and pursuing a hedonistic Ameri-
cans-abroad lifestyle with his girlfriend, Marge.
Brilliant but poor, Tom envies the wealth and
love Dickie takes for granted, and sees his
errand as an opportunity. He’s used to misrepre
senting himself to get in with the upper crust,
and he draws on these skills at every turn with
Dickie and Marge. But when he’s exposed, his
underlying jealousy and sexual repression turn
murderous.
A recent New Yorker review of the film sug
gested that Patricia Highsmith was “turned on
by same-sex relations and openly scornful of
female characters drab enough to love one
man.” This may explain the villainous nature
of Paltrow’s character; if Law’s Dickie is a
spoiled rich brat, her Marge is a spoiled rich
brat who’s also an unbearable busybody. It’s Mr.
Ripley, as the title suggests, who’s the hero of
this film, despite his crimes. Damon plays him
as a tense bundle of Freudian nerves; Tom’s
longing for Dickie is both sympathetic and
highly erotic.
Though the film is too shallow and Oscar-
grubbing to be anywhere near great— it’s shot
in that superficially grandiose style that signi
fies “art” to Academy voters— it is, aside from
its appealing sensuality, one of 1999’s more
artistically successful mainstream films. It’s cur
rently showing at various locations.
— Christopher M cQuain
j
Boys in the band in The Talented Mr. Ripley
Fruit salad
The current crop
of new films is as diverse
as the queer community
track is young and European without too much
of that cheesy My So Called Life sort of feeling.
Agnes and Elin are played by two amazingly
convincing young actresses, Rebecca Liljeberg
and Alexandra Dahlstrom; they both put on
heart-capturing performances with hardly any
other acting experience from which to pull.
Show Me Love, which plays Jan. 21 through
27 at Cinema 21 in Portland, is a simple, warm
viewing experience.
— Katy Davidson
A ll A bout M y M other
A
Spanish filmmaker who has directed 14
features since 1980, Pedro Almodovar has
attracted an avid international following
with his unique style. His candy-colored, flam
boyant films almost invariably feature beautiful
women and handsome men of all sexual per
suasions, and usually at least one dignified
transsexual heroine, tossed into a frothy (but
hardly shallow) confection of drama, sex,
camp, intrigue, suspense and comedy. Almodo
var brings to the screen a rather more literal
interpretation of la vida loca than the one
Ricky Martin has popularized.
S how M e L ove
E
ven if you’re a snooty moviegoer with a low
tolerance for underdeveloped plots, the
Swedish coming-of-age film Show Me Love
will touch you in some way.
This independent movie is the foreign
equivalent to The Incredibly True Adventure of
Two Girls in Love, but this story isn’t as thickly
layered as its American counterpart.
Instead of relying on plot to grab attention,
the director and screenwriter, Lukas Moodys-
son, develops his characters into highly realis
tic beings. One of these characters is Agnes, a
young dyke and pariah. She is known around
the school as the one you’re not supposed to sit
with at lunch; she’s the butt of many jokes.
She also happens to have a crush on El in,
who is upheld as one of the school’s favorite
personalities. We spend the first part of the
movie watching Agnes get dumped on and
El in get drunk, then we begin to notice a shift.
Though she pretends to be preoccupied with a
boy, Elin becomes interested in Agnes and does
the seemingly most obvious thing to let her
know: She ignores her.
Moodysson’s emphasis on realism lies in the
films minute details. His characters are dressed
m wannabe American garb, and the sound-
and is hit and killed by an oncoming car.
The rest of the film follows heartbro
ken Manuela from Madrid to Barcelona,
where the father Esteban never knew, a pre
operative transsexual named Lola, resides. Lola,
who has been working as a prostitute, is diffi
cult to track down, but Manuela’s search leads
her to a makeshift family of women, both bio
logical and preoperative: Lola’s ex-roommate
Agrado, another transsexual; Sister Rosa, a nun
who is carrying Lola’s most recent offspring;
and, most unexpectedly, Huma Rojo. The
actress is experiencing difficulties of her own
with her lover and co-star, Nina, a young
woman with a heroin habit. As her relation
ship with Nina deteriorates, Huma finds the
support of her new friends indispensable.
All About My Mother, now playing at KOIN
Cinemas in Portland, delivers humor, self-
discovery, female bonding and no small degree
of tenderness. The film is Almodovar’s tribute
to the maternal origin we all share; he dedi
cates it “to all women who have played actress
es. To all women who are mothers. To my
mother.”
— CM
An old fashioned idea
about future comfort.
Jerry Poirier takes an old fashioned
S weet and L owdow n
E
ven those who normally scorn Woody
Allen— either because of his ’90s tabloid
notoriety or his always-stuttering, neurotic
screen persona— may want to treat themselves
to his latest, Street and Lowdown.
The film stars Sean Penn as fictional 1930s
jazz guitarist Emmet Ray. Supposedly second
only to real-life jazz guitar great Django Rein
hardt, Ray is only good at playing his guitar.
Otherwise, he’s a womanizing, deceitful, egotis
tical kleptomaniac whose personal life is con
stantly in shambles. His most beautiful music,
however, comes only after his heart has been
broken by his true love, a mute but strong-
willed woman played by the endearing Sam an
tha Morton, whose performance has earned
comparisons to Charlie Chaplin.
Allen subtly, if somewhat self-servingly, rais
es the point that many great, publicly beloved
artists not only suffer for their work, they make
those around them suffer as well.
As in nearly all of Allen’s films, the photog
raphy is fluid and gorgeous, the writing and
performances fine, and an intellectual, post
modern sense of bemused detachment is com
bined easily with old-fashioned movie romanti
cism. Sweet and Lowdown, which opens Jan. 21
at the Broadway Metroplex in downtown Port
land, stands with the best of his work. — CM
approach to your future comfort
and peace of mind.
He cares more about your best
interest than making a sale.
Placing your needs and goals above
his own creates happy clients.
Happy clients mean more business for
Jerry — which makes him happy.
Simple, isn’t it?
Call Jerry today, and let him
make you happy.
T he B rian E pstein S tory
P
Girls who like girls in Show Me Love
In his latest, All About My Mother, Almodb-
var’s idiosyncratic vision has sharper dramatic
focus, but none of his trademark humor or
flamboyance is lost.
At the beginning of the film, Manuela
(Cecilia Roth) takes her son Esteban to a per
formance of A Streetcar Named Desire for his
17th birthday. Fascinated by the lead actress,
Huma Rojo (Maria Paredes), Esteban runs after
her taxi, aggressively seeking her autograph,
art of the Northwest Film Center’s Reel
Music Festival, this documentary recreates
the short life of the Beatles’ first manager,
who happened to be gay. The Brian Epstein
Story includes archival footage and audio tape,
interviews with former lovers, as well as an
extensive interview with Paul McCartney, who
talks openly about Epstein’s orientation.
As to the persistent rumors that Epstein had
a fling with John Lennon, Lennon himself is
heard on an audio tape addressing the issue:
“We didn’t have an affair...but I liked playing
a bit faggy— it was enjoyable.”
For all his wealth and success, Epstein
appears to have been quite miserable and lone
ly and, like most of his musical discoveries,
deeply involved in the drug scene of 1960s
mad, mod London.
Only recommended for die-hard Beatles
fans, it plays at 7 p.m. Jan. 29 at the Guild
Theatre in Portland.
—Ortana Green
■ C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portland-based
writer and tireless observer of pop culture.
Jerry Poirier
Sales Associate
( 503 ) 284-7755
pager 909-4964
e-mail jerrypoirier@aol.com
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