By Dan Cohen, Santa Monica Reporter
Back in July of 2006, the small Chicago based distributor, Music Box Films, released “Tell No One,” a French thriller based on a novel by an American, Harlen Corben. Much to everyone’s’ surprise, the movie, winner of several French “Cesars” raked in over 6 million US dollars, a big number for a foreign language film.
“Tell No One’s” pleasantly contrived plot line, seasoned with a sexy, Gallic flavor, found favor among adults searching for an alternative to the teen directed blockbusters that normally predominate in summer. While the relatively small gross meant nothing to major distributors, it was a huge windfall for Music Box. And its’ success proved once again, that if you offer adults smart entertainment, they’ll turn out.
The plucky small distributor, followed up with an interesting slate of foreign releases, including the sensational “Il Divo,” which I’ll discuss in a forthcoming article covering DVDS. But none of their titles burned with the viral intensity of “Tell No One.” Until now.
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the latest overseas pickup from Music Box, is rapidly becoming the must see art house thriller of the year. Running a little more than two and half hours, (with almost 30 minutes trimmed from its original length) the movie keeps your riveted with a complicated story line, perverse sex, and periodic spurts of grisly, but tasteful, blood letting. It’s more unlikely aspects are blunted by expert filmmaking, which tantalizes you with the sense that anything could happen to the off beat characters.
Immediately after serving a brief jail term, Mikael Blomqvist, a controversial journalist, is hired by the patriarch of a wealthy Swedish family to find out how and why his favorite niece disappeared forty years ago. As the journalist delves into the family tree, his work is secretly monitored by a voyeuristic, private investigator with a prison record herself. Spying on him through cyberspace, (hooked up to his computer) she keeps to a safe distance, until plot devices compel her to intervene. Once the two partner up, their very different inclinations, (the investigators’ penchant for violence, the writers’ compulsive curiosity), accelerate a dangerous journey.
Why anybody other than an idiosyncratic octogenarian would hire either of these characters, and what attracts them to each other, are questions the movie never takes up. Since I haven’t read it, I can’t tell you if these issues are addressed in Stieg Larssons’ lengthy novel, on which the deft screenplay is based. But it matters little to the movie, as its confident filmmaking quickly disarms your rational faculties, especially when things get nasty. Given that at its heart, “Dragon Tattoo” never aspires to more than adult fun, there isn’t much to complain.
And good fun it is, especially when Lisbeth, a spiky haired lesbian with a nearly wordless demeanor, takes eye popping revenge on a predatory male, or goes ballistic on one of the several bad guys who threaten her partner Mikael. This time out the male is clearly the more genteel of the two. And the movie is all the better for that.
Lisbeth, who never leaves home in less than head to toe, skin tight leather, is the latest in a series of darker than dark heroines who appeal to that part of our psyche that flirts with sado-masochism. On this side of the Atlantic this archetype is best personified by Angela Jolie, whose contemptuous sneers and snarls are the high points of over the top fantasies, like “Wanted” and “Lara Croft.” Jolie is our tepid contribution to a tradition that was better served by a number of others, including the divinely talented Diana Rigg, who, with tongue firmly planted in cheek and body stuffed into leather jump suits, delivered karate chops to evil doers in the slyly comic, mid sixties TV series, “The Avengers.” Oh, for the good old days.
Noomi Rapace, a thirtyish veteran of TV, playing the dragon girl with a face as frozen as the Swedish winter, makes Jolie’s half hearted sadists look like lawyers bar hopping on Friday nights. Her expressions are so tortured that when she strips down to show her dragon tattoo and protruding rib cage, you worry that sex, for her, might be a prelude to ritual slaying. Have no fear; two sequels featuring the same unlikely duo are already in the can.
“Tell No Evil,” and “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” have been secured for American remakes. But in order for them to work as popular movies both will have to be completely rethought, as the better part of their charm is bound up with their European settings and attendant attitudes. My hope is the rights holders will get distracted by subjects closer to home and leave well enough alone. One more interesting note; “Dragon’s” original Swedish title is “Men who Hate Women,” a line that is amply illustrated in the story.
“Un Prophet,” along with “The White Ribbon,” were the odds on favorites for last years foreign language Oscar. As it turned out, neither won. “Ribbon,” an earnest work by a director of the highest order, was probably too dense and demanding. “The Story in Their Eyes,” from Argentina, took home the statue. More on that one later.
“Un Prophet,” an ambitious chronicle of a young immigrant’s evolution from petty criminal to major criminal has a relentless energy not to be denied. Its ugliness is relieved by meticulous detail along with a script that refuses to fall back on sentimentality.
I believe it was Sartre who commented that the humanity of a society could be measured by the way it treated its prisoners. If that really is the case, and there’s any truth to “Un Prophet,” French prisons do not speak very well for the society that maintains them.
Bullied by the two main gangs that dominate life inside a middle level correction facility, a young Arab is ordered to murder a fellow inmate suspected of informing. But the order is just the beginning of his odyssey.
Although Malik’s sole interest is serving the six year sentence he considers unjust, and to some extent, the bi product of his illiteracy, he becomes easy prey for the designs of a ruthless Corsican Mafioso, who controls a large contingency of the prison population.
After the rude, disorienting shocks that establish the setting, the movie focuses on the process by which Malik ingratiates himself to the powers that be. In truth, he has little choice. Eventually he learns the skills that will serve him both within and without the prison. Along the way he sees the inevitable ebb and flow that binds him and his fellows to a cycle of crime that may be their only entrée to middle class life.
Most of director Jacques Audiard’s well observed drama takes place within prison walls, although vivid fantasies and a number of pivotal sequences liberate the camera and his protagonist from the claustrophobic settings of the films first half. The initial thirty minutes or so, which build to one of the most terrifying sequences in recent memory, are hardly relieved by what comes after, but they do set the stage for an evolution of sorts, even if it does show the human impulse to bond as more of a liability than an asset.
“Un Prophet” has been compared to “The Godfather,” but it doesn’t have nearly the scope of Coppola’s classic. For one thing, there’s almost no place for a female voice. Interestingly, Audiard, writer and director of the remarkable “Read My Lips,” from 2001, has shown an uncanny ability to weave a unique male/female dynamic into the fabric of a suspense thriller. Let me digress on that one for a minute.
“Lips,” begins as a drama about the tentative relationship between a cloistered and deaf office worker and a low level convict, then gracefully evolves into a nail biting caper flick. Carla, a plain office worker generally reviled by her co workers, is handed the unenviable task of finding a place for the sadly disheveled Paul, who, as the movie begins, spends his nights in broom closets. Their slow process of bonding eventually yields an ideal team for an imaginative, hair raising robbery. The characters are not so much acted as inhabited by brilliant actors; Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassell. Get the DVD!
I don’t mean to minimize the strengths of “Un Prophet,” because it moves toward a breath taking set piece that fully exploits the wealth of details accumulated early on. But it doesn’t have the positive libido of Audiard’s earlier work, where so much more is at stake.
The screen writer of several other French thrillers, Aduiard knows the genre and the people. “Un Prophet” is a work of grit and integrity. But its isolated character leaves us cold.
Both “Un Prophet” and “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” are screening in Philadelphia. Both run a solid two and a half hours, and are more than worth the trip…especially considering the studio drivel currently filling local screens.
Really enjoyed both of these foreign films as well. Should be interesting to see what comes of the American remake, supposedly to be helmed by David Fincher. Now the must-see film is The Secret in Their Eyes. Expectations are high for having beat out The White Ribbon AND A Prophet.
“U Texas Austin has one of the most prestigious film schools in the country. There, studying radio/tv/film, you’d learn both production and screenwriting. No, it’s not screenwriting on its own as a major, but I can not emphasize to you how well regarded this program is in the film and tv industries. You could not go wrong by going there. And it’s a public uni – you’d get the lower, in-state tuition! What a steal!”