27 EZ
LEAVING
Crazy in love, or just crazy?
BY MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN
Is this woman nuts? That’s the question you’ll be asking
yourself aboutKristin ScottThomas’s char- acter in “Leaving,” a sexy if frustrating French divorce drama from prolific film- maker Catherine Corsini. It doesn’t take long for the issue of her
sanity to come up. The movie opens with Scott Thomas’s Suzanne getting out of bed one night as her husband, Samuel (Yvan Attal), snores beside her. She walks down the hall, and a few seconds later, as Corsini’s camera jumps to an exterior shot of the house, we hear a gun being fired. Who’s done what to whom, and why, is
left up in the air. The movie then flashes back to six months earlier, by way of explanation. It helps, but not much. We meet Suzanne, a physical therapist,
and Samuel, a doctor at the local hospital, amid renovation work on the garage be-
LAURENT CHAMPOUSSIN/IFC FILMS
Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a married woman who has a torrid affair with Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a handyman hired to work on her house, in “Leaving.”
hind their house, which Suzanne is turning into a home office. She seems open, warm and grounded. As for her husband, he’s a bit snippy and curt with the contractor doing the work (Bernard Blancan). But maybe it’s the stress of the job. They also have two cute teenage kids (Alexandre Vidal and Daisy Broom). Then along comes Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a
soulful Spanish handyman hired to work on the renovation. After he’s injured in an accident thatSuzannefeels responsible for, the two begin a torrid affair. And when I say torrid, I mean is-it-hot-in-here-or-
what? Corsini’s flair for filming their fre- quent sensuous encounters raises the tem- perature in the theater about 15 degrees. Dress accordingly. In short order, Suzanne goes completely
gaga for Ivan, leaving Samuel and the kids so she can shack up with her new boy- friend. It’s a little crazy. Sure, Ivan’s a great lover. (Trust me. Corsini will convince you of that, if nothing else.) But what exactly does she know about him, other than that he’s an ex-con — nothing major, he reas- sures her — and that he’s mad about the daughter (Berta Esquirol) he’s had with
another woman? The French have a name for it (of course
they do):amourfou,whichmeans, literally, madlove. “You’re crazy,” Ivantells Suzanne. Meanwhile, Samuel is getting worked
up, going so far as to cut Suzanne off financially and to have Ivan blacklisted from area contracting
jobs.Not because he wants revenge, mind you, but because — get this — he wants to take her back, as if nothing ever happened. It isn’t pretty. At this point, you’re thinking: And she’s the crazy one? Yeah, Samuel is a little cuckoo, too. The film is speeding, full steam ahead,
toward that opening bang. It comes, butwhenit does, it leavesmore
questions unanswered than it resolves. If “Leaving” is a story of a broken marriage, what, exactly, went wrong? And if it’s a story about lust and its power over logic, why do Suzanne and Ivan keep talking about love, love, love as if they’re reunited high school sweethearts? The two have wild sex every chance they get, but there’s no evidence — at least not on film — that they know anything about each other. It’s crazy, right?
osullivanm@washpost.com r½
Unrated. AtWest End Cinema. Contains a lot of sex and nudity, and some obscenity and violence. In French and a few words of Catalan with English subtitles. 90 minutes.
tron from 23
the sound” — and addressing everyone as “man.” The best way to fight, he says, is to “do nothing, be still.” All that’s missing is a white Russian in his hand. Quorra, as it turns out, isn’t exactly
Flynn’s girlfriend, but his protege. For one thing, she isn’t actually a girl, but an “isomorphic algorithm.” (Don’t ask. You take it on faith, like warp drive.) Into this cozy domestic situation comes
Flynn’s son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund). Like his father, Sam is a geek. After getting a telephone page—how last century!—that seems to have originated from the elder Flynn’s old office,Sammanages, with a few keystrokes, to get sucked into the same virtual world that his long-lost father and Quorra live in. Sam awakens in his father a yearning for the
outside.Now it’s up to the three of them to get there. Let the games begin. Much of “Tron: Legacy” involves heart- pounding if protracted sequences of video game action as Quorra and the Flynns make their way toward the exit. (If you have the Light Bike app on your iPhone — orhave seen the original “Tron”—you’llget the picture.) There’s a lot of smashing, crashing and flashing lights as evil human- oid “programs” pursue our heroes and are summarily “de-rezzed,” a word derived from de-resolution, which is what happens when bad computer programs go boom. At times, the soundtrack is so loud that you feel it more than hear it. Kind of cool, if you like that sort of thing. Another cool thing? Bridges gets to play
not one but two parts in the film. Using digital technology, the actor appears both as he looks today and as his younger, “Tron”-era self, a digital doppelganger of
Flynn called Clu (for “Codified Likeness Utility”) that Flynn originally created to run the digital universe he designed. Clu is the hero’s evil twin, a CEO run amok. It’s a pretty neat effect. British actor Michael Sheen also shines
as one of Clu’s mid-level managers, an evil imp with a cane and a mane of white hair. He runs some sort of nightmarish night- club, where the members of the electropop duo Daft Punk are house DJs. They also scored the film, which explains why, much of it sounds like a rave. This brings us to a fundamental contra-
diction at the heart of “Tron: Legacy” (or, for that matter, “Tron”). Sonically, visually and conceptually, it’s a richly imagined world. So richly imagined, in fact, that it’s easy to see why gamers would fall in love with the idea of it. It fulfills the ultimate escapist fantasy of the user entering what can otherwise only be experienced from the outside, with a game controller. But if that noisy, adrenaline-addled uni-
verse is so wonderful,why are Quorra,Sam and his father so all fired up to get out of it and back to a world of long walks on the beach and quiet conversation? Written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, and directed by Joseph Kosinski, the movie argues that doing nothing and being still are better than the frenetic activity of the game grid. But can the movie have it both ways? When you finally stumble back into the
relative peace and quiet of the lobby, it’ll hit you. “Tron:Legacy”may be nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
osullivanm@washpost.com
rr
PG. At area theaters. Contains computer-game violence. 126 minutes.
fighter from 23
Lowell’s own scrappy, post-industrial mi- lieu. The atmospherics are flawless:When the sweating, strung-out Dicky is sparring andcrackingwisewithhis addict friends in a seedy apartment, Russell films it with such vividness, you canalmost feel the heat outside. As manic as Dicky is, Micky is just as
quiet and self-effacing. Although Bale gets the juiciest scenes,Wahlbergmakes just as big an impact with fewer jacked-up flour- ishes — like when he takes Charlene to “Belle Epoque” (which he pronounces “epicue”) and,whena fellowtheater patron mentions that the cinematography is sup- posed to be beautiful, he responds with a shy, “Oh, cool.” Zing are sure to go the strings of viewers’
hearts at that moment. And luckily, the filmmakers treatour emotional investment with respect and unexpected tenderness. As pathologically dysfunctional as the Ek- lund-Ward clan is—thanks in large part to Alice’s toxic mix of denial and ferocious protectiveness — Russell chooses not to demonize the tribe. Instead, “The Fighter” becomes a tough, bare-knuckled, compas- sionate meditation on every family’s rope- a-dope between tribal bonds and self-defi-
nition.Both, it turns out, areworthgoing to themat for.
hornadaya@washpost.com rrr½
R. At area theaters. Contains profanity, drug content, violence and sexuality. 114minutes.
speech from 22
sliver of humanity to which they can com- pletely relate. While Firth is working that barely per-
ceptible magic, Rush and Bonham Carter get to tuck themselves into the cheekiest, most lighthearted scenes in “The King’s Speech,” which toggles between the royals’ elegant court life and Logue’s sparse, ar- restingly distressed studio. When Eliza- beth (who came to be known as the Queen Mother) first engages Logue to work with her husband, she’s mysterious about his identity, saying only that his job requires public speaking. When Logue suggests he change jobs, she demurs. “What is he, an indentured servant?”hequips.“Something like that,” she replies dryly.
Such are the bubbles of badinage that
keep “The King’s Speech” pleasantly afloat, even as the viewer’s heart aches for the embattled, brittle-natured Bertie. Soon enough, though, hearts begin to soar—not coincidentally when Hooper pulls out ev- ery manipulative trick to set pulses racing (in case the importance of the king’s cli- mactic speech isn’t underlined enough, Hooper helpfully adds some Beethoven). Nomatter.He earns it. “The King’s Speech” is a movie of buoyant spirit, affecting sensi- tivity and infectious cheer.Go! Enjoy!
hornadaya@washpost.com
rrr½
R. At Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema and Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains profanity in a speech therapy context. 118 minutes.
K
the washington post friday, december 17, 2010 l
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