Mon, March 28, 2005

Something about the idea for Melinda and Melinda gave me hope. I went to see it feeling that it might be a throwback to the old Woody Allen – the good Woody Allen. I'm delighted to say that it delivers. It's impossible to compare its bifurcated narrative to anything else we've seen, but it's as entertaining as Mighty Aphrodite which – along with the spectacular Manhattan Murder Mystery – are the standout successes of Woody's recent slump, while simultaneously packing the emotional wallop of his more serious fare. As you're most likely aware, the film follows two separate stories from their shared beginning: an unexpected guest barging into a dinner party. One is a tragic story of romantic betrayal and frustration, while the other addresses the same themes in a comedic fashion, drawing on the familiar and charming Woody Allen bons mots. Using this device, he turns both movies that he would have made from this idea into one movie – both films are incisive, and both have moments of humor, but rather than trying to force the slapstick into the drama or wedge the pathos into the comedy, he splits them and everyone wins.

The dramatic side is headlined by Chloë Sevigny and Jonny Lee Miller as the married couple whose doorstep Melinda shows up on. Miller, as an actor struggling to find his career and himself, is so far outside his usual terrain that I didn't even recognize him. Sevigny is breathtaking, delivering with utmost nuance the quiet, refined dissatisfaction of a great musician who now serves as a piano tutor to rich children. I've been unimpressed by her previous work, but this portrayal shows that she just needed the right part – she gets everything across in one turn of her head. They're complimented by amazing performances from Brooke Smith, whom we last saw at the bottom of a well in The Silence of the Lambs, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who deserves all the crazy adulation he's been getting. (Remember how promising Will Smith seemed after Six Degrees of Separation? Ejiofor isn't signing onto any dopey movies about golf or robots.)

On the comic side, Melinda imposes upon the delicious Amanda Peet and the hyperactive Will Ferrell, as an independent film director and her out-of-work actor husband. They're joined occasionally by Steve Carell and Josh Brolin. Ferrell's comic style is familiar – which is good, you hire him to do what he does – but incorporates a newfound restraint. For one thing, he follows in the footsteps of Kenneth Branagh and Jason Biggs by imitating Woody's delivery. It doesn't happen all the time, but with certain pieces of dialogue, you can hear Woody talking through him. It's one of the things that's always frustrating about the ones Woody's not in – along with not having Woody on the screen. It made me wonder: does Woody ask them to do it, or does it happen on a subconscious level because we all do Woody Allen impressions, and he's right there on the set – it'd be automatic. Maybe the material is so permeated by his unique voice that there's just no other way to deliver it. Ferrell is excellent, though. Very funny without being hammy, and sweetly pathetic when he needs to be.

Bridging the two and shouldering the entire crux of the film is newcomer Radha Mitchell, whom the IMDb tells us isn't new at all (showing up in last year's Best Picture nominee Finding Neverland among others – including two movies I've actually seen!), but "Premiere" magazine says this is the year people will find out who she is, so I think the moniker applies. Mitchell takes on the daunting task of inhabiting the two distinct characters, and does a magnificent job of giving Melinda a particular identity that underlies both portrayals while keeping specific elements separated between the two. It's really unlike Gwyneth Paltrow's (also impressive) performance in Sliding Doors because Melinda isn't the same person on two paths, she's two embodiments of the same character. The only thing they share, besides the physical form and some key biographical details, is that they both dropped into a dinner party unannounced.

Mitchell, whose Aussie accent only pokes through on two or three occasions, is captivating to watch. Partly due to the rich complexities of her character, as written by Allen, but owing in large part to her own tour de force journey through two different women, each involved in a very tumultuous period. I was a huge Michelle Pfeiffer fan in my day, but watching Radha Mitchell I kept thinking, "This is what Michelle Pfeiffer could have been." Both are strikingly beautiful, but where Pfeiffer could seem wan and fragile, Mitchell reveals a darker, more powerful force beneath the surface. Melinda's been through divorce, betrayal, suicide attempts, and institutionalization – and Mitchell keeps all of that within arm's reach, even at an upscale dinner party. She careers from frantic mania to staid focus (within each character, and also between them) yet the performance never seems unbounded. Mitchell could never do romantic comedy in the Nora Ephron style, but she's right at home in the Woody Allen version, with all its mishaps and anxiety.

In the comedy, of course, she's supported ably by Will Ferrell. I've always said that you have to be very smart to make stupid humor funny, and this performance proves that Will Ferrell is as bright as he is hilarious. I think a part like this gives him some real flexibility to experiment as a comedian the way Eternal Sunshine really didn't for Jim Carrey. Whether Ferrell eventually intends to pursue a more dramatic career or not, after Melinda and Melinda he won't be perceived as just another goofy, pratfalling joker. He makes intelligent choices about his character: adrift professionally and romantically, and feeling completely ignored by the world, he steals scenes by underplaying the funniest material and often seems to mentally join a conversation after he's already been talking for a minute. Fans of Will Ferrell who also like Woody Allen (or vice versa) will not be disappointed.

For anyone wondering if Woody Allen can still deliver, Melinda and Melinda is highly recommended. It's built on a similar theme to Deconstructing Harry – pulling apart a writer who's a thinly veiled version of Woody, this time splitting him in two – but where Harry seemed narcissistic and meandering, Melinda is tighter and focuses primarily on the characters. Ultimately, the frame story (a conversation between two playwrights – Wallace Shawn writes comedies, Larry Pine, tragedies) feels distractingly "on the nose." The film is a fascinating experiment – you can't help carrying over the things you know about Melinda from one story to the other, even though she's plainly different people – and it probably wouldn't work without the opening conversation between Shawn and Pine, but it's a shame it doesn't depart from them for good once it's running on its own power. Perhaps Woody thought the structure needed ongoing justification, but for all the conclusions the film allows us to draw on our own, it seems out of place for the playwrights to be summing things up so starkly. It's odd that they can be the genesis for the whole story and still seem to distract from it, but that's how it plays out. Fortunately, they only pop in briefly, once or twice.

The film bears Woody Allen's unmistakable stamp – and perhaps that's what was lacking from misfires like Hollywood Ending and Small Time Crooks. Each of the stories in Melinda and Melinda is the type only Woody Allen would tell, told the way only he can. It's like cross-cutting between Bananas and Manhattan – or putting Annie Hall in a centrifuge. But there's warmth and promise in its familiarity: it's certainly not a rehash, it's just good to have Woody back.

***

Incidentally, as further proof in general that nobody has any idea what they're doing, three trailers they chose to stick on Melinda and Melinda were for The Interpreter, Millions, and Fever Pitch. (And this is at ArcLight, where they're ostensibly paying attention!) Not only do these films have nothing to do with the feature presentation, but they're definitely the worst three trailers going these days (and that's counting Guess Who) – with The Interpreter topping my list as the worst trailer of all time. I'll give a thousand dollars to anyone who can find me a scene from that movie that isn't excerpted in the trailer in some part. It's not that complicated a film to sell: absurdly hot U.N. interpreter overhears assassination plot, feds get involved, plot thickens. Why do we have to see Sean Penn and Catherine Keener fighting with the security guard at the U.N. metal detector over jurisdiction? (Why do we have to see Sean Penn in movies at all – but that's a question for a larger discussion.) Why do we have to see the bus explode three times? Why do we have to see multiple attempts on Nicole Kidman's life? Wouldn't some of these surprises be more effective in the movie if they were unspoiled? If I were to lose a bet, or fall down some stairs into a screening of The Interpreter, I feel like I'd be sitting there with a checklist of plot twists from the trailer, ticking them off as they unfold. That's not what a trailer should do. The ideal trailer for this film (let's assume for the moment that this has to be a movie – if it's going to be, then it should have a better trailer) would set up the assassination-plot-overhearing with the initial interview between Kidman and Penn. Then it would have the scenes with Sydney Pollack, showing that it's a big deal and giving Penn and Keener all sorts of authority. Then maybe you'd have the scene where Kidman shows up and Penn's all "Where were you? How can I protect you if I don't know where you are?" and the scene where he watches her sleep through a window across the street. It gets across the question about whether her character can be trusted. Then, all you need are quick cuts of the photograph, the bus explosion, the sirens and helicopters, and maybe the town car rear-ending her on the moped. That's it. That tells us there's excitement and intrigue (and photography!) but doesn't give us the precise context for any of it. That sets up a movie that someone might want to see. (Not me, but to each his own; some people sat through The Aviator.)

Millions is far better from a trailer construction standpoint, but still looks terrible. It's syrupy, twee UK-indie fluff – and every little thing about it bores me. The hallucinations, the kids' accents, the whole premise. The only thing I like is the cute logo which uses a crescent moon for the "O" in Millions. And I suppose I tend to chuckle at the schoolteacher who asks an assembly of grade-schoolers, "Who feels sorry for poor children?" and when all the hands go up, points to them and says, "Correct answer!" Ultimately, though, this is exactly the sort of film that no one should be making.

And, Fever Pitch. Aighhh! I can understand if you're one of those people who like any movie set against the backdrop of real-life sports. But still, this looks just terrible. I think Jimmy Fallon has proved by now that the only acting he should be doing outside of a sketch comedy environment is little two-minute walk-ons like in Band of Brothers. Nobody from Taxi should ever be in another movie ever. Even Queen Latifah has slunk back to her Beauty Shop base to rebuild again from scratch. (She gets preferential treatment from me, for being the brave soul to finally bring dipponomics to the public attention.) I understand why Fallon has to be in this movie: he's spent his career mentioning that he's a Red Sox fan been in a lot of SNL sketches as that irritating Boston Guy character. [What was I thinking? –ed.] But not a single laugh in the trailer comes from him. (Not that there are many laughs.) The whole thing looks ridiculously bad: way beneath the Farrelly brothers, way beneath Nick Hornby. Beneath even Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, if such a thing is possible. Yuck. (And who are these wax figure Barbie dolls that play Barrymore's friends? Those women seriously freak me out. They're more silicon and Botox than human! What happened to cute Farrelly chicks like Cameron Diaz, Eva Mendes, and Sarah Silverman?)

The only trailer that even came close to appropriate was for a small documentary called Mad Hot Ballroom about schoolchildren competing in ballroom dancing competitions. (Complete with the obligatory quote: "Spellbound meets Strictly Ballroom!") It looks passable, but that's not the point: it's an indie production that isn't gooey sweet, and that's what makes it an appropriate trailer for Melinda and Melinda – although less appropriate than another quirky, smart indie comedy would have been. Of course, Mad Hot Ballroom makes the misstep of that final screen with a few dozen film festival names, each bracketed by Cannes-style fronds. How did those become the international symbol for "film festival"? And when are people going to realize that being an "official selection" at most festivals is as complicated as filling out a form and shipping a print of your movie? It's time to stop using the Greater Miami Film Festival as your claim to fame.

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