SAVAGE GRACE * * *
The big question this true story poses - and the film fails to answer - is whether we are the result of nature or of nurture.
Barbary Daly (Moore) was a Boston socialite who tried to make it in Hollywood, but failed. She also tried painting and, again, it didn't work. So she married the heir to the Bakelite fortune, Brooks Baekeland (Dillane), a pilot, adventurer and womaniser. He also tried to be a writer, but failed. Who said it was easy being fabulously wealthy?
Into their fantastically privileged world came their only son, Anthony (Redmayne plays the young adult version to perfection), and this is where the problem starts. Did his brash, pushy mother push him into homosexuality and schizophrenia, or was he born like that?
The film seems to be saying yes, she did push him over the "edge". But then it also tries to make a subtle drama out of what is essentially a very loud, plastic story. In one particularly embarrassing scene, Barbara confronts the pusillanimous Brooks with his latest girlfriend at the Mallorca airport and gives a public speech about his sexual preferences that is truly cringe-worthy.
But we are not told that the young woman Brooks takes over from his son is herself an heiress to one of Europe's great art publishing houses, nor do we ever really see Barbara taunting Tony about his homosexuality, as she did according to the book of the same title by Natalie Robins and Steven ML Aronson.
In fact, she was so desperate to convert him to heterosexuality that she tried to sway him in that direction with her own body. The great incest scene in the film, referred to as "the mother of all sex scenes" by some clever critic, is shocking enough, but without the taunts and pressure preceding it it doesn't quite work.
This is not enough to make a young man go mad and stab his mother to death. If you look at the drawings he was making by then you can see this is clearly a disturbed mind. The point is that even an esteemed poet such as Robert Graves thought that Tony was merely talented, not in need of some serious aid, help which had nothing to do with his sexual persuasion.
So the film in effect ends half way, leaving us with a postscript as to what happened to Tony, his father and his grandmother, whom he also stabbed, repeatedly.
In a way, one can sympathise with the makers of this film. It is clear that they were not going to be given the huge budget for a movie like The Aviator, which was also about the inherent decadence of excessive wealth. You can see this by a lack of production values - for example, no great period aircraft shots for a family that was constantly commuting between New York, Paris, Mallorca and London in the '60s and '70s.
You can even see it by the fact that there is quite a bit of Spanish investment in the film, perhaps a result of a denialist, Puritanical, homophobic US, but then the script lends itself towards being a story of gay victimhood rather than an indictment of capitalist excess.
Instead of an episodic tragedy playing itself out, we are given endless indoor scenes without emphasising the kind of claustrophobia Tony might have felt. The result is that a lot of what we should have seen is worked into the dialogue, which is often self-conscious and unnecessarily expositional. The acting is great, but instead of a brash cacophony, we are given chamber music. Wrong.
WELCOME TO THE STICKS * * * * *
French comedy is premised on the fact that while the world is collapsing around you, you carry on as if nothing is amiss. An atomic bomb might go off at any moment, but the right forms simply have to be filled in and signed - in triplicate, if you don't mind.
It is one of the many saving graces of French culture that they can send up their petit bourgeoisie with such blank-faced artistry. (Would that we had such a class that prides itself on its petty efficiency, thanks to good perks, rather than the resentful, corrupt and therefore obstructionist lot with which we're saddled.)
Come to think of it, even when things are going particularly well, the French still carry on as if nothing is right because they're too busy being French to notice. It takes a certain regardto carry that off, and the master of that, of course, was the late Jacques Tati.
Based very much on his style of film-making, Philippe (Merad) is a bald, unshaven postmaster who would like to get a transfer to the sunny south to cheer up his depressed (read: precious) wife, Julie (Zoe Felix). They have the typically cute, angelic child, unsurprisingly called Raphael. But life would just be so much better in a place like, say, the Riviera.
However, to qualify for that he would have to be disadvantaged in one way or another - does that sound familiar? - and so contrives to appear wheelchair-ridden. Naturally an inspector has to come round to make sure about this, but when he's persuaded that Philippe is indeed disabled and therefore qualifies, the man is so happy that he literally jumps for joy!
His punishment is to be posted out to the far north, to a grim little town called Bergues, which is permanently overcast and where the locals speak a strange concoction of French, a little like the Bavarians speak a broader German than the clipped, precise kind the Berliners speak.
Obviously the man's going to warm to these rough locals, who tell him that he'll only cry twice about that place: when he gets there and when he leaves. But the wife and child don't join him and, in order not to upset her, he has to tell her just how terrible the place is on his fortnightly visits home as he grows increasingly fond of those strange people, the Ch'tis.
The name comes from their odd way of pronouncing words, and it must have been quite a challenge for the subtitle translator, but it somehow works in what is, in effect, its second translation.
The biggest ever local hit in France and heading towards taking over from Titanic, the curious thing about Welcome to the Sticks is that when you look back at it, it's not so exceptionally funny or even heart-warming, but it's got a kind of pleasant familiarity about it, like a kind, somewhat odd uncle.
ZACH AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO * * * *
On the other end of the taste spectrum, we have Smith's latest film which, in many instances, is funnier than Welcome to the Sticks. It is also as predictable, since we know very well that true love is going to end up coming (the whole movie is a series of puns, intended or otherwise) first.
The titular two people live together as friends and work at a kind of Mugg & Bean in Nowheresville, but they're not making enough money. In fact, it's getting so bad that first the electricity is cut off, then the water.
That the attractive Miri (Banks) would never have met a handsome guy who carried her off into the suburbs is somewhat moot, even though we get a hint or two that she doesn't have much of an opinion about herself, which happens.
Zach (Rogen) would continue living with her because a) he's a somewhat overweight slacker and b) he's probably been in love with her for all the years that they've just been friends. That also happens.
Anyway, when all else fails on the financial front, Zach has the brainwave to make a porn movie so that they can roll in the money. "Other people have dignity," he reasons, "which we don't, which puts us in an advantageous position."
It's rather touching when she agrees and he goes down on his knees and says: "Will you have sex with me, on camera, for money?"
Film workers will also have a hoot when Zach and Miri hire an old storehouse in which to make their film and one of their porn "stars" asks whether everything will be all right. Zach confidently replies that "It's a movie. What could go wrong?"
The short answer is everything, which is part of this film's rather gross charm.
Eventually it has to be made in their place of employ, after hours, and one of the funniest scenes involves a drunk sports supporter, who barges in and doesn't seem to notice that a sex scene (anal, if you really want to know) is being performed and shot on the shop's counter.
Maybe this is what Smith means when he says, by way of Rogen, that "Porn has gone mainstream, like Coca-Cola." But it's not a question he takes any further, and so this is really just a romantic entertainment with a very different angle, which thankfully only takes the scatological to the extreme once.
The story is anchored by Craig Robinson as Delaney, their African-American co-worker and executive producer, but some might find his and Zach's opinion of their boss, Mr Surya, as a "sneaky Indian motherf***cker" a tad unpalatable, if not downright racist.
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