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April 14, 2004

Game Plan

RIPLEY'S GAME
Last week I finally caught up with RIPLEY'S GAME, the controversial adaptation of the Patricia Highstreet novel, RIPLEY'S GAME began its life rather quietly as a "just another Ripley movie" before evolving into a cause célèbre when it was released straight to video rather than officially or fully to the screens. The full story is summarized by Nathan Lee's excellent appraisal of the film and its fate in the April 4 NEW YORK TIMES a few Sundays ago.

Highsmith is one of those mystery writers who for several decades quietly influences movies (much more than literature) before exploding into popularity for some reason. In Highsmith's case, it was Wim Wenders's adaptation of Ripley material in 1977. Highsmith had already provided the inspiration for Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, but she crossed the threshold from cult figure to international fame with Wender's THE AMERICAN FRIEND, based both on RIPLEY'S GAME and a little bit of RIPLEY UNDER GROUND. There are two other Ripley movies, PURPLE NOON, in which Alain Delon plays the character enacting the same identity-switching story that Matt Damon did, with more explicitly gay elements, in the 1999 remake THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. There is another Ripley movie on the way, WHITE ON WHITE, with Barry Pepper as Ripley.

When I first learned of RIPLEY'S GAME, my individual reaction to the thought of seeing another Ripley film was wearied hesitancy. But where did that state of mind come from? I'd read no reviews of the movie prior to just a few days ago. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Malkovich was playing Ripley. Or maybe that it was another European adaptation (even though Highsmith spent most of her life in Europe and became more continental than American), or maybe because it just seemed like old ground. Or maybe it was noting more specific than a general feeling that Ripley's career as a movie character had "passed." But this is craziness. These are just the kinds of crazy, unquantifiable issues that movie makers and movie publicists often have to contend with when a film doesn't have some kind of "high concept" hook to it.

But then, like everybody else, I read the NEW YORK TIMES article and got really excited. Fortunately, I'd had the foresight to request the movie from the distributor, probably by rote, so it was sitting on my desk. And as it turns out, everything they've been saying about the movie is true. It's funny and harrowing. It's a more accurate adaptation of the novel than Wenders's film. And Malkovich is great in it.

Ripley is an ur-Lector. Sophisticated and brutal, Ripley is evidence that the salutary effects of civilization are not necessarily civilizing. He blends a high level of knowledge about art (enough to be able to peddle forgeries) with a conscience-free sense of self-preservation. More so than even Lector, he has no "reason" for his brutality (Lector in one of the movies has issues with the "free range rude"). An American interloper, he's the energized anti-Puritan immigrating back to a European homeland to haunt it and torture it through its own pretensions.

RIPLEY'S GAME is also a nightmare vision of what can happen to bigmouths when they have a few glasses of Bordeaux in them. It begins like this. Tom Ripley is at a party given by a young couple down the road from his château. Ripley walks into the kitchen where the men have gathered to dish, and he hears his host say, "That's the trouble with Ripley. Too much money and no taste." The host, Jonathan Trevanny (Dougray Scott) swallows nervously over his snafu, and attempts to dig himself out. But with each declaration or explanation, Ripley, in a marvelously menacing scene, takes another few steps forward and asks, "Meaning?" Trevanny crumbles

As payback for this publicly humiliating slight, Ripley stumbles upon a perfect revenge. When an old gangster associate of his, Reeves (Ray Winstone), finds himself in a jam he calls on Ripley. He needs someone assassinated. Ripley won't do it himself, but he offers up Trevanny as a likely killer. That's because Trevanny is dying of leukemia, and thus more willing to take on such a gross task and leave some money for his family (this is a change from the book, wherein Ripley even more deviously starts instead just the rumor that Trevanny is dying of cancer). Trading murders, or having murders performed by an outside integer, was a trademark of Highsmith's.

The whole movie — which is copyrighted 2002 — is good, but Malkovich is especially good, very subtle yet commanding, as Ripley. Looking a little like the Tall Man in PHANTASM, Malkovich is both gloweringly menacing and serene. His Ripley is a man who knows thoroughly what he is. In a wonderful speech, Ripley tells a distraught Trevanny, whom he has just helped kill three men in a train car bathroom, " I am a creation. I am a gifted improviser. When I was young that troubled me. It no longer does. I don't worry about being caught because I don't believe that anyone is watching."

As in the books, Ripley has a beautiful wife who is in on his game. Trevanny's wife (played by the beautiful Lena Headey) is more along the lines of the scolding killjoy. Ripley seems to live by the rules of this game, but without sharing them with anyone else. But though he sees through and controls Trevanny with great dexterity. But Trevanny still manages to surprise Ripley. At a key moment, and in the grand old tradition of movies, he takes a bullet meant for the scam artist. So why does Trevanny throw himself before the bullet? Ripley wants to know the same thing. Ripley asks the dying Trevanny in true if cold wonderment, "Why did you do that?" I think the answer is found in the slight smile that graces Trevanny's face as life ebbs from him. It is because he finally caught onto the game, and won it. By sacrificing himself, something Ripley would never do, Trevanny trumps him.

If Ripley was, for Highsmith, a surrogate novelist, with his adeptness at mimicry, for absorbing the lives of others, and spinning narratives out of whole cloth, in the film Ripley becomes a metaphor for actors — good at improvising, no conscience, lovers of action. In the bathroom scene where Ripley tells Trevanny that he is a good improviser, he proves it a few seconds before saying that by turning away another patron of the stalls by saying, "I'm with immigration. Please wait outside" (in German).

Cavani, the film's 70-year-old director, has been working in what is as far as American viewers are concerned is obscurity: a lot of European television movies, and filmed operas. Her most famous film is, of course, THE NIGHT PORTER, another tale of someone manipulated and dominated by another, who in a way turns the tables at the end. RIPLEY'S GAME is subtly "artistic." There are no sweeping camera movements or swelling music as in, say, a Bertolucci movie, nor the enviably lush settings of some of the previous Ripley films. Instead, Cavani concentrates on how she positions her pawns (note the way, in the bathroom scene, how Malkovich moves around, when he is photographed in medium close-up even when he is only listening, and how he looks at Trevanny both directly and via his reflection in the mirror). Ripley is often photographed in doorframes. Doors hide his dire actions from the word, but they are also portals to his many secrets. They are transitional thresholds to Ripley's playing fields.

New Line's excellent transfer of RIPLEY'S GAME comes on a disc uncharacteristically free of supplementary material. The widescreen transfer (1.85:1), enhanced for widescreen televisions, is solid, with DD 5.1 and stereo surround, plus English, French, and Spanish subtitles, and closed captioning. Supplements consist of DVD credits along with the film's original trailer and trailers for LAWS OF ATTRACTION, DINNER RUSH, ABOUT SCHMIDT, and SECONDHAND LIARS. There are also some DVD-ROM options for those with PCs. The animated, musical menu offers 23-chapter scene selection. The disc comes in a keep case, retails for $26.95, and hit the streets April 30th, 2004

Dine and Die

EATING RAOUL
Someone I know once saw Mary Woronov in person. She was standing outside a Los Angeles theater where EATING RAOUL was playing, standing with the film's director, the lat Paul Bartel. Woronov, in case you don't know, is the one time Andy Warhol Factory hanger on turned drive-in movie actress turned memoirist and novelist. But all along she was really a painter, using her height and exotic good looks to essentially finance her art career. She is six feet tall and about five of it is leg, and she has a very dramatic, dynamic face.

Most of her movies have been for Corman as opposed to, say Jon Jost or Abel Ferrara, or some other truly independent or "cutting edge" type directors. She seems to have a sense of humor and she prefers comedies, or better yet, satires on pop culture genres (perhaps a throwback to her anti-pop culture days with Warhol?).

So given that comedic background it's a little disappointing that EATING RAOUL, the film she made with Bartel back in 1982 at the dawn of the Reagan era isn't funnier (someone should write an essay on the impact of the Reagan '80s on horror films and vice versa: THEY LIVE, POLTERGEIST, WARNING SIGN). On the other hand, it's progressive when it comes to sexual expression; but then on the third hand, that itself seems a little old hat by now.

In EATING RAOUL, Bartel and Woronov play Paul and Mary Bland (they were later to play them again in CHOPPING MALL). He is an aspiring restaurateur stuck in a liquor store. She is a nurse. Both are prim and proper people who sleep in separate beds, hate the licentious culture around them, and unfortunately life in an apartment building infected by swingers (imagine if Donnie Osmond had moved into the Starliner Towers from Cronenberg's THEY CAME FROM WITHIN).

Things don't go their way — they need to raise money to buy a perfect site for an eatery — and so naturally they turn to murder, putting up a sex ad and then killing their clients. A fly in the ointment of their plan is Raoul (Robert Beltran), a locksmith-thief who finagles his way into the Bland's schemes and Mary's bed. Will this stand?

As a survey of American sexual mores the film is, maybe, 20 years too late. As a satire on conservative social mores it is perhaps a tad obvious. As an endorsement of ribald sexual experimentation it is optimistic and liberal (to prepare for their ad campaign, the Blands visit a professional dominatrix named Doris [Susan Saiger] who gives them hints while trying to feed her toddler in her bland suburban kitchen).

It's a movie that is more or less preaching to the converted, but you wish it had done it with a little more wit (one guesses that the script was sitting around for a long time before it got made, and that Bartel was more or less locked into his out of date views). On the other hand, besides the always-brilliant Woronov, the film offers up a wealth of character actors, including DJ Don Steele, Ed Begley, Jr., Buck Henry, Hamilton Camp, and a few other surprises.

Columbia Tristar's bare bones disc of EATING RAOUL enjoys a fine transfer (1.85:1 enhanced) of the 20+ year old film, and DD stereo. There are French and English subtitles. The extras consist solely of three trailers, for BIG SHOT'S FUNERAL, DARK CRYSTAL, and MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. The static, silent menu offers 28-chapter scene selection. The disc comes in a keep-case and retails for $19.95, hitting the streets April 13th.

The Bride Wore Jaune

KILL BILL VOL. 1
The fourth film by Quentin Tarantino has reached the DVD bins and it is a provisional affair. It's a beautiful transfer (2.35:1, enhanced), with great sound (both DD 5.1 and DTS audio), but the supplements are modest, and you know that at some point a bigger, better disc will come along, perhaps with VOL. 2, or perhaps both films melded into one. Who knows? Still, it's good to have convenient access to the film just days before the second part opens across the land.

The principal extra on the disc is a "The Making of Kill Bill" (22:05), produced, the credits say, by Miramax Television. It is very much in the spirit of a making of meant to fill gaps in movie channel programming: lots of clips from the movie and the trailers; talking heads in front of movie posters, happy cross talk in which everyone praises everyone else. You expect more from a KILL BILL disc, but QT didn't make it himself so there you have it.

It's not completely valueless, however. Tarantino (and even Thurman) explains some of his influences, including LADY SNOWBLOOD, of which there is a short sequence, and details the genealogy of Hattori Hanzo. Tarantino explains to the viewer that for him the best directors are those who can handle action, and so, "The whole idea on KILL BILL was to test the limits of my talent."

Following that featurette is "The "5,6,7,8s Perform 'I Walk like Jayne Mansfield' and 'I'm Blue'" (5:51), which is non-anamorphic (i.e., not enhanced for widescreen TVs) footage of the trio performing two songs on the House of Blue Leaves set. The songs are fine, and they fit into the film well, but I think the viewer would also like a little more background on the band.

Finally, there's a Tarantino Trailer Gallery, including trailers for RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION, and JACKIE BROWN, plus the early teaser for VOL. 1 and the recent one for VOL. 2, and something called the "bootleg" trailer that I wasn't familiar with before: a lush, detailed, somewhat calmer summary of the movie.

The single-sided, dual-layered disc comes in both English and French, with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish subtitles. The animated, musical menu offers 19-chapter scene selection. It all comes in a keep-case, and the disc, which came out Tuesday, the 13th of April, 2004, retails for $29.99.

DVD QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From KILL BILL VOL. 1: "Sonny Chiba was to me right up there in the '70s with Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood as just one of the greatest action stars. Ever. And I'd been wanting to work with Sonny since I was a little kid. And Sonny Chiba, one of the coolest things that he did, amongst all these great movies, is he had a TV show, all right?, that I used to watch on the Japanese station in Los Angeles in the '80s. And the English title of the show was SHADOW WARRIORS, all right?, the Japanese title of the show was KAGE NO GUNDAN. And the way they do series in Japan are very different. They do a series for about, like, a year, a year and a half, and then when it's over with, it's over. But if it's a success it takes a year off, and they do another, like, bunch of episodes, and a year later, KAGE NO GUNDAN 2 appears, all right?, and I think they went all the way up to IV with KAGE NO GUNDAN, you know? And each time they did a new show he was a new Hanzo — Hattori Hanzo the first, then Hattori Hanzo the second, and it would always take place, like, three decades later. And so I just continued that philosophy when I wrote my Hattori Hanzo, so he's Hattori Hanzo the 100th in KILL BILL." -- Quentin Tarantino on one of the many influences on KILL BILL, 00:06:19 in the "making of" supplement.

NEXT TIME:Numerous STAR TREKS, ROSWELL, and more!

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