The Cannes Film Festival just ended and in the next couple of days I will do a lot of reviews of those shown movies there. Let's start with Based on a true story. A writer goes through a tough period after the release of her latest book, as she gets involved with an obsessive admirer.
D'après une histoire vraie (2017)
Director:
Roman PolanskiStars:
Emmanuelle Seigner and Eva Green do a literary tango in Roman Polanski’s tongue-in-cheek psychological thriller.
There are multiple levels on which to enjoy Roman Polanski’s Based on a True Story (D’Apres une histoire vraie),
none of them very deep or complicated. But together they raise the
resonance of a masterfully made psychological thriller in the
traditional mode. This story of rivalry invites comparison with the
director’s award-winning 2010 thriller The Ghost Writer, not
least because one of the two main characters is a ghostwriter of celeb
autobiographies. A teasing, tongue-in-cheek tale of literary
cannibalism, it's a film with in-jokes that will play best with
audiences who watch France Culture programs and recognize references.
But there’s nothing so obscure it would prevent average French film fans
from enjoying a few chills from the consummate 83-year-old director who
gave us Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby.
Here the screenplay, adapted by Polanski and French auteur Olivier
Assayas from Delphine de Vigan’s novel, is an intimate woman’s story
about one diabolical mind attempting to take over another. The
director’s muse Emmanuelle Seigner steps into the laid-back threads of
Delphine, a best-selling writer whom we meet at a book fair besieged by
her adoring fans, captured by the camera in an amusing series of flash
caricatures.
She’s obviously at the top of her game, and her boyfriend
Francois (Vincent Perez), the host of a book program on French TV, isn’t
bad, either. But faced with the blank white Word page on her computer
screen, she's unable to produce a single syllable of her new novel.
Enter the beautiful Elle (Eva Green at her seductive, taunting best),
whom she casually meets at the book fair and later bumps into again at a
party. The chic young woman presents herself to Delphine as her great
admirer and a humble ghost writer, currently at work on a hush-hush
autobiography. Elle so clearly means trouble that the audience will have
red lights flashing as soon as Alexandre Desplat's mocking score hits
its first few warning notes.
But Delphine, exhausted from her promotional labors, is taken in by
the young woman and literally opens the door of her life to this
bewitching stranger. Elle’s trap unfolds with silken deadliness. As
chance would have it, she lives across the street from the older writer.
She starts by consoling Delphine over the anonymous hate mail somebody
has been slipping under her door that accuses her of besmirching her
family in her books for vile gain.
Admittedly, squeezing drama and suspense out of a writer’s hermit
life is no short order, and for all their concerted efforts, de Vigan
and the screenwriters go no farther than mildly alarming the audience as
to the outcome of Elle’s intentions. She sends messages to all
Delphine’s friends and professional associates telling them to keep away
so she can concentrate on her writing. But instead of urging the writer
to start her book on the difficulties reality TV stars have returning
to civilian life, she coaxes her instead to write the “hidden,
dangerous, personal book” lurking inside her based on her own life
experiences.
When Francois takes off for the U.S. to interview a laughable list of
literary royalty (Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didion, Don DeLillo...), Elle
sees her chance. Ignoring Francois’ warnings that she is a destabilizing
influence, Delphine deepens the relationship by allowing Elle to move
in with her, answer her mail and practically become her private
secretary. One flashes on a role-switching drama like Joseph Losey’s The Servant,
and a takeover story seems to be mutating into identity theft when the
tired Delphine permits the ambitious ghostwriter to zip off to Tours and
impersonate her at a lecture before 200 students.
Had this been a Brian De Palma movie, or maybe Polanski in a friskier
mood, one would have expected to see some hot scenes of the lovely
Seigner and Green hitting the hay together. The alert viewer will pick
up scattered clues that Delphine is not such a fragile and naïve victim
as we are led to assume. After all, she comes from a job in corporate
social relations and must have some psychological savvy as a novelist.
Both leads entertain, but Green gets the sexier scenes, like
inexplicably smashing an orange press to smithereens for no apparent
reason (she later says it was because she lost a job writing Gerard
Depardieu’s autobiography) and throwing hot drinks at doors. The movie
rolls by effortlessly in DP Pawel Edelman's confident lensing and Jean
Rabasse's sophisticated set design.
0 comments:
Post a Comment