Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes are respected architects of stark, minimalist filmmaking. That and a penchant for dark, tightly wound dramas about young fringe types — druggies, knockabouts, immigrants, etc. — struggling in the Belgian city/province of Liege constitute their basic game. The bullshit-free moral fibre in their films qualifies them as first-rate guys. They’re certainly admired by the critical elite the world over for this.

And yet I was close to enraged by the actions of Arta Dobroshi‘s main character in La Silence de Lorna, which I saw this morning. Which means I felt strongly irked by the Dardenne brothers’ screenplay. Which means, despite the feeling and focus that went into it, that I didn’t care for the film. At all.
Lorna (Dobroshi) is an Albanian immigrant who’s married a sickly, fair-haired junkie named Claudy (Jeremie Renier) in order to get her Belgian citizenship. She’s done so as part of a scheme orchestrated by a rich Russian who will pay her, once she’s a citizen, to marry another guy, a Russian, who wants his own citizen card. Her operator is a sharp, feral-eyed cab driver named Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione). But after the marriage scams are completed Lorna’s real plan is to hook up with her lover Sokol (Alban Ukaj) and use the money she’ll have earned to start a snack-bar business.
The problem is that she develops a soft spot for Claudy, despite the words “pathetic loser” all but stamped on his forehead. The guy is wretched refuse personified, but his whining weakness arouses her maternal urges. He’s trying to kick heroin as the film begins, and during Act One she finds his mewing infuriating — I certainly did. When she learns, however, that Fabio feels it would be better to intentionally overdose Claudy rather than pursue a plan in which Lorna will obtain a divorce from him due to (faked) domestic abuse, she starts feeling guilty. Naturally.
She manages to obtain the divorce notwithstanding, clearing the way to marrying the Russian guy. But she feels so protective of Claudio (and so torn up about being in collusion with guys who might kill him) that one night, in order to keep him from going back on the street to score more smack, she impulsively makes love to him. Fabio, not trusting Claudy to keep quiet about the scheme, has him killed soon after, just to be safe. Which of course makes Lorna feel all the more pained, even though she has done everything necessary to dissuade Fabio from offing him.
Then she comes to believe that she’s pregnant with Cloudy’s child, even though she’s soon after told by a doctor that she’s not. Then she decides to pull out of the snack-bar plan with Sokol and return to Albania. And then…
In other words, Lorna is initially willing to turn a blind eye to the connivings of scumbags in order to get a leg up, but her sense of moral failure is so acute after Cloudy’s death that she effectively becomes Cloudy and pretty much lets it all go to hell.
Obviously her guilt over a junkie’s demise makes Lorna a tragic figure — your heart goes out to her. Compassion for society’s lowest and weakest is the highest rung of humanism, but dammit, there’s more to tough, morally conflicted situations than just feeling badly about them. Life is hard and then you die. As the woman who lived upstairs from Stanley and Stella Kowalski said in A Streetcar Named Desire, “Sometimes you just have to keep going.”
Lorna delivers some payback to one of the bad guys in the final stretch. This provides a certain satisfaction, or at least a hopeful feeling that she’s capable of more than passive fantasizing. But the story, which I found more and more listless as it went along, left me with nothing to grow on or feel solid about.
We all feel awful about the bad things we’ve done. I’ll never get over my having beaten a turtle with a heavy stick and causing its shell to bleed when I was seven or eight. (I thought it might be a cousin of a snapping turtle and that it might bite my fingers off.) But you have to somehow get past this. Make amends for your sins, devote yourself to kindness, start a turtle farm. But get on the horse and do what you need to do.

The red-band trailer for Ben Stiller‘s Tropic Thunder (Paramount, 8.7), which I’ve seen but can’t write about until sometime next month.

I’m now back in the Orange Cafe and writing up a fast interview piece on the sharp and gifted James Toback and his extremely well-received (even by Cannes standards) Tyson, an emotional, straight-to-the-point portrait of the former heavyweight champ. I have between now (7:10 pm) and 9:30 or so to finish and publish, as I need a good seat for the 10 pm screening of James Gray‘s Two Lovers.

Tyson director James Toback during our brief chat about an hour ago at the Gray d’Albion bar — 5.19.08, 5:50 pm

Toback and Tyson publicist Cynthia Swartz of 42West — 5.19.08, 5:35 pm.

With the exception of catching this morning’s showing of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes‘ Le Silence de Lorna (which I all but hated), a good chunk of the day — close to six hours — was eaten up by another missing-suitcase search. Hours of waiting and walking back and forth to my apartment, pleading with the Air France ladies at the local office, making expensive cell-phone calls to four or five Air France lost-baggage reps, etc. But the bag and I finally met up about an hour ago at the Majestic Hotel.

The bag was delivered to the Majestic at 9:37 am two days ago, only no one at Air France thought to call or e-mail me about this. This information came from the Air France employees at the walk-in office. Relieved, I walked right over to the Majestic. The concierge, however, said no — wasn’t there, bad information, very sorry. Back to the Air France office to ask “what the hell?” One of the women eventually put me on the phone late this morning with an Air France baggage detective who told me it had absolutely been delivered to my apartment on rue 14 Juliette, in care of a Monsieur Gilles.
So I humped it back there (about a 20-minute walk) but found no “Gilles” on the tenant list. I spent a good two hours knocking on every door in the building, asking everyone who answered if M. Gilles lived there. No dice. I left a note written in moron-level French on the door of the building manager, who was off working. I also spent part of that time calling Air France reps, asking who signed for it. Nobody knew squat.
I finally went back to the Air France office around 2 pm and was told the information about the bag having been dropped at the apartment building was wrong (sorry) and that the bag was definitely and absolutely sitting at the Majestic — and had been there, as they said earlier, since Saturday morning. Back to the Majestic and a chat with a different concierge guy who immediately said “ah, voila!” and pointed to it, sitting four or five feet away. Absent six days and there it finally was.
So the primary bad guys, of course, were the Air France delivery guys and their bosses for (a) taking four days to deliver the bag from Paris To Cannes and (b) declining to notify me of its arrival. The secondary villains were the Majestic concierge staffers who blew me off late this morning, not caring to look for or ask about the bag because I’m not a paying guest and, I’m guessing, therefore considered a nuisance. This despite the fact they’d been told to deliver it to Pete Hammond, who is staying there.
There will be blood when I get back to Paris and file my report about the stuff I had to buy (including a pair of white pants) to keep myself going without looking too scuzzy.

The Dardennes brothers‘ Le Silence de Lorna at 8:30 am (55 minutes from now). Terence Davies‘ Of Time and the City at 11 am. And James Gray‘s Two Lovers at 10 pm at the Salle Debussy. (Apologies for the previous 8 pm error.)

“If things continue to go as well for Barack Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president.” — from Larry Rohter‘s 5.18 N.Y. Times story.

“Explicit fellatio, blocked toilets and a crudely exploded ass-cheek boil form some of the more unsavory elements of Service, Brillante Mendoza‘s latest opus that revels in shock value. Largely set in a rundown porn cinema called ‘Family,’ whose proprietors share space with male hustlers plying their trade, pic’s rabbit-warren storylines, complete with half-dug trails, match Mendoza’s marked predilection for endlessly following characters walking through spaces. Moving into pseudo-Tsai Ming-liang territory is unlikely to win the prolific helmer further converts, though the competition slot at Cannes ensures Service will be tipped for plenty of fest play.” — from a 5.18 review by Variety‘s Jay Weissberg.

Sections of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are a great deal of fun. I felt jazzed and charged during a good 60% or even 70% of it. I was more than delighted at times. What a pleasure, I told myself over and over, to swim in a first-rate, big-budget action film that throws one expertly-crafted thrill after another at you, and with plotting that’s fairly easy to understand, dialogue that’s frequently witty and sharp, and performances — Harrison Ford, Shia LeBouf and Cate Blanchett‘s, in particular — that are 90% delctable from start to finish.

I heard some guys say as they left the theatre, “It’s okay…it’s fine…it’s good enough.” I talked to an Israeli journalist who kind of wrinkled his face and went, “Not really…not for me.” But nobody hates it. It gave me no real pain, and a healthy amount of serious moviegoing delight. (Although I was, from time time, slightly bothered.) Fears of a DaVinci Code-styled beat-down were, it turns out, unfounded.
I’m hedging because Indy 4 doesn’t have the stuffings of a great adventure film. It’s fine and appropriate that it stays in the good groove of an old-time action serial, but (and I’m really trying to stay clear of snooty, high-horse attitudes because they really don’t fit the occasion) I only wish that Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson had attempted at least a superficial injection of a little heart and soul. Just a stab, I mean.
What they’ve done is certainly okay or good enough. I didn’t go into this thing expecting something by Euripides. Plus I had such a good time with Spielberg’s immaculate architecture, choreography and editing that I was just charmed and off-the-ground during much of it. The “old-school” character of it is pretty damn sublime. It felt wonderful to watch an adventure flick untouched or uninfluenced by time or post-Matrix or Tarantino-ish attitudes.
But it would have been that much better if they’d faked just a little personal or thematic weight — the old traditional “who I am and what I really need” stuff — and thrown it in for good measure.

The weak link is Karen Allen‘s performance as Marion Ravenwood. She’s never been a great actress, and her energy here feels a little forced and lacking a center — she’s too energetically “up.” Plus she looks like she’s had some work done, and that in itself throws you out of the movie’s 1957 setting. I’ve never hankered over the last 27 years for a reunion between Indy and Marion, largely because I’ve always felt hugely irritated by her “Indieeeeee!” scream. They made a pretty good team in ’81 but let’s not get all sentimental about this.
I’m not going to reveal the ending, but it ties in with Allen’s character and it just doesn’t work. It’s delivers a very odd vibe, the finale does. There’s a little hint that LeBouf will take over the series down the road, but everyone had this half-guessed…right?
It’s a superficial thrill ride, this movie — more of an out-and-out comedy with thrills than a solid adventure thriller with sly, wink-wink humor, which is how I always regarded Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But don’t believe for a single second that they tried to keep this film grounded in recognizable physics. Spielberg & Co. keep to the 1957 milieu and all, but they throw everything imaginable at the audience, including a huge nuclear explosion. There’s a triple dose of huge-waterfall plunging, and there’s a scene at the end that rivals the parting of the Red Sea sequence in Cecil D. DemIlle‘s The Ten Commandments. It’s a very high-energy, high-gloss, big-whoosh entertainment and enjoyable as hell for everyone except the crab-heads.
That said, the truth is that I’m partly one of those crab-heads. I wanted more than what I was given. Maybe the word for my attitude is “greedy” or “demanding.”
Flashback to initial iPhone Indy 4 review written from salle de press conference while being shoved and elbowed by photographers, about an hour ago: My ideal version of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would be (a) just as beautifully shot, choreographed and CGI’ed as the film everyone just saw, but (b) grittier and snarlier with a stronger investment in good old classic machismo. Alas, Spielberg & Co. have decided, as far as (b) is concerned, on a lighter, more frolicsome tone — lots of eye-filling thrills and acrobatic derring-do but with an almost cartoonish emphasis on slapstick goofery. (Although this is delivered with great snap and panache.) The tone is a little less “classic Indy” and a little more (this dates me, I realize) Tom and Jerry.
Raiders was about a tough-guy archeologist; this latest installment is a family film — about Dad, Mom and Junior (i.e., Shia LeBouf’s “Mutt”) — with a very family-friendly, fun-time-at-Magic-Mountain tone.
The first two action sequences — an extended Indy vs. the Russians run-around and a wild motorcycle-and-car chase through New Haven’s Yale campus — are delightful. And the action sequences in the Amazon jungle that occupy the last 35 or 40 minutes are great also, if a little outlandish. Truth be told, a lot of the action is outlandish. But that’s the fun of it also.
Bottom line: it’s not the equal of Raiders of the Lost Ark or, frankly, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (The more times I watch that film, the better it seems.) But it’s better than Temple of Doom, and that, at least, is a welcome thing.

Harvey Weinstein announced this morning that he’ll produce a $60 million adaptation of Paulo Coelho‘s The Alchemist, the worldwide best-seller (over 30 million copies) which was first published in 1988. Laurence Fishburne will direct, star and also produce.

Harvey Weinstein during this morning’s announcement at the Majestic Beach.

Fishburne has produced several films (Five Fingers, Akeelah and the Bee, The Beltway) but directed only one — Once in the Life, which came out in 2000.
The Weinstein Co. is “currently in negotiations with an Academy Award-winning screenwriter to adapt the novel into a screenplay,” the press release says. Harvey said on the mike that he’s read all the previous screenplay adaptations and “hated them.” This viewpoint, he said, gives him creative cred as it indicates high standards. He envisions The Alchemist movie as a “simple, spiritual tale” that won’t be lathered up in typical Hollywood style.