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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 2001)
FILM ............ ▼............ Sex scandal! Stoner mayhem! Boarding school girls! The Deep End excites; Kevin Smith aggravates; Lost and D elirious disappoints BY C hristopher M c Q uain T he Deep End, a new film by the writing/pro- ducing/directing team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel, is a dark, taut thriller that provides its thrills through carefully con structed atmosphere, perfect pacing and wonder fully unusual performances. It’s also exemplary of an authentic strain of progressiveness making its way into all genres of cinema. Its gay characters and gay-themed sub plot are not representative stick figures hut real people whose flaws and virtues have little to do with their sexual orientation. Tilda Swinton (the reputable English actress who starred in much of Derek Jarman’s great queer cinema, Sally Potters Orlando and Tim Roth’s The War Zone) stars as a housewife named Margaret Hall, who lives with her father- in-law and children on the California side of Lake Tahoe. Her Navy captain husband is almost always gone, leaving his family ensconced in an expensive-looking, chilly cot tage that has all the appeal of an Architectural Digest spread. Her eldest, Beau, is an almost-legal musical prodigy, Ivy League college applicant and grow ing worry. Margaret has had to rescue him from a drunken driving accident in which a suspi cious “friend” of his named Darby Reece, the significantly older owner of a gay nightclub, was the passenger. She suspects the two are more than friends and heads to Reno to confront Darby. That night, he shows up at their home and furtively meets with Beau in the boathouse, where his reptilian nature is revealed when he admits he was willing to accept money from Margaret to stay away from Beau, who’s con vinced Darby had real feelings for him. They fight, and Beau flees the scene. The next day, Margaret finds Darby’s body, impaled on an anchor, washed up on the beach. Margaret assumes Beau has killed the predatory man and hides the body. To make her had day worse, a blackmailer (the excellent Goran Visnjic) shows up with a videotape of Darby and Beau having sex. As Margaret struggles to keep up her soccer-mom household duties and come up with $50,000 to keep the tape from being made public, the blackmailer begins to seem more complex than he appears. All the sublimely noirish goings-on Without a travel agent, you’re on your own. ' build to a devastating, quietly acute climax, one of the most gratifying of any film I’ve seen this year. The Deep End has all the simultaneous sto icism and tingly, creeping dread of a classic film noir (it actually is based on the 1949 Max Ophuls film The Reckless Moment). It’s also gracefully, beautifully shot; the visual connota Is Kevin Smith (left, with Jason Mewes) tions in some scenes are so good, so revealing, a homophobe? Does it matter? it’s actually startling. Everything is exquisitely underplayed and nod to the army of comic book geeks who wor subtle. The performances, especially Swinton’s, ship the director for the same reason we film are rightfully austere and tight-lipped; as in a nerds worship Martin Scorsese; he’s a fellow David Mamet film, they’re crisply starched with geek who somehow made good. out being stuffy or sterile. To Smith’s credit, he makes some brave The Deep End might not actually he great attempts at self-parody and zestfully bites the cinema— there are too many minor missteps for hand that feeds him; Miramax, the distributor of that—but it’s an unequivocally good film. Com Jay and Silent Bob, is made tidy satirical work of. pare it to its immediate competition in the sus The endless cameos by notables such as Carrie pense-thriller and queer-indie suhgenres, Fisher, Chris Rock, Gus Van Sant, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are actually funny. though, and it might as well be Citizen Kane. But most of the film is as belabored as a pant ing dog, dismally struggling to be provocative, ike much media watchdogging, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s attack fresh, irreverent and snappy. It doesn’t work. Instead, we’re treated to Smith’s tired Gen X on filmmaker Kevin Smith for his latest attempt at cinema, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, cultural references and conflicted, barely dis guised adolescent sexual frustration. This means is an unwarranted bit of wolf-crying, giving the cultural product at its center far too much credit (not to men tion free publicity). The idea that this movie contains any thing significant or even tangi ble enough to be considered offensive will seem laughable to anyone who actually sits through it. Ostensibly the tale of how the two title characters make their way to Hollywood to pre vent a film based on characters based on them from being made, Jay and Silent Bob is little more than a running series of episodic sketches involving the From left, Lea Pool directs Jessica Pare, Piper Perabo and Mischa crude misadventures of the Barton in Lost and Delirious pothead losers, who in fact are most of the humor is at the Beam and Butt-head based on comic book characters created by Smith level, significantly less charming in execution (who plays Silent Bob). The characters have than the notorious animated pair. popped up briefly in other Smith movies— The film’s ballyhrxved “homophobia” is just Clerks as well as the surprisingly thoughtful and the cliched, clearly wrongheaded and cmel yet queer-positive Chasing Amy — apparently as a L Meet Someone Neat! I,MIYII TRAVEL 1026 NE Multnomah 503 288-5145 - Fri. 8:30 am - 5:30 pm Sat. 10 am - 3 pm___________ Mon. - C hristopher M c Q ua in is a Portland writer and Hmmaker. Zen Center 2539 SE Madison Portland, Oregon 97214 503-239-4846 Fax. 503-239-5217 E-mail: Staff@Dharma-Rain Org www Dharma-Rain.Org • • A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of see ing and raving about Set Me Free, a realist but pretty kitchen-sink picture involving a young French Canadian girl who falls in love with a movie, eventually finding salvation through filmmaking. It was the work of Lea Pool, herself a Quebec filmmaker. I hoped she could be added to my (far too short) list of venerable modem women filmmakers—Jane Campion, Mary Harron, Rose Troche— who, even with their quirks and imperfections taken into account, still can be counted on to bring us postfeminist/progres- sive/queer-positive films that are intriguing, complex and alive. How disappointing, then, that her latest, an English-language bit of sogginess called Lost and Delirious, is so thoroughly trite and corny, at times even to the point of degrading the actors and the audience. The plot— a naive small town girl arrives at boarding school, where she rooms with a secretly lesbian couple and becomes entangled in the joys, disappointments and ultimate tragedy of their love— isn’t a bad idea. The earless, greeting-card tone of Judith Thompson’s script, however, certainly is. Our heroine is meant to be a tragic martyr of homo phobia and enforced normalcy, but any emotions or ideas Thompson and Pool attempt to signify are so generic and/or silly as to be laughable. There are brief, fleeting glimpses of the visual poetry Pool proficiently displayed in Set Me Free, but Lost and Delirious is a misstep, a wasted opportunity. It only can be hoped it won’t jeopardize her future opportunities to further the craft she already has proven herself capable of. J D P & A m a; ß un (Plan JSiow forjlolid a y Travel Mexico •J lawaii South Tacific essentially meaningless paranoia of teen-age straight boys whose (presumably hetero) sexuali ty hasn’t yet matured into any semblance of confidence or security. There is also, of course, bathroom and genital humor aplenty, all done with a smugness suggesting Smith labors under the erroneous delusion that he’s a) original and b) really sticking it to the strait-laced P.C. Establishment with his pseudo-chauvinism and cocksucking jokes. All of which is fine when done right. It’s hard not to laugh at the crude breeziness of such dumb-duo comedies as Wayne’s World, Dick and even Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. This film’s downfall is its joylessness. Smith doesn’t seem to understand that mere vulgarity, however harsh, is undermined by actual serious ness. His film is self-conscious and self- impressed— a lame, fatuous, terminally disingen uous act of wannabe naughtiness. o f p o rtla n d , ine. n il A T E Q theraPeutic Private & sem i p riv a te lessons Small g ro u p m a t classes T e a c h e r training c e n te r 503/248-4483 • 852 SW 21st w w w b o d ie s in b a la n c e .c ity s e a rc h .c o m Dharma Rain Zen Center is a Soto Zen Temple for Lay practice, bringing people together to build community and wisdom through practice DRZC offers retreats, classes, intro ductory workshops, and sesshms The Zendo space is shared with groups in the Vipassana, Tibetan, & Zen traditions, creating a unique atmosphere and oppor tunities for learning about Budd hism and its daily application Kyogen and Gyokuko Carlson, resident teachers
