20


GAY SAN DIEGO


August 13-August 26, 2010


FILM


www.gay-sd.com


Not stellar, but Reubens saves ‘Wartime’ somewhat Rating Key


SCOTT MARKS


OUTING the MOVIES


“Life During Wartime”


Written and Directed by: Todd Solondz Starring: Allison Janney, Shirley Hender- son, Ciarán Hinds, Dylan Riley Snyder and Paul Reubens


Rating: One of the great personal


delights of cinema is finding a new director to hitch your hopes to. After seeing Todd Solondz’s “Welcome to the Dollhouse” I couldn’t wait to get home and call my cine-friends to boast about my latest “discovery.”


Paul Reubens and Shirley Henderson in “Life During Wartime.” (Courtesy IFC Films)


“Dollhouse” does have the stamp of an auteur, but it’s not Todd Solondz. As Dawn “Wie- nerdog” Wiener, then 13-year-old actress Heather Matarazzo put on a painfully immediate and truly re- markable show. It’s one of the fin- est child performances I’ve ever seen. Forget about Solondz; his viewfinder would be put to better use as a paperweight. Matarazzo is the boss of this “Dollhouse.” The director asked Matarazzo


to revive the role of Wienerdog in “Palindromes,” his follow-up to “Dollhouse,” but she wisely refused. (She must have read the script.) Unable to create the inner-


dialog he longed for, Solondz kills Dawn off with a pre-credit title card and proceeds to cast eight different actresses to play his lead. Lacking either the wit or visual complexity of contemporary teen angst masters Harmony Korine or Larry Clark, Solondz’s desperate stretch to add depth and texture through casting simply results in confusion. Was this Solondz’s way of paying tribute to Bunuel’s “That Obscure Object of Desire?” (In an interview, Solondz referenced the Darren-swapping of TV’s “Be- witched” as a prime inspiration.) The idea of grafting meaning


onto artifice through an offbeat gimmick must have appealed to Solondz. With “Life During Wartime,”


he fashions a sequel of sorts to “Happiness,” his 1998 indie darling about a trio of New Jersey sisters caught up in their own sexual and familial hells. This time around, Solondz tricks us by casting entirely different actors than those in the original. Joy (Shirley Henderson)


is still married to Allen, the character formerly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and now played by Michael Kenneth Williams. (How’s that for suspen- sion of disbelief?) Joy resembles a faded doll that has been set on a shelf too long. After a weepy, relatively comatose anniversary dinner, Allen explodes and begins to spew all sorts of ugly per- sonal backstory. The tirade is no doubt included to give the film a powerfully meaningful opening scene. Allen’s not the only one screaming at Joy. The ghost of her abusive ex (Paul Reubens, brilliant as always) keeps popping up to profane her. At another restaurant Trish (Allison Janney) is being wined and dined by Harvey (Michael Lerner), a man she’s falling in love with simply because he’s “normal.” Anyone would appear normal when compared to her ex-husband Bill (milquetoast Dylan Baker has been replaced by hardened Ciarán Hinds) who is soon to be released from prison on child molestation charges. On his bus ride home from jail, Bill’s character sets


FROM PAGE 6 SENSE


2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Walker’s decision has been appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and both sides have said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court regardless of the 9th Circuit’s decision. It’s hard to predict what the Supreme Court will do but it’s likely that it will be a 5-4 decision. The Court should up- hold Judge Walker’s decision and strike down all the laws banning same-sex couples from marrying


up a recurring series of hyp- nagogic flashbacks that gradu- ally build to a big reveal. This device became old hat soon after Sergio Leone reinvented it for “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Trish is so taken by Harvey’s decency that she can’t wait to tell her son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder) all about him. Unless she attends NAMBLA meetings in drag, no mother—particularly one whose ex-husband served time for pedophilia—is going to describe every lurid detail of how she became sexually aroused to a 12-year-old. Helen (Ally Sheedy) is the


only Jordan sister to have fled Jersey. Helen migrated to Holly- wood where she found lucrative work as a screenwriter, all the while maintaining a safe distance from her bitter mother (Renée Taylor). Perhaps Taylor’s scenes are best viewed on the small screen. Her unflattering close- ups are more fear-provoking than any horror film released this year.


As noble as Solondz’s at-


tempts to explore the boundaries of emotional amnesty may be, the guy has no idea how to tell a story on film. To the best of my knowledge, Solondz is the only director who uses long shots to punctuate close-ups, instead of the other way around. A good 30 percent of “Wartime” consists of static reverse angle close-ups of characters engaged in dinner conversation. It makes “My Dinner with Andre” look like a “Bourne” prequel.


across the U.S. Perhaps the Prop. 8 plaintiffs’ winning attorneys— David Boies and Ted Olson— who were on opposite sides in the Bush v. Gore case, and who have already convinced Judge Walker, a Reagan appointee, will be able to convince the conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court that these bans must end.


—Barbara J. Cox is the Clara


Shortridge Foltz Professor of Law at California Western School of Law in San Diego. She is a national author- ity on issues regarding sexual orienta- tion and the law, and women and the law. Professor Cox helped draft one of the earliest domestic partnership ordinances in the country. She chairs the board of directors of the national Freedom to Marry organization.


VISIONARY MASTERWORK A MUST SEE WORTH A LOOK GLAUCOMIC


POPCORN’S BETTER THAN THE MOVIE


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24