“When Changeling was translated into French as L’Echange, many folks liked The Exchange better. Director Clint Eastwood was noncommital at the press conference, but [producer Brian] Grazer thinks it will stay Changeling in the U.S.” — from Anne Thompson‘s Variety column, posted a little while ago.
If Grazer “thinks” it will stay Changeling, that means he’s not 100% sure, which means the title is in play. I think The Exchange mildly sucks myself. It sounds dry and underdescriptive — close to meaningless . It suggests an allusion to some sort of financial-barter transaction rather than a switch. And even something that clearly refers to one young boy replacing another doesn’t sound right to me, having now seen Eastwood’s film.
Changeling without a “The” is probably the one to stick with.

“One under-estimated factor is the nature of Mrs. Clinton’s ambition. As her life has progressed from those salad days at Wellesley, her own long march through the institutions has been fraught with awful moral compromise. In this campaign alone, the pacts she has made with various devils to keep ahead of the pretender to her throne have been particularly brutal.
“Somewhere in her head, she justifies all the principles she has trashed over the years, all the enemies she has allied with, all the racists she has won over, all the abused women she has smeared…on the grounds that if she becomes president, the good she can do will outweigh it all.
“These are the sacrifices all people who seek power for the good must undergo, she tells herself. To have it all taken away from her at the last minute — by someone who hasn’t made as many compromises — is therefore unimaginably cruel. She cannot accept it because her life’s work is at stake. So she struggles on. Her private life, her marriage, is fused with her public life. So she has nowhere else to go. Which is why she stays. This is all there is for her.
“Is that crazy? I don’t know. But it is immeasurably sad. Not sad enough for pity. She did this all herself. But sad nonetheless.” — 5.20 entry from Andrew Sullivan‘s Daily Dish blog.

I was going to tap out a glowing review of Terence Davies‘ Of Time and the City, a spiritual lament about the director’s hometown of Liverpool. It’s a sublime marriage of poetry, archival footage, snippy social criticism, and nostalgia for a lost and irretrievable past. It hits you gently and yet powerfully. Especially if you have a feeling for the fraying of social cohesion and family structure that has happened everywhere since the ’50s.

Davies — short, bespectacled, pinkish complexion, gleaming white hair, traditional black tuxedo — took a bow before last night’s 10 pm showing at the Salle du Soixantieme. One of his producer pals said on the mike, “He’s back…and he’s beautiful.”
And like I said, I was going to write about it…but the line for the 11:30 showing of Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling/The Exchange — 85 minutes from now! — is already getting pretty long so I’d better get down there. Why don’t people just hang back and wait until 10:45 or so to line up? Who wants to wait in line this long?

“Exclusive! Indiewire’s Eric Kohn texts from the premiere of Raiders of the Lost Ark!” — written by eFilmCritic’s Rob Gonsalves. Funny stuff.

Variety‘s Anne Thompson is reporting that the “buzz is good” on Benicio del Toro‘s performance as Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh‘s The Argentine and Guerrilla, which will show in tandem in Cannes tomorrow night. A guy who’s seen both films told me last night that Del Toro’s performance is so intense he’s “almost scary.”
I’ve heard two other things — one from a journalist with a contact who’s seen it, and a director who gets around and tends to hear pretty good stuff. The journalist claims that Guerilla gave his friend “the feeling of ‘why am I watching this?” — the guy having enjoyed The Argentine much more. The director says he’s been told that Guerilla is the far superior of the two.

“I gotta give it up — as earnest and awkward as Two Lovers — a loose rethink of Dostoevsky’s White Nights — can get, it frequently moved me,” writes Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny. “Perhaps it’s something to do with my own past as a fall-hard guy for troubled, difficult women. Then again, a lot of my male colleagues not giving this movie any love have similar skeletons in their closet.”

Having made perhaps too many thoughtful political-minded films that haven’t made money, John Cusack is taking his agent’s advice and plunging into Roland Emmerich‘s 2012, an apocalyptic thriller for Columbia Pictures. Redbelt star Chiwetel (“Chewy”) Ejiofor is also planning to join the big-budget epic, whose title refers to the end days of human civilization as foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar, blah blah. Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel reports that the screenplay was cowritten by Emmerich and Harald Kloser. Harald?

So the Daily Mail‘s Baz Bamigboye went to the Vanity Fair party at the Hotel du Cap last Saturday night, and learned from an “executive” that Vicky Cristina Barcelona costar Scarlett Johansson didn’t make it to Cannes because of “scheduling issues,” as Woody Allen put it the other day in a press confernce, but because she was being an ego-monster in terms of perks. She demanded an out-of-town villa (“way out in the sticks, some 25 to 30 miles away”) and insisted on a 5,000 euro-per-day makeup consultant, Bamigboye reports.

James Gray‘s Two Lovers, which screened last night, is an attractively composed, persuasively acted but slightly too earnest and on-the-nose drama about romantic indecision. But it’s not half bad — a little Marty-ish at times, maybe a bit too emphatic here and there, but nonetheless concise, reasonably well-ordered and, for the most part, emotionally restrained and therefore believable.

Joaquin Phoenix, Vinessa Shaw in James Gray’s Two Lovers.

Financed by the Wild Bunch, Two Lovers is, I gather, up for grabs at Cannes.
Unlike Gray’s The Yards and We Own The Night, there’s no criminal behavior in Two Lovers, and the absence of this — no resorting to gunplay, car chases or fist fights — has naturally led Gray in a gentler, quieter direction. It’s mainly a mild-mannered borough family film, and fairly decent in that regard. I’m not a lockstep Gray fan — I was mostly okay with The Yards but disliked We Own The Night. But for what it’s worth, I think Lovers is his best yet.
Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely, less-than-worldly, recently suicide-prone guy, reeling from a busted relationship and living with his parents (Moni Moshonov, Isabella Rossellini) and working for his dad’s dry-cleaning store. The movie kicks in when he finds himself torn between Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), a sweet, wrinkle-free Brooklyn girl who wants to get married and do the usual-usual, and Michelle (Gwynneth Paltrow), a scattered, impulsive blonde who lives in Phoenix’s parents’ apartment building and is obviously “trouble” from the get-go.
Guess which one Leonard has the major hots for? Naturally.

Elias Koteas, Gwynneth Paltrow and Pheonix.

Leonard’s passion for Michelle is partly due to her being hot shiksa material, but also because she’s very much the big-city girl. His sincere but less passionate feelings for Sandra are precisely about her being a home-and-hearth type — stable, loyal and not exciting enough. As Leonard is also a fairly decent photographer, he understandably sees Michelle as spiritually linked to the big “out there” where his talent may some day be recognized — a place where people may see more value in his work than his family and neighborhood friends, who look at his stuff and say “yeah, pretty good” and then ask him to photograph weddings.
I was disappointed that Gray didn’t touch on a general rule-of-thumb when it comes to nice girls vs. crazy girls. As Woody Allen and other men of the world will tell you, the crazy ones are better in bed. This isn’t an absolute fact, thank fortune, but my experience on the planet has taught me it’s more true than not. I regard this as one of the great unfair conditions about life. It is certainly something Gray should have gotten into, and the fact that he doesn’t even flirt with this is, for me, strike #1.
Strike #2 is the casting of Shaw as Sandra. She’s too Fairfield County pretty, poised and delicate to be a borough girl. There are exceptions galore in real life, of course, but men and women from Brooklyn and Queens (i.e., those born and raised) tend to exude a slight coarseness. A coarseness that’s often vibrant and agreeable (I know New Yorkers and it’s not a cliche), but is also saddled, I feel, with a lack of interest in other realms. A wanting for worldly finesse. An Adrianna-from- The Sopranos quality. Not to mention that happily hunkered- down attitude about being “borough” — a life of eating pizza, not quite dressing the right way and failing to learn to speak French or play piano. Not to mention the distinctive ethnic features and honky accents. (I’ve known exactly one woman in my life who was raised in Brooklyn but doesn’t look it or talk it.)

James Gray

Shaw, simply, looks and talks like a girl from Greenwich or Westport or the Hamptons or Pacific Palisades. I’m a huge fan of this actress (as HE readers well know), but she’s too finishing-school to be believed here. Plus Gray and co-writer Ric Menello haven’t given Sandra enough in the way of distinctive ticks or weirdnesses. (Which everyone has.) They’ve settled for making her warm, generous, full of support and understanding. In short, a fantasy.
That said, I admired Pheonix’s performance — his best since Walk The Line, I feel. He convinced me that Leonard is just hermetic and naive enough to fall for a girl like Paltrow’s Michelle and not realize what he’s getting into. He’s starting to look vaguely 40ish — jowly, slightly chunky, filled-in. This is fine from an acting perspective, but a little curious given that he’s only 33.
Sidenote: anyone who chimes in about Shaw in a certain context — you know what I mean — will be banned for life from this website. Fair warning.