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"Star Wars Episode |: The Phantom Menace"
Cineview
by Lisa Nesselson
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Deauville '99 kicks off season's new releases

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“Being John Malkovich”
won the Grand Prize at the 25th Deauville Festival of American Cinema, which ran September 3-12. Written by first-timer Charlie Kaufman and directed by music video maestro Spike Jonze, it’s the story of scruffy but gifted puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), who upon taking a job in a very strange Manhattan office discovers a hidden passageway that turns out to be a portal into the title character’s gray matter.

In what is just a fraction of the wacky yet presented-as-plausible narrative hijinks, Schwartz and his urban-to-the-bone co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener) charge the hoi polloi $200 a head to sample the inside of Malkovich’s head for 15 minutes. Personally, I would pay 10 times that for an ironclad guarantee that I will never have to be John Malkovich, however briefly. But you, dear reader, should pay the going rate to experience this movie, a metaphysical bungee jump that is laugh-out-loud funny yet pleasingly bittersweet. A splendid cast and crew examine the ins and outs of fame, jealousy, sexual longing and immortality via a bouncy, always surprising framework of visual and intellectual conceits that will leave you wondering what hit you — but in a nice way, like being clonked by a platinum brick you get to keep.

Although the aforementioned praise may glow in the dark, “Being John Malkovich” (due out Dec 8) wasn’t my favorite film in competition at Deauville this year. That distinction goes to the Jury Prize winner, “Twin Falls Idaho.” Identical twins, Mark (writer) and Michael (director and co-writer) Polish, now 28, star as perfectly groomed, bottomlessly sweet Siamese twins, Blake and Francis Falls. (By the way, if it comes up in conversation, the preferred term for two people who share tissue and/or organs is “conjoined twins.”) A haunting meditation on physical and emotional closeness that can be readily enjoyed for its more obvious story (you know how it is: some people share a circulatory system, some people are allergic to subtext), “Twin Falls Idaho” does a soft-shoe dance on your heartstrings.

One of the many virtues of “Twin Falls” is that it is one of the most polite movies about the repercussions of deformity ever made. Blake and Francis are shy and self-sufficient. They are gracious at the cellular level and their circumscribed world is rich with earned emotion. Which is why the MPAA ratings board’s behavior, as Mark related it to me, is all the more crass. The Motion Picture Association of America, under Jack Valenti, issues ratings — G, PG, PG-13, R and, in the 1990s, NC-17 — designed to help parents guide their youngsters’ moviegoing. Every film submitted (and accompanied by a hefty fee) is viewed by a panel of parents from different socio-economic backgrounds. Certain sexual situations and certain dirty words catapult a film from one level to the next. In one scene in “Twin Falls Idaho,” a fundamentally decent young woman kisses one of the twins. “The ratings board said that was a ménage à trois, so they’d have to give us an ‘R,’” Mark recalled. “These two guys were born connected — they’re literally attached at the hip, so it’s not like one of them can leave the room. But the MPAA said, ‘Two guys, one woman — that’s a ménage à trois and that’s perverse.’” (The film, doing quite nicely in American theaters as of this writing, was released unrated.)

As it happens, I had the opportunity to spend an hour in Deauville arguing one-on-one with Jack Valenti. I told him how grateful I was that my parents had taken me to X-rated movies in the late ’60s and early ’70s. And he said, “I’m sure your parents didn’t take you to X-rated movies.” (“Oh, you’re right, sir. Space aliens took me to see ‘The Trip’ and ‘The Pawnbroker’ and ‘Midnight Cowboy.’ I just thought they were my parents.”)

“Twin Falls Idaho” tied with writer-director Audrey Wells’ “Guinevere,” a valiant but slightly annoying attempt to portray the unconventional relationship between a smart but introverted 21-year-old girl (Sarah Polley) and a hard drinking fiftysomething photographer (Stephen Rea). Wells explores the student-mentor dynamic in thoughtful but not always convincing ways.
Readers who have nothing better to do than memorize my columns will recall my unfettered enthusiasm for a film from last year’s Deauville lineup: “Sue,” directed by Amos Kollek and starring Anna Thomson. (It’s still showing in Paris as “Sue perdue dans Manhattan” and I urge you to see it.) Kollek and Thomson were back this year with “Fiona” (due out Nov 24), the harsh and haunting story of a woman with a Ph.D. from the school of hard knocks. No matter how many movies you’ve seen, I guarantee there’s one development in this film you’ve never seen before. Jury president Regis Wargnier expressed his regret that there were too few prizes to allow such a magnificent piece of work to be recognized.

A propos of nice handiwork, in honor of the festival’s silver anniversary, the Hamilton Watch Company issued a special limited edition variation on its “Traveller” wristwatch, a slightly curved model with two dials that may be set separately to track two distinct time zones. The Polish twins found the “conjoined dials” a particularly fitting touch. As for me, I learned something from the instruction manual that I’d like to pass along as a public service. Cheap quartz watches, as anyone who’s ever sat next to a wrist bearing one at the movies knows, have a distinct, potentially maddening tick. Costlier quartz models run silently. As I own several watches, both quartz and non-quartz, I’ve never been much of a stickler for replacing batteries. But these lines gave me pause: “The energy from a battery stimulates the quartz material within the watch to oscillate at over 32,000 times per second. The number of oscillations are then calculated within the watch and translated into extremely accurate timekeeping. After 12-18 months, a drop in the voltage of the battery may bring the watch to a stop. When this occurs, it is recommended to change the battery at once to prevent damage to your watch.” If you’ve been remiss, better oscillate than never.
“In America,” says writer-director Eric Mendelsohn, “the suburbs are a joke for most people. I wanted to say, ‘No — there’s something interesting and important and human that goes on there.’” He succeeds beautifully with “Judy Berlin” (Babylon, USA, out in January), which takes place on Long Island during a total eclipse and provides terrific roles for a marvelous collection of actors of a certain age.

As my mother said when she sat me down to explain the facts of life: “Lisa, whenever you have sex with 251 men in the same day, make sure there are at least 251 condoms in the house.” “Sex: The Annabel Chong Story,” a documentary (due out Nov 24) about the Singapore-born, UK- and USC-educated young woman who in 1995 made history hosting the physical ministrations of 251 guys in 10 hours at “The World’s Biggest Gang Bang,” is educational (just how much do the participants in porn films earn for a hard day’s work?) and unsettling (who’s going to break the news to mom and dad that their smarter-than-average only child is getting A’s in her credit courses and triple X’s in her extracurricular pursuits?).

A delectably nasty satire of small-town beauty pageants with a perfect cast, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (Belles à mourir), the best film presented out of competition in Deauville, has way more to tell us about pursuing one’s dreams and fulfilling one’s destiny than all the Star Wars movies put together. Don’t miss it when it hits Paris screens next year. “Outside Providence,” co-written and directed by Michael Corrente, features one of the funniest wrong-person-reading-a-letter-out-loud scenes in film history.

Although Deauville champions independent and small-budget filmmaking, the festival also serves as a platform for big Hollywood releases, some due out here immediately, others still months off. John Travolta and Madeleine Stowe run into layers of interference when they try to get to the bottom of a bizarre murder on a military base in “The General’s Daughter” (Le Deshonneur d’Elisabeth Campbell, Sept 29). It’s worth the price of a bargain matinee for James Woods’ performance alone, although the film’s denouement is self-righteous and irritating. “Analyze This” (Mafia Blues, Sept 29) is a one-joke movie with an impressive performance from Billy Crystal and a mostly embarrassing one from Robert De Niro as, respectively, a mild-mannered psychiatrist and the mobster with a midlife crisis who drafts him for therapy. De Niro’s mob boss expects his reluctant doctor to be on call the same way his devoted thugs are. The result is the cinematic equivalent of fairly tasty Chinese food.
In “Jakob the Liar” (Jakob le menteur, Oct 20 ), set “somewhere in Poland in the winter of 1944,” an unassuming potato pancake vendor (Robin Williams) becomes the reluctant conduit for news that gives his fellow ghetto dwellers hope. “Jakob” is a tasteful, often touching comedy that taps into the mordant, self-deprecating humor that, demonstrably, flourished in almost unbearably painful circumstances. Hungarian-born French director Peter Kassovitz (father of “La Haine” helmer Mathieu) explained that he tried to make the bittersweet Holocaust comedy in France “for years, without success. My hat’s off to the Americans for agreeing to make a movie European financiers didn’t want to touch.”

An overflow crowd in Deauville's 1,500-seat auditorium gave Williams a lengthy standing ovation before and after the film. Fest co-founder Lionel Chouchan handed Williams the festival’s special 25th anniversary trophy — three golden beach umbrellas stuck upright into a Lucite base sprinkled with gold stars. (Trophies also went to composer Maurice Jarre on opening night and, in the course of the festival, honorees Al Pacino, Michael Caine and Ang Lee.) Alas, one of the umbrellas immediately snapped off, whereupon Williams did a series of improvisations with the loose component to general hilarity, concluding with, “Thank you for this lovely broken trophy.”
When Kirk Douglas received the fest’s literary award for the second volume of his memoirs, the actor — born Isur Danielovitch Demsky — emphasized that he’s spent much of this decade getting in touch with his Jewish roots. Asked if HIS religious background helped him play a Jew in a Polish ghetto, Williams coined the perfect blend of French fashion and American secular faith, announcing “My mother is a Christian Dior Scientist.”

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Uh-oh. I saw “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” a few weeks ago, but I didn’t write up my impressions immediately and, uh, I can’t remember a thing about it. Darn.
I suppose I could track down some of those diehard fans who camped out for weeks in front of American theaters. I mean, they’d probably be able to tell me something about the story. Or I guess I could watch a bootleg copy on the Internet or something, to refresh my memory. Some say “The Phantom Menace” is just the warm-up for Episodes 2 and 3, which will be really interesting and exciting. And others, as they consider the $4 billion worth of tangential merchandise Star Wars has foisted on willing fans over the past 22 years, might say the latest installment is just a really expensive toy commercial. But I think it’s more worrisome than that. I think George Lucas actually believes that he has something to say and that the newest trilogy is an inspiring, entertaining way to say it.

Inexplicably, Lucas’ original “Star Wars” was the touchstone of a generation in America and beyond, just as Luc Besson’s tepid “Le Grand Bleu” really did enthrall millions of French moviegoers who, like unusually resilient brain-damaged lemmings returning to the cliff, lined up for repeat doses of Bessonian platitudes. How can I put this? “The Phantom Menace” is really, truly not very good. Neither is it awful, but when a guy has that much time and that much money at his disposal, I’d prefer the result to elicit “Wow!” instead of “Eh.”
Wait a minute. A few scenes are coming back to me. Like the one where the taller Jedi knight (Liam Neeson; the shorter one is Ewan McGregor) asks the mother of Jedi-in-the-rough Anakin Skywalker: “Who is the father?” Mom (Swedish thesp Pernilla August) says, “There is no father. I carried him. I raised him. I can’t explain.” This scene seems to indicate that “somewhere in a galaxy far far away” (but not far enough), some women will still be really stupid when it comes to dating.
And what, I wonder, will film critics of the future call a “wooden” performance in eras yet to come when all the wood’s gone? Many questions are answered in “Episode I,” but not “Who does Jedi laundry?” and “If Yoda’s so smart, why did he teach himself English from a textbook on parsing sentences?” Anakin is called “Ani” (pronounced “Annie”), which paves the way for a musical: “Ani Get your Grudge.” It also paves the way for the kid wanting to change his name. (“All you’ve got left is ‘Darth Vader’? I’ll take it!”)
The introductory trailer for Lucasfilm’s THX Sound System — in which a computer-generated mooing cow in a cylinder struts its aural stuff — has more wit and narrative verve than “The Phantom Menace” in its entirety. (Oct 13)

Munk, Lemmy and Friends
How much do I love the stop-action animated adventures of Munk and Lemmy? The press screening for the latest set of seven short films from Lithuanian animators Maris Putnins, Nils Skapans and Peteris Trups was at 1 pm on the same day that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were giving an intimate press conference at 2 at the Ritz, and I was more excited about Munk and Lemmy. A depressed lizard loses his tail, a rodent gnaws on anything and everything in its path, Munk and Lemmy (two critters, one a bear and the other — well, I’m not sure exactly, but he’s awfully cute) find a novel use for the precious gems they discover in a cave. “Les nouvelles aventures de Munk, Lemmy et compagnie” add up to 45 minutes of delightfully silly, dialogue-free shenanigans for all ages. (Sept 15)

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Munk, Lemmy,and Friends