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Capital Reviewed by David D’Arcy


Costa-Gavras is back in familiar form with a bank board- room thriller in which French finance comes under threat from US invaders. The story is off the rack, but the plotters’ suits are well tailored. Inspired by the French novel by corporate insider


Stéphane Osmont, Capital will have a struggle to stand out from similar fare descended from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Interest in the US and UK for such themes in the French language — even with lots of English lines — will be limited, and Costa-Gavras’ ardent fans are ageing. And any financial melodrama risks being overtaken by real events of greater drama. Still, anything by the veteran director has a shelf life. Capital opens as sex, wealth and power collide. The CEO


Imogene Reviewed byTim Grierson


Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini have made a career focusing on loveable oddballs (American Splendor, The Extra Man), but their new film lacks the satiric sharpness and well-defined characters that are the hall- marks of the duo’s best work. Despite the presence of Kristen Wiig and Annette Bening, this look at a flailing writer and her down-and-out New Jersey family offers only sporadic, mild laughs, never kicking into a higher gear. No doubt Wiig will be a commercial asset in terms of sales


after her Bridesmaids breakthrough. But this low-key indie comedy does not aspire to the broad laughs of that film, sug- gesting this will be a modest theatrical performer more in line with Berman and Pulcini’s other films. Wiig plays Imogene, who since she was a child has


dreamed of leaving behind her lower-class New Jersey homelife. She now lives in Manhattan, but both her play- writing career and her hopes for love have come to nothing, and in a moment of desperation she stages a suicide attempt as a ploy to win back her ex-boyfriend. Instead, she is ordered by doctors to move back in with her white-trash sin- gle mother Zelda (Bening) so Mom can keep an eye on her. The film makes the case that Imogene’s unhappiness


stems from her fixation on being part of upper-crust society, which she considers culturally superior to her humble ori- gins. But as Imogene reunites with her mother, who is a walking fashion show of tacky outfits, she is meant to learn she needs to stop putting the snooty on a pedestal and instead embrace what is good about her upbringing. This is a worthy premise — indeed, Berman and Pulcini


have devoted a few films to the mocking of New York preten- sion — but Imogene’s crippling weakness is that Imogene is not a particularly funny or dynamic character. Wiig does what she can in the part, but Michelle Morgan’s screenplay rarely crackles, which leaves Wiig falling back on her comedic bag of tricks that worked well on Saturday Night Live but have started to feel overused. If Berman and Pulcini’s loving send-up of Jersey trashi-


ness is tepid, their treatment of Manhattan high society dishes out predictable clichés about snobby socialites and bitchy backstabbers that do not have the requisite meanness that would make the jabs sting. No matter where Imogene goes, she is surrounded by half-realised characters who are not much fun to be around. Even Darren Criss, playing an aspiring singer who rents a room from Zelda and starts to take an interest in Imogene, can only do so much, though his charisma enriches the experience.


n 10 Screen International at Toronto September 11, 2012


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


US. 2012. 103mins Directors Shari Springer Berman, RobertPulcini Production companies MavenPictures, AnonymousContent Picture, Ambush Entertainment, 10th Hole Productions,LLC, Gambit Films International sales VoltagePictures, www.voltagepictures.com Domestic sales United Talent Agency, www.unitedtalent.com ProducersCeline Rattray, Trudie Styler, Alix Madigan- Yorkin, Mark Amin Executive producers Kristen Wiig, Michelle Morgan, Miranda Bailey, Steve Golin, Matt Leutwyler, Dylan KNarang, Nadine DeBarros, Dan Frishwasser, Marra B Gad, AnneO’Shea,Pamela Hirsch Screenplay Michelle Morgan Cinematography Steve Yedlin Editor RobertPulcini Production designer Annie Spitz Music Rob Simonsen Main cast Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon, DarrenCriss, Christopher Fitzgerald, June Diane Raphael


of Phenix Bank collapses in agony on the golf course, with a terminal cancer. As colleagues gather like vultures, the dying man names a provisional successor, Marc Tourneuil (Elmaleh), a media-savvy tactician with a sneer that does not change through almost two hours of non-stop backstabbing. But Costa-Gavras has more in mind than a one-note char-


acter study. Phenix has been acquired by US investors, and Tourneuil’s challenge is to keep his bank, corrupt and nepo- tistic as it might be, from going the way of US institutions that fire employees en masse. Costa-Gavras is no stranger to conspiracy tales. This one


bobs and weaves with crisp editing to bring some visual movement to corporate meetings and follow the innumera- ble knives that the unsavoury ensemble of financiers stick into each other. Most of the characters are corporate slime stereotypes: Gabriel Byrne is a greedy cost-cutting investor, calling the shots from Miami in a boat filled with bikini-clad girls; Hippolyte Girardot is a weak executive scrambling to avoid the chopping block. The model Liya Kebede plays a runway siren who strings a willing Tourneuil along. Filmed by Eric Gautier with solid thriller production val-


ues, the boilerplate intrigue does experiment with storytell- ing. We see, for instance, the explosions of emotions that Tourneuil suppresses before he responds with composure. In a meeting of the bank’s employees, dozens of video streams of the participants cover the wall behind Tourneuil and his team in a vibrant effect. But Costa-Gavras bludgeons the audience with the mes-


sage that executives cannot be expected to preserve their values given the system in which they are working. Capital does not tell us much more than that, and a lot less than we can read in the newspaper.


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


Fr. 2012. 114mins DirectorCosta-Gavras Production companies KGProductions, France 2 Cinema International salesElle Driver, www.elledriver.fr Producers Michele Ray-Gavras Screenplay Jean-Claude Grumberg, Karim Boukercha,Costa-Gavras, based on a book by StéphaneOsmont Cinematography Eric Gautier Editors Yannick Kergoat, YorgosLamprinos Music Armand Amar Main cast Gabriel Byrne, GadElmaleh,Natacha Régnier,Céline Sallette, Liya Kebede, Hippolyte Girardot, Daniel Mesguich, BernardLeCoq


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