{"id":8105,"date":"2012-03-22T16:58:08","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T20:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=8105"},"modified":"2014-06-18T03:57:48","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T07:57:48","slug":"a-man-in-love-with-bonus-clip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=8105","title":{"rendered":"A Man in Love (with bonus clip)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s quite a bold move to try to explore mediocrity. Most of us never rise above it anyway. But if you have talent and you use it to look at those who can\u2019t get past the middle, it can be seen as condescending and\/or gloating. That\u2019s why the context of mediocrity is so important; when you have the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>, which is a 2 \u00bd hour magnum opus on playing to the middle and not having your heart in your art, the key is that Metallica appears to have no idea how cynical and sad the whole thing is. Sure, you\u2019d think that the co-directors, the savvy filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who\u2019ve collaborated on Brother\u2019s Keeper <\/em>and the three Paradise Lost <\/em>films, would have the wherewithal to recognize how they presented their subjects, as spoiled crybabies who ought to just retire instead of pumping the soulless nothing that was their St. Anger <\/em>album. But, no, according to their audio commentary, Sinofsky and Berlinger think they\u2019ve made an incisive \u201cherpes warts and all\u201d film, that shows the band from all sides.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The more effective way to look at mediocrity is how Francoise Truffaut dealt with it in Day for Night<\/em>, honest, yet loaded with exuberance within the meta-commentary about making movies. Truffaut plays a version of himself, working on an international co-production with an American star (Jacqueline Bisset, in her best role) and a script rife with compromises. The film they\u2019re making is called Meet Pamela<\/em>, and from what we see, it\u2019s professionally done, but totally forgettable. The footage is competent, but inert, death for what appears to be a romantic drama. Truffaut shows us how much work goes into such a project and that going through the motions is just as hard, if not more difficult than really believing in what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Diane Kurys\u2019 A Man in Love<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span> hangs somewhere in between Some Kind of Monster <\/em>and Day for Night<\/em>; it\u2019s about an American star (Peter Coyote) traveling to Italy to make a well-meaning but ponderous and clich\u00e9d biopic of Italian poet Cesar Pavese. Does Kurys know that this biopic is mediocre? Sometimes, when we see Coyote\u2019s spoiled and self-indulgent movie star behaving like a prima donna instead of doing his job, she seems totally aware of what she\u2019s doing. And then there are other sections of the film, such as the parents of the actress (Greta Sccachi) that Coyote falls in love with, and their troubles with Scacchi\u2019s mother\u2019s cancer that suggest that Kurys forgot which part of her film was supposed <\/em>to be a parody of limp melodrama. Scacchi\u2019s mother, played by Claudia Cardinale, is appropriately distant and sad without overdoing it, but her husband, played by John Berry is a complete cartoon. First he\u2019s barging onto the set and demanding a magazine interview with Coyote, almost getting his daughter fired before she\u2019s even accepted the supporting part she\u2019s been offered, and then he\u2019s supposed to be the supportive, understanding father doting on his dying wife in other scenes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Now part of the problem with Berry\u2019s performance is how out of place he looks. Not just as a character, but physically. He\u2019s supposed to be Greta Scacchi\u2019s father, and the husband of the still gorgeous Cardinale. Scacchi and Cardinale look somewhat alike and match up as a mother and daughter, but Berry looks like Walter Matthau after a sleepless night of boozing and poker. Kurys might have been better off just referring to Berry as Scacchi\u2019s stepfather so we wouldn\u2019t spend most of his scenes trying to do the genetic math in our heads.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And just like with Some Kind of Monster <\/em>there is little sense of perspective; Coyote\u2019s boorishness may be part of the point, but Scacchi\u2019s character lives with her parents on an enormous French villa, and she enters her relationship with Coyote with complete knowledge that he\u2019s married and has two children, but that he\u2019s never going to leave his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis). Yet she still finds time to get jealous. Scacchi is cheating on her possessive French boyfriend, and it\u2019s unclear what she sees in the spindly Coyote, unless it\u2019s that he\u2019s a 40 year-old-infant who knows how to properly manipulate his wife.<\/em> These two lovers are hardly secretive and they find themselves rollicking in a rich people\u2019s melodrama with beautiful sets and expansive widescreen photography*<\/a>. Are we supposed to laugh at Coyote**, a man so vain that in order to maintain his erection while already<\/em> inside a woman, he needs her to talk dirty to him?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The movie\u2019s real hero is played by Peter Riegert, who is Coyote\u2019s gopher\/assistant, always there to cover up his messes and appease his constant childish whims. Riegert has a couple of great scenes with Curtis, as he sarcastically (but not really) flirts with her, while using himself as a shield for Coyote\u2019s indiscretions. Curtis knows quite well what\u2019s going on, and her brief appearances are the only time Coyote\u2019s character has to actually deal with something tangible and real. He has a witty moment where Curtis is complaining about their child walking in on the nanny in the bathroom, and how she was naked, and therefore she has to be fired. Coyote responds with, \u201cshe was <\/em>a lousy nanny, she never showed me anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Moments like that is where Kurys forgets she\u2019s making an epic and reveals her gifts when she\u2019s willing to scale back and be intimate. She may have hired George Delerue to write one of his beautiful tragedy scores*** but then she\u2019ll throw in a scene like the one in the video below. This scene has virtually nothing to do with anything (and no, I did not artificially speed up the footage) within the film, it\u2019s just an isolated piece of vaudeville with one or two shots of Scacchi in there to justify itself.<\/p>\n

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