Film

Rip It Up, Issue 98, 1 September 1985, Page 42

Film

William Dart

MR WRONG Director: Gaylene Preston Anyone who is familiar with Gaylene Preston's excellent work in the area of short films over the past few years, will be only too aware of the lady's considerable cinematic flair. Even when she doesn't build the film around a social or political issue, as in last year's production with the Neighbours, Preston's instinctive sense of style is not to be faulted. Mr Wrong confirms the promise of the earlier work "and stands as one of the premier New Zealand releases of the year. It also happens to be the most successful feature to come from one of our women directors, realising its aims much more succinctly than, say, Melanie Reid's Trial Run.

The origins of Mr Wrong are indubitably classy, taken from a short story by Elizabeth Jane Howard, but Preston manages to focus the film on the wider issues of woman's problems in our society. The director has been quoted as saying that "Women need to explore paths other than those which lead to Mr Right they

need to take control of their lives" and this is precisely what Heather Bolton's Meg sets out to do in Mr Wrong.

Using the genre of the thriller, Mr Wrong is transformed into an allegorical tale of a pursued and persecuted heroine, even if Bolton is a refreshingly atypical heroine with her delightfully matter-of-fact

performance. A thriller has its special demands in terms of pacing, and Preston meets these with considerable ease, the film culminating in a suspenseful final sequence worthy of Hitchcock. Mr Wrong was a huge success with festival audiences in July and I should imagine it will prove popular with wider audiences on general release.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB Director: John Hughes The Breakfast Club must be one of the most contrived movies to come my way for some time, built on the premise of five young teenagers thrown together for a Saturday detention and, within a few hours, realising what life is all about. The advertsing doesn't help either, with lines like “They only met once, but it changed their lives forever."

The central premise of Hughes’ film is a very theatrical one and when this theatrical aspect is too much to the fore, the movie creaks a little: the lachrimose soul-baring session after the obligatory reefersharing is a case in point, as is Paul Gleason’s unremittingly heavy teacher-supervisor. However, balancing this is Hughes' highly articulate script, with some of its best lines going

to the splendid Emilio Estevez, who has already made such an impact in Repo Man and St Elmo's Fire.

So fine is the ensemble playing it's difficult to pick a favourite, but Molly Ringwald, looking like a young Sandy Dennis, catches the vulnerability of an uptight prom queen to a tee, and Anthony Michael Hall's introverted Brian is another finely-drawn character. And up there with the teenage stars is ace editor, Dede Allen, the lady who won an Oscar for her innovative work in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.

CRAZY FOR YOU Director: Harold Becker On the surface it’s only too easy to relegate Crazy For You into the category of the teen market film and it’s certainly that, with its tale of a young high school lad (nicely played by Matthew Modine) struggling to make it as a wrestler and coping with the onslaughts of burgeoning manhood. Here is a film that deals with hokum (and very moralistic hokum at that) laced with some raunchy dialogue that seems to almost come from another movie.

From the Madonna theme song up, Crazy For You is clearly aimed at a young market: yet, if the undeniably erotic quality of the many wrestling scenes are anything to go by, this is not by any means the only audience in the producer’s sights.

EATING RAUOL Director: Paul Bartel Director Paul Bartel has commented on all the ideas that lie behind Eating Raoul, from being a commentary on the perversion of middle-class values through to a study of Latin machismo versus WASP fastidiousness. What has resulted is an uproarious black comedy which declares open season on everything from the Hollywood swinger set to cannibalism, all serving to illustrate Bartel’s theory of how financial considerations ultimately overpower emotional ones. Paul and Mary Bland (Bartel and

Mary Woronov in two delicious performances) slaughter their way into owning the restaurant of their dreams, their meteoric path to success being shown in a series of brilliant and bizarre cameos. Some years ago Phyllis Diller was on television explaining how her humour consists of jokes cumulatively built on top of each other Bartel does this in Eating Rauol, most notably when he wreaks vengeance on a hot tub full of "swingers.” Earlier this year, some may have been coaxed to see Not For Publication, the film he made after this one: it was a disappointingly flat affair, both in wit and style. I can’t wait to see his latest, Lust In the Dust, which, with Tab Hunter and Divine heading the cast, promises to be a pretty outrageous view of the Wild West. ELECTRIC DREAMS

Director: Steve Barron It’s difficult to dislike Electric Dreams, a sweet little cloud-cuckoo-land movie which has at least the enviable ability not to take itself too seriously. Billed as a “fairy-tale for computers" it offers a modern-day triangle of boy (Lenny van Dohlen), girl (Virginia Mudson) and computer (voice supplied by Bud Cort) and, just for a twist, the girl’s the odd person out.

For those who lost their hearts to Amy Irving in The Competition, the heroine is a cellist in a symphony orchestra and a girl who, in her own words, was brought up on "Bach, Beethoven and Bing Crosby.” The orchestral repetoire is limited Tchaikovsky's “Waltz of the Flowers' and a Bach Minuet whilst the various songs by Culture Club, Heaven 17 and other groups on the soundtrack provide the excuse for some fairly loose visual sequences when the script wants a wee rest.

When Rusty Lemorande's script is on form, it provides the muchneeded edge to the proceedings and the many confrontations between man and machine would even do the late Frank Tashlin proud.