That Girl!
CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN
The essence of acting, to speak broadly, is dancing. The best actors are at root really great dancers. The reverse isn't always true — dancers can be good screen performers, though not necessarily Actors Studio level thespians. Fred Astaire and Marlon Brando both moved like dancers, becoming the essence of cool, and John Travolta is never better than when making a foray onto the dance floor.
My belief in this critical precept is why I believe that Lindsay Lohan will someday blossom into a great screen star. The daughter of an ex-Rockette, Lohan has been dancing since she was a toddler, and when steps into a routine she takes on a knowing, confident, sexy demeanor that would be outlawed in some countries. When dancing, she has the arrogant confidence of an Astaire or a Travolta. The trait usually proves to be inconsistent with the kinds of characters she usually plays.
It's the same in CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN. Lohan plays Mary Cep (the subtitles translate the name as "Stepe"), a rather theatrical girl who thinks that she deserves to be called Lola. Her now-single parent Karen (Glenne Headly), however, has uprooted the family from Manhattan to Dellwood, New Jersey. The reason for the move goes unexplained, and Mary-Lola has two younger twin sisters who figure zero in the proceedings.
Moving into a typically dull American neighborhood, Lola finds solace only in her love for rock singer-songwriter Stu Wolff (Adam Garcia) of the band Sidarthur. Her new best friend Ella (Alison Pill) shares her obsession (except that she likes the bass player). Meanwhile, Lola soon falls into a competition with another girl at school, Carla Santini (Megan Fox), nicknamed The Bad Santini, thanks to her "mean girls" ways. The thrust of the film dwells on their competition over attending the band's final concert and then a party afterwards, which Santini, it appears, can do easily because her father does legal work for the band.
All this should be familiar to followers of teen comedies. CONFESSIONS has the necessary ingredients you have come to expect from films starring a newfound singing teen icon whom everybody seems to have heard of but you.
First off, there is 1), the kooky yet normal heroine (played by Hilary Duff, Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, Kate Bosworth, or Lohan) who nevertheless has a secret talent that sets her apart from all the other girls.
There is also 2), the invariable trio of "mean girls," the social leaders who set the standard for conduct in the school and whose dominatrix perceives an instant threat from the heroine. In CONFESSIONS, the leader of the pack is the ravishing brunette Megan Fox, who looks about 10 years older than her peers, though the audio commentary track makes sure we know that she was the same age as Lohan at the time (17) — and that she was far from being a "mean girl" in real life. Fox has the kind of beauty you used to see in '70s giallos.
Then there is 3), the innocuous parental figure, often single, and usually played by a fading actor in the twilight of his or her career (Dan Aykroyd in CROSSROADS, Robert Carradine in THE LIZZIE MCGUIRE MOVIE, Gary Cole in WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!).
Next there is 4), a goofy teacher or other supervisory figure, here played by Carol Kane, an English teacher who also runs the theater department and has written a updated, musical version of PYGMALION (as if MY FAIR LADY didn't already exist). The idea of her character was preceded by Miss Ungermeyer in THE LIZZIE MCGUIRE MOVIE, and followed by Tina Fey in MEAN GIRLS.
Inevitably, there is 5), the quietly loving boy who needs to assert his affection for the girl. In CONFESSIONS this is Sam (Eli Marienthal). In TAD HAMILTON it was Topher Grace, and in THE LIZZIE MCGUIRE MOVIE it was Adam Lamberg. But this character usually has a great hurdle to conquer because the love of his life happens to have —
— 6), a fixation on a prominent star/actor around whom the heroine had built her life, squandered all her disposable income, and preserved her virginity. Needless to say, rarely is the star actually worth it, though only the love-sick puppy best friend, the heroine's pals, all the adults in the movie, and the audience watching the movie can see it.
In order to finally pair heroine and rock star there is 7), The Trip, which usually requires both caprice and scheming at the same time, and generally provides the thrust of the film's third quarter.
Lurking in the background is, 8) the Big Performance, wherein the heroine will prove to all that she truly is the star no one has given her credit for being. Generally it is preferred that this event take place on some kind of international stage, but the high school theater will serve just as well. In CONFESSIONS it is at the Dellwood High School, like the show at the end of JERSEY GIRL.
The final key component is, 7) the slightly plainer best friend, in this case Ella (Alison Pill). Her function is to be the surrogate for the girl in the audience, the one who is just a tad heavier, a bit more pimply, and in general not the earthshaking beauty that the star of the show happens to be.
If you've seen any of the recent teen films, CONFESSIONS is more of the same. And if you find these elements all too familiar, how do you think Lohan felt, especially when she went on to do MEAN GIRLS, which is virtually identical (though funnier) than CONFESSIONS?
But though CONFESSIONS manages to acquit itself reasonably well within the dictates of the singing star genre, especially one coming out of the Disney plant, the film is also something of an "incoherent text," at odds with itself almost throughout the whole scenario (credited to Gail Parent, and based on a teen novel by Dyan Sheldon). But also, by being an "unspectacular," routine, ordinary teen film, it actually allows better access into why Lohan is the best of all the teeners.
Here are some of the ways in which CONFESSIONS doesn't make sense.
The film can't make up its mind if Lola is to get Stu or Sam. Throughout most of the movie Sam is a simp whom you can barely remember from one sequence to the next. Later, Lola ends up at a party where triumphally for her Stu shows up to give Lola something, a Maguffin that allows Lola to prove to all the rest of the school that she did indeed attend Stu's party. Looking at each other, they then swirl off into a romantic dance. They also make vague promises to get together at some point in the near future. But then the film segues weirdly back to Sam, whom most of us, including the filmmakers, had forgotten about. Suddenly she is dancing with him, instead of Stu, and in a voiceover Lola tells us that in fact she does have "time for a boyfriend." It's as if the film had to back off from the idea of a rock start associating with a 17-year-old, and so tacks on a reassuring climax with Sam.
Another element that doesn't make sense is the final public "humiliation" of Santini at the final party. It's far from clear what's going on. Even Lohan in the "making of" alludes to the fact that it doesn't make a lot of sense. Just what is Santini being embarrassed over? What is about her that gets "exposed"?
And finally, there is a way in which the film is really Ella's story. She looks on Lola's hijinks and schemes at first in admiration and envy, and then in increasingly disillusionment and horror at the lengths Lola will go to fulfill her fantasies. Lola's procedures go against Ella's mainstream upper middleclass background and standards, yet at the same time there is a demon inside waiting to get out. The movie, however, being a star vehicle, puts all of its emphasis on Lohan.
Yet at the same time, the movie undermines Lola. She is presented as unambiguously pretentious and difficult, uncertain while compensating for it with outlandish costumes. Ella is the "normal" friend who exists to be the gauge of Lola's behavior. In large part the "template" was set back in 1964 with the excellent THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT, still the best of the girlfriend movies.
Lohan was the same age when she made this movie as Maria Sharapova when she won Wimbledon recently, and Will Hickman over at Knot Magazine, in an amusing homage to Vladimir Nabokov, shares his enthusiasm for the tennis star. Hickman is the only writer I've stumbled upon who has been brave enough to admit impure thoughts about sexy media girls under the legal age limit.
Certainly Lohan's blend of dancer's chutzpah (and vulgarity, if you have ever seen pictures of her in US or PEOPLE) and apple-cheeked innocence can be disconcerting to the parent who, unlikely as it may be, has accompanied a daughter to a screening or is watching the disc. Still, I think that Lohan will eventually overcome that disparity and "mature" into a great performer — of one kind or another.
These mixed or forbidden emotions come up yet again with Lohan's music video for the movie, also on the disc. I think it is actually a very good music vid, with a catchy tune and even some good acting from the voiceless judges who sit at the audition that serves as the premise for the video (plus a visual nod to her breakout in Disney's THE PARENT TRAP remake). In line with the kooky costumes Lola wears, Lohan dons a succession of sartorial splendors from a red evening gown to a hip-hop costume. Here you have the Lohanian essence, the dancer's body that moves sexily and the happily bashful face that can't seem to believe that all this happening. If nothing else, the video proves that Lohan is a natural.
Disney's DVD of CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN features a nice transfer (though it looked a little soft to me), with a widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced) with a full-frame alternative on a single-sided disc. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is adequate to the movie's needs. There weren't quite as many special features as I though the movie could bear (especially after viewing the electronic press kit earlier this year), but they include a commentary with director Sara Sugerman, scenarist Gail Parent, and producers Robert Shapiro and Jerry Leider. They point out that the band had to have a slight name change from the band in the book because there really is a band called Siddhartha. The chat is a love fest, though one of the producers has the annoying habit of taking the "educational" value of a yak track mock seriously, interrupting everyone to make them spell "diopter" and what have you. Also on hand is the six-minute making of featurette "Confessions from the Set," a deleted scene, in which Lola imagines staring with Stu in a musical on Broadway, and of course Lohan's music video of the movie's theme song, "That Girl." The film comes in a Disney kids' disc white keep-case, retails for $29.99, and hit the street Tuesday, July 20.
 |
Natal-Noir
PORT OF SHADOWS
If as I suggested a couple of weeks ago that film noir has its roots in RKO horror films, then it shares the same pot with the poetic realism of French films of the 1930s.
There is a murky fatalism to some French films of the time, and they even share the dark streets and long shadows (no Venetian blinds, though). Paradoxically, the two counties, American in the late '40s and France in the '20s and 1930s perhaps shared a similar shattering of ego after the war, conflicts that they both happened to win.
Whatever the roots, Marcel Carne's PORT OF SHADOWS is a quintessential example and should be in every noir aficionado's library.
PORT OF SHADOWS concerns a deserter who drifts into Le Havre, looking for a ship to take him to South America. Unfortunately, he impulsively takes up with a mysterious woman who is the nexus for a lot of sexual tensions and jealousies. They hit it off, but her secrets and his lead to tragedy.
PORT OF SHADOWS begins beautifully — a foggy road at night down which a lone truck rumbles, its lights hitting the solitary figure of a mysterious soldier. It's like something out of THUNDER ROAD. Like a true existentialist, the soldier (Jean Gabin) knows he is doomed, along with everyone else around him, but still makes a futile gesture toward love. His immediate inamorata, Nelly (Michelle Morgan) is a pure romantic, a fool for love in the Garbo mold, and that leads to some of the best kissing scenes you will ever see in a film.
 |
The Criterion Collection's disc of PORT OF SHADOWS is on the surface an attractive package, but is a little skimpy with extras and due to difficulties with the source materials isn't the greatest transfer in the world. It's a full frame transfer (with windowboxed credits) and for the most part captures the essentially luscious and misty black and white of the film, though there are occasional, unavoidable damage marks, such as water stains or scratches. The mono audio track is audible.
There is not much in the way of supplements — the trailer and a photo gallery on the disc itself — but the accompanying 32-page booklet has an excellent essay by writer Luc Sante and a healthy excerpt from Carne's autobiography (the reader is surprised to discover that Jean Renoir, the recipient of another Criterion packaging in a few weeks, denounced the film as politically suspect). The booklet also provides chapter titles, transfer information, and credits. PORT OF SHADOWS hit the street July 20, and retails for $29.95
NEXT TIME: DAWSON'S CREEK, some SPIDERMANs, THE SNAKE PIT, and more!
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
