REVIEWS


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


Rampart REVIEWED BY HOWARD FEINSTEIN


In this neo-noir drama set in 1999 — about a cor- rupt and violent captain in the notorious Rampart division of the Los Angeles Police Department — Owen Moverman gives Woody Harrelson and sev- eral fine actors in supporting roles plenty of room


Damsels In Distress REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL


‘Jane Austen meets Judd Apatow’ is how Whit Still- man would like to think of his ensemble romantic comedy, which centres on a group of smart, high- performing girls who try to bring a touch of class to a male-dominated East Coast college. Now that would have been a fun film to watch (actually it was — it was called Clueless). As it is we get another Whit Stillman movie: droll and precious, erudite and talky, occasionally hilarious but more often annoyingly mannered in its deliberately stilted dia- logue, stiff TV-soap-style camerawork and editing, and frustratingly meandering script structure. For all its longueurs and mannerisms, however,


this affable film does have a broader audience appeal than recent Stillman outings, and it also has the ever-watchable Greta Gerwig, former queen of mumblecore but increasingly bankable in more commercial arthouse fare (and soon to be seen in Woody Allen’s The Bop Decameron), in a role that brings out her knack for deadpan comedy. Gerwig plays Violet, the unofficial leader of a


room-sharing trio of motivated femmes at Seven Oaks college — a small, not-quite-Ivy-League establishment for underperforming rich kids somewhere in the East Coast WASP belt. Also comprising posh and rather pompous Brit


Rose (Echikunwoke) and petite, undemanding Heather (MacLemore), the group soon adopts a fourth member, sexy, independently minded Lily (Tipton), who is the only one to stand up to Vio-


n 10 Screen International at the Toronto Film Festival September 12, 2011


in which to work. In fact the performers in Ram- part all seem particularly comfortable in their roles. Moverman revised the screenplay by the novel’s


author, James Ellroy, on the LAPD scandals of that time and decided to hone in on a single person rather than several of its members. It is question- able whether that will be enough to entice viewers to check out a rogue cop’s downward spiral, espe- cially in such a self-consciously disjointed film. Among the problems are that the characters’


US. 2010. 105mins Director Owen Moverman Production company Waypoint Entertainment, Lightstream Pictures, The Third Mind Pictures International sales Sierra-Affinity, www. sierra-affinity.com Producer Lawrence Inglee, Clark Peterson, Ben Foster, Ken Kao Executive producers Michael DeFranco, Lila Yacoub, Mark Gordon, Paul Currie, Garrett Kelleher Screenplay James Ellroy, Owen Moverman Cinematography Bobby Bukowski Editor Jay Rabinowitz Music Dickon Hinchliffe Main cast Woody Harrelson, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Ned Beatty, Ben Foster, Ice Cube, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon


lines are often overstated and they are always overshadowed by the ambience. The efforts are undermined by Moverman’s contrived, extremely busy approach. Too many self-conscious set-ups and jump cuts, lighting either overly dim or brashly bright, and an unrelentingly magnified soundtrack spoil the party. Egotistical cop Dave Brown (Harrelson) utters


politically incorrect comments, sticks up for him- self in front of district attorneys and senior police officials with monologues that combine preten- tious polysyllabic words with streetwise fast talk, and taunts, beats or kills possible offenders. But rather than bouncing off another strong presence, as Harrelson’s soldier did with Ben Foster in The Messenger, the method could prove too solipsistic for some. The jerky style (almost everything was shot


with a hand-held camera), which seemed much more relaxed in films such as Paul Greengrass’ United 93 and some of the Danish Dogme films, could prove a turn-off in domestic and foreign markets. What might offset these potential liabili- ties is the magnetism of Harrelson, who once again succeeds with a populist persona, but reveals here a rarer endearing tenderness and mel- ancholy that could help generate buzz. Sigourney Weaver sinks her teeth into the part


of an assistant DA, the only character who can match Brown’s wit and repartee, even if some of the detours on which the script sends her are far- fetched. Foster has a significant role as a homeless man who witnesses one of Brown’s killings. Ned Beatty irritates as a mentor to the younger man — his part and his dialogue are the most clichéd of all. Ice Cube is fine as an Internal Affairs investiga- tor, but the character is two-dimensional.


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


US. 2011. 99mins Director/screenplay Whit Stillman Production companies Westerly Films, Castle Rock Entertainment International distribution Sony Pictures Releasing, www. spe.sony.com Producers Whit Stillman, Martin Shafer, Liz Glotzer Cinematography Doug Emmett Editor Andrew Hafitz Production designer Elizabeth J Jones Music Mark Suozzo, Adam Schlesinger Main cast Greta Gerwig, Analeigh Tipton, Adam Brody, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie MacLemore, Hugo Becker, Ryan Metcalf, Billy Magnussen


let’s well-meant bossiness, and to question her wearing stream of beautifully expressed opinions about boyfriends (it’s always best, she pontificates, to choose one who is “frankly inferior”, like her paramour Frank) and other topics. The women help out in the college’s Suicide


Prevention Center, where they hand out dough- nuts to the depressed; they take classes on the lit- erature of perfumed decadence and hold their noses when frat boys walk by. Mostly, though, they talk a lot, in perfectly formed sentences.


What holds back Damsels In Distress from being


more than a droll curio is the way its mannerisms and intellectual jokes freeze out any real empathy with its characters. Accompanied by a muzak-style soundtrack


that is presumably meant to be ironic, and wrapped by a couple of musical numbers that are pleasant enough, this fitfully funny divertisse- ment is not so much Jane Austen meets Judd Apatow as a poor man’s Oscar Wilde meets a preppy, co-ed St Trinian’s.


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