Afternoon Delight (***1/4)

If you watch much comedy, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize Kathryn Hahn, but less chance you’ll know her name. She plays a lot of brassy women, like the ruthless campaign manager on Parks and Recreation, and she also has a supporting role in We’re the Millers. But she gets to headline this sometimes serious, sometimes raunchy comedy, playing the sometimes brassy but more frequently closed up Rachel, a Los Angeles housewife (and mother to a little boy) who can barely bring herself to tell her therapist (Jane Lynch) what’s bothering her, such as that she hasn’t had sex with her husband (Josh Radnor) in six months. (A little wine brings out the brassy, even raunchy, side.)

Into this story comes McKenna (Juno Temple), a stripper Rachel encounters on a visit to a local club. Something draws Rachel to her, and so Rachel seeks her out and eventually invites her to stay. I liked the character but she doesn’t fit in with the rescue fantasy Rachel but is also the sleazy gold-digger she might have been written as. Rachel is a tougher character to assess, a woman whose problem seems to be not being in touch with her problems. She might simply strike a lot of people as a spoiled rich woman with too much time on her hands, but the comedy, which is funny, tempers that, and I don’t think she’s meant to be entirely sympathetic. The way the plot resolves is not entirely the cliché it could have been, but the ending may be a little pat. Or maybe it’s subtle. I’m still not entirely clear on what leads Rachel to seek out the stripper; it seems maybe Rachel might have a kinky side, but this theme is explored in only the most tentative way, then tossed aside, despite a few nude scenes. In any case, a very good role for Hahn and a fairly promising feature debut for TV writer/producer Jill Soloway (United States of Tara).

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viewed 9/11/13 7:30 at Ritz Bourse and posted 9/11/13

Black Swan (**1/2)

Obsession, jealousy and repressed desire are the themes in this Darren Aronofsky-directed drama. All of Aronofsky’s lead characters seem to be obsessed with something. Here, the pressure of mastering the lead role in Swan Lake threatens to undo ballet dancer Nina (Natalie Portman). Her director (Vincent Cassel) tells her she has the technique necessary to play the White Swan, but seems to lack the passion to play her alter ego, the Black Swan. Nervous about her chances of landing the role, she sees a woman on the subway who looks exactly like her, her own alter ego. And then there is the company’s new dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), who may be a friend, may be competition, or may be the Black Swan of Nina’s imagination.

This is all very stylish, so that it seems both that Nina’s mind is playing tricks on her and that Aronofsky is playing with his audience. The direction is skillful, the shots crisp, with an effective use of close-ups. Cliff Mansell’s piano-driven score is also very dramatic. Aronofsky’s camerawork doesn’t call attention to itself as often as in early efforts like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, his first two features. Nor, with The Wrestler and this film, are his stories as pretentious as in Pi, or the ambitious mess that was The Fountain. Possibly this is because he no longer is co-writing his own films (or at least isn’t credited). Hence he plays to his strengths as a visual stylist here. It’s certainly a lot artier than The Wrestler, but the story is even simpler.

It’s a showcase role for Portman, who’s in every scene and herself must embody both swans, the repressed “mama’s girl” at the start of the film and the one who awakens to her own desires as the story moves to a climax (pun intended). Barbara Hershey plays Nina’s overbearing mother, and Winona Ryder makes a nice mini-comeback as a retiring dancer who feels pushed aside. Cassel, so excellent as the title character in the Mesrine gangster films, is well cast as the director who presses and manipulates Nina into letting herself go. The reason my rating is not higher is simply because, like Nina, Aronofsky has a lot of technique, but his movie feels full of artifice. It’s more psychological horror film than psychological drama. Black Swan is, metaphorically though not literally, bloodless.

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viewed 12/8/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/8–9/10

Water Lilies (***1/2)

It seems like a subject American movies won’t touch, the female-centered, sexually charged coming-of-age story, is practically a whole subgenre unto itself in France. Sure, Hollywood will churn out smutty comedies like American Pie, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with anything like this teen drama, despite the fact that the feelings it explores are hardly uncommon. The particulars are three girls of about 15. Marie, the central character, is a boyish-looking girl who becomes infatuated with the voluptuous captain of her school’s synchronized-swimming team. Meanwhile, her pudgy, somewhat childish best friend frets with false sophistication about being “somewhat behind on my kissing.” I mention the looks because the story reminds us of how such things are central to the self-identity of teenage girls, and shape the way they are perceived by others. The three young women, with exactly one previous credit between them, are well cast, and director Céline Sciamma, all of 26 during filming, makes a remarkably poised debut that evokes the urgency and uncertainty of adolescent desire. There’s a level of abstraction, or perhaps just subtlety, to the ending that may or may not appeal. I expect to see more of Adèle Haenel, who plays the cool object of Marie’s desires.

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viewed 6/18/08 at Ritz Bourse; review posted 7/27/08

The Notorious Bettie Page (***)

Covering Page’s rise and subsequent career as the nation’s premier pin-up queen, this alluring biopic is easy to watch, thanks in part to Gretchen Mol’s lively performance, but left me wanting a bit more.

Nashville-reared Bettie Page was a 1950s pin-up queen. If she was not the first, she was probably the first whose fame came solely as a result of the thousands of racy pictures she posed for. As Page, Gretchen Mol is, in both senses, a knockout. In the many modeling scenes, she retains an air of innocence even as she indulges in mock bondage scenarios and the occasional nude shot. (Given the legal restrictions, the nudes were almost all for private collectors who paid to take photographs.) Mol as Page oozes allure, but not an overt sexuality. She seems intelligent, and poised, but callow. Asked how she reconciles her work with her abiding faith, she admits some uncertainty but simply explains that it seems to make people happy. If her interior life went much beyond that (and Richard Foster’s biography suggests that it did), it’s not frequently apparent here. There’s an early sequence in which Page’s naiveté gets her in trouble. Maybe director Mary Harron simply figured it was too important to exclude, but if anything the movie suggests that it didn’t really affect her friendly, trusting nature. Along with movies such as Kinsey, Harron’s film provides an useful glimpse into a relatively repressed, mysterious era of American sexuality. (Harron and her co-writer, Guinevere Turner, previously collaborated on the film version of American Psycho.) It’s largely in black and white, with much of the look and feel of an older movie. When the color scenes begin, they are deliberately blurred to look like an old post card. This movie is a bit like a picture post card. It’s lovely to look at, but provides only a glimpse of what it represents.

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posted 8/23/13