By STEVE PERSALL AND PHILIP BOOTH
Published August 14, 2003
Intimations of odd realities
Northfork (PG-13) (103 min.) - Mix the ethereal fancy of Wings of Heaven with David Lynch's droll sense of Americana and the Coen brothers' visual style and you have Northfork, an impressively confounding film from Michael and Mark Polish. Days after a screening, the meaning of it all is still fuzzy. But it's a thrilling confusion, with much to admire, for moviegoers tired of assembly-line cinema.
Northfork is a Montana town in 1955, on its last legs, primed to be flooded in two days by the opening of a massive dam. Those who haven't left are on their way, but a few, like Father Harlan (Nick Nolte), caretaker of an abandoned orphanage, are still around. A few hardliners don't plan to leave, planning to float on religious faith - one has even built an ark for the occasion.
Those holdouts are called "evacs" by eight identically grim, brutally polite agents hired to evacuate them. One of these fedora-wearing movers is Walter O'Brien (James Woods), who's tormented by his own personal Northfork evacuation: His wife's coffin must be moved before it rests in a watery grave.
One household of "evacs" is notably weird: Flower Hercules (Daryl Hannah) is an androgynous sprite, an earth mother to the mute, cowboy-attired Cod (Ben Foster); Happy (Anthony Edwards), a scientist with magnifying lenses for all occasions; and a puckish Englishman named Cup of Tea (Robin Sachs) for his favorite offering to everyone. The drastic contrast between those carnival types and Northfork's more morose citizens is one of the film's missteps, tipping its hand a bit too soon.
Father Harlan reluctantly takes back a sick child named Irwin (Duel Farnes) from his adoptive parents on their way out of town, unable to take care of what they consider already damaged goods. "He's an angel," Father Harlan quietly insists. The rest of the film tries to prove that with deliberately paced deathbed fantasy and real life commandeering of divinity by businessmen. As these themes continually swirl in tighter patterns, reality seems ever stranger. Memories materialize in the background and fade, transitions between scenes become clues, and hallucinations - like a wooden giraffe without a neck - become real, or at least doted upon long enough to make them seem real.
Michael Polish has a wonderful eye for odd visuals, from Father Harlan's church with one wall missing (the better to enjoy God's mountain masterpieces) to the stark, ashen gray tones of the town. His script, co-written with twin brother Mark, veers wildly from melodramatic anguish to absurd, stone-faced comedy; this is surely the only film set in the Eisenhower era that quotes Diff'rent Strokes.
Northfork is an intriguing novelty, at times too ponderous or playful to establish any consistent tone. The pleasure is found in the details of this quaint, alternate universe where a child's imagination and the harsh realities of progress collide, where humans play god and angels fuss around like Harry Potter characters. Northfork is emotionally abstract to a fault, but it's full of fascinating whims. B+
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Nervy breakdowns
Respiro (PG-13) (91 min.) - Gorgeous Mediterranean locales and Valeria Golino's beauty are the only fully realized qualities of Emanuele Crialese's film, a drama that never digs into the causes, or the effects, for that matter, of the mental illness suffered by its central character. Golino plays Grazia, a mother of three and bored wife of a fisherman named Pietro (Vincenzo Amato). She may be manic-depressive, although nobody - especially Crialese - can quite identify it.
We observe Grazia acting a bit oddly, throwing dishes and taking shots of some unidentified nerve-calming drug, but she doesn't seem that disturbed. When Grazia releases dogs from the city pound, it's a response to her own pet's fate, not necessarily insanity. But everyone wants Grazia to be sent to a psychiatric hospital in Milan, an idea that seems more like railroading than it should for the movie to work.
Grazia's only supporter is her oldest son Pasquale (Francesco Casisa), who hides her in a cave to prevent her being hospitalized. After a few days, the villagers, including Pietro, think she has drowned. The crisis ends the way it began, with arbitrary drama and unpolished attempts to make viewers think it's possible.
Golina, however, has one of those marvelous European faces that makes subtitles easy to overlook. Perhaps she's a bit too sunny for the circumstances, but she's an actor capable of playing much darker material if it's provided. Crialese's screenplay is more successful with the daily lives of Grazia's children, tormented by bullies or, in the case of sister Marinella (Veronica D'Agostino), a budding romance. Those scenes of prankish behavior and naive concern are the best parts of Respiro, but not quite enough to recommend it.
Shown with English subtitles. C+
- S.P.
"Owning Mahowny' a sure bet
Owning Mahowny (R) (104 min.) - Based on a true story, Richard Kwietniowski's movie is a character study acted with consummate detachment by Philip Seymour Hoffman, right. Detachment, that is, from everyone around him, even the camera, as his character devotes all his attention to gambling and the desperate measures taken to finance it.
Dan Mahowny (Hoffman) is a Toronto bank vice president by day and a betting machine on nights and weekends when he sneaks away to Atlantic City or Las Vegas. A run of bad luck leaves him owing $10,300 to bookies. His first mistake is forging a loan to cover that debt. Then he can't stop. Before the end of the film, Dan has siphoned $10.2-million from the bank, the largest one-person bank theft in Canadian history. And he has blown it.
Hoffman's portrayal of Dan is deceptively bland, the same way the real embezzler must have been to pull off this vicious cycle as long as he did. His eyes rarely stray from the task at hand, whether it's another bogus bank document or another craps table. Owning Mahowny is reminiscent of Catch Me If You Can with its tale of obsessive theft and looming capture, but Hoffman isn't a charming rogue like Leonardo DiCaprio. In fact, Dan is a pathetic creature of bad habit, isolated by his vice from everyone at work and his girlfriend, Belinda (Minnie Driver), at home.
That isolation intrigues Victor Foss (John Hurt), an Atlantic City casino boss who loves taking Dan's bankroll, yet strangely admires his focus. Dan resists Victor's attempts to treat him like a high roller, declining Pointer Sisters show tickets, a prostitute and gourmet meals. Dan is so intent on gaming that he sees Victor simply as a well-dressed waiter, asking only for a plate of ribs, no sauce and a Coke, adding a question mark to the request as if he's asking too much. It's easy to see why Victor is fascinated.
Director Richard Kwietniowski paces his film slowly, allowing Dan's compulsion to evolve in the same way James Whale's Frankenstein deliberately traced the creation of a monster. The filmmaker's understated style shortchanges some of the plot's potentially tense moments when Dan's crimes are almost discovered. Maurice Chauvet's screenplay occasionally makes Dan's coverups and his surveillance by police so complex that the twists wash right by.
The cat-and-canary relationship between Dan and Victor makes up for those deficiencies. Each man inspires the other to react in ways completely at odds with his actual personality. Hoffman and Hurt revel in those contradictions, a sensible guy gone over the edge and a card shark pulling against the house. Owning Mahowny takes its time getting to where destiny is bound to take it, but those two actors make the trip worthwhile. B+
- S.P.
Plot thickens; interest doesn't
Lucia, Lucia (R) (110 min.) - The popular plot device - a hint that things may not be as they seem - is back again in Lucia, Lucia, the second feature from filmmaker Antonio Serrano, director of Mexican box office smash Sex, Shame and Tears. But the ploy isn't effective this time because the central mystery isn't very compelling and the denouement, when it finally comes, is a letdown.
At least warnings about the narrative trickery come often. "I make up stories and then I start believing what I've invented," Lucia (Cecilia Roth), an author of children's books, says in voiceover, as bouncy groove music hints at the quirky vibe of the comic drama. Later, after one patently bogus sequence, she begs of viewers, "Forgive me. That was over the top."
Lucia, an attractive 40-something woman with red hair (sometimes) and a passing resemblance to Diane Lane, reveals a penchant for self-deception shortly after her husband, Ramon (Jose Elias Moreno), disappears from the Mexico City airport. The two had planned a New Year's Eve celebration in Rio de Janeiro; he visits the men's room and fails to return.
Lucia's spouse, or so it would seem, has been kidnapped by a Maoist group with a murderous history, and the quaintly named Workers Pride issues a demand for 20-million pesos in exchange for Ramon's life. The plot thickens with a familiar twist: Ramon, seemingly an unambitious government bureaucrat, has a secret life and has embezzled 200-million pesos from the Treasury. And he may have been involved with the terrorist organization.
As Lucia tries to find her husband, she becomes involved with her neighbor, Felix (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa), a kindly, white-bearded widower with a secret past as a Spanish revolutionary. But she also falls for Adrian (Kuno Becker), a handsome young musician eager to help track Ramon.
Is Lucia's adventure the real thing, or purely a figment of her imagination, as might be suggested by the ever-changing decor of her tiny apartment? It's an intriguing concept, and Roth is worth watching. Too bad Serrano doesn't offer a less obvious, more subversive exploration. C+
