CINEMA

Rip It Up, Issue 151, 1 February 1990, Page 27

CINEMA

THE WAR OF THE ROSES Director: Danny DeVito Oliver and Barbara Rose seem to epitomise success and marital bliss. Finally Barbara (Kathleen Turner, looking uncannily like Elizabeth Montgomery) wants out, with unreasonable terms, and the marital battle that ensues gives the film its name.

The brutality of the film, from Turner's first thigh-crack in bed (Turner uses the character's gymnastic background, whereas Montgomery just had to twist her mouth) is impressive. Turner and Douglas are the core of the film, but the constant punctuations of Danny De Vito, as a gag-bound lawyer, deflect the battles of this latterday Hepburn and Tracy. Even more curiously. Marianne Sagebrecht (Baghdad Cafe, Sugar Baby) is given a throwaway part as the housemaid. De Vito's obsession with self-consciously arty shots also irritates —we see a warped view of Douglas returning to bed through some fire-damaged binoculars, a downcast Turner on the couch, framed by the doorway. If he wanted "art", it's already there in the "black ballet" of Douglas and Turner's final tussle. The director can't resist a final moralising tag, telling the young would-be divorcee, "It's your life, take a minute." The film should have ended under the chandelier... WILLIAM DART DO THE RIGHT THING Director: Spike Lee Spike Lee's amiable She's Gotta Have Hand School Daze gave us little warning of the tough politics of his new film. In its opening scene, a DJ announces "the colourfor today is black", and Do The Right Thing is resolutely so, in every sense of the

word. The movie centres on the conflict between Italian owners of a pizza parlour and the blacks of the neighbourhood. The owner Sal (Danny Aiello) is proud of his Italian background, and the walls are covered with portraits of successful Italians, from Sophia Loren to Sylvester Stallone: some of his customers think this is inappropriate for what is basically a black neighbourhood. The crunch comes when Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) gives Sal and his sons a little too much of Public Enemy on his ghetto blaster, and Sal's reaction leads to the ultimate violence of the film. Do The Right Thing has generated some controversy in the States— in New York the Village Voice had eight articles on it, some of which used labels like "fascist" and "racist". Lee often seems equivocal. We are shown, on several occasions, a photograph of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X together and, at the end of the film, presented with two contradictory statements by each man — one conciliatory, the other more revolutionary. The movie is not one to be taken easily. Lee generates a bubbling tension under the first two-thirds of the

film, and the final third is a blistering assault on his audience. His cast, which includes veterans Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, work as an ensemble and comparisons with Brecht and the late John Cassavetes are unavoidable. Lee himself, as Mookie the pizza delivery boy, plays it relatively low-key, but Rosie Perez's Tina is anything but, as she hurls abuse at Lee in their bedroom. Only recently, Spike Lee was complaining about the lack of opportunities for black actors and film-makers in American mainstream cinema. Eddie Murphy has made it, but is frittering away his achievement in half-baked projects like Harlem Nights. Do The Right Thing lost out at Cannes last year to Sex Lies And Videotape. Lee's characters don't play little games amongst themselves, but react to their situation from the gut. Even if the director's political stance might seem ambiguous, Do The Right Thing is a film that demands your attention. WILLIAM DART

LITTLE VERA Director: Vasili Pichul There was a time when the slightest mention of Soviet cinema would

provoke a chuckle about the deficiencies of Soviocolour, and a groan about such "classics" as The Cranes Are Flying. In the last five years we've had directors like Paradjanov and Klimov, showing that there are independent cinematic spirits within the USSR. While these directors' films have stayed in the art-house circuit, Little Vera has penetrated a little further into the Western consciousness. Vera is a startling expose of a disillusioned Soviet state. Vera and her parents live in a depressing flat. Cheap vodka decanted in a Gilbeys bottle keeps herfather happy which her mother remains obsessed with the domestic drudgery. Their constantly bickering lifestyle is as depressing as the bleak industrial cityscape. Natalya Negoda plays Vera fairly casually, almost avoiding involvement with the role. At times she seems like a . young Monica Vitti, equally isolated in those emotionally freezing Antonioni vistas of the early 60s. Little Vera is a profoundly depressing film, and

eloquently so in the wake of the current Soviet political situation. I suspect it's far more important as a political document

than as a film, although Pichul does allow himself a few lighter touches, such as a young African boy watching a television cartoon warning him about. not going to Africa. WILLIAM DART CASUALTIES OF WAR Director: Brian De Palma The film opens in a New York subway train. The camera prowls around the passengers, a newspaper carries the headline of Nixon's resignation. This, and the scene which ends the movie, •; . prove to be the sandwich for another filling of Nam guilt. Back in Vietnam, a squadron are doing their jungle stint, and the , ! ' psychotic leaderMeserve (Sean Penn) decides to abduct a young village girl to be the men's portable R&R—for rest and recreation, read rape and ravage. Eriksson (a particularly blue-eyed Michael J Fox) carries the Burden of Conscience, carrying on hisfightfor : justice when the men return to camp. , The prolonged abuse and bloody murder of the unfortunate young woman is extremely disturbing and, as if this were not enough, David Rabe's screenplay paints Penn's character in aggressively unpleasant terms. As Penn boasts at one point, "Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of. death, I will fear no evil, for I'm the meanest motherfucker in the valley." There are none of the literary : - echoes of Apocalypse Now orthe analytical brutality and mind-warping of Full Metal Jacket— Casualties a ‘ thriller. De Palma shows his • Hitchcockian skill in sequences like the one involving a knife-weilding Viet Cong soldier in a tunnel. There are parallels with Dressed To Kill and Body Double, although De Palma's documentary-like filming of the trial sequence is stunningly effective, ;f ’ •' ' justifying what some will see as the equivocal morality of the earlier abuse scenes. WILLIAM DART

SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS Director: Paul Bartel

In Time magazine Richard Corliss likened Paul Bartel's new film to "a kid blowing a May Day raspberry in Red Square", and suggested "if you are in the right black mood, you could laugh till your nose bleeds." My nose remained dry for the duration of Scenes. Perhaps my mood was not sufficiently black, but I suspect that it had more to do with a surprisingly bland film.

Bartel's first film Eating Raoul was a deliciously black comedy, and Scenes looked promising, but Bartel has . proved he is not up to the Bunuelian task he has set himself. Scenes is closer to Feydeau in its boudoir-jumping, and the twist at the end in which the two

manservants pair off is agreeably unexpected. Yet the beautifully handled irony of the opening few scenes is not equalled in the 90 minutes or so that follow and lines like Bartel's "Abuse is a strictly Californian concept" are few and far between. The director has a fine cast. . Jacqueline Bisset, with her philosophy of "binge and purge" seems unnecessarily distracted though, and the wonderful Mary Woronov overplays in an effort to compensate forthe script's deficiencies. Ed Begley Jr is a gormless playwright, whose masterwork is called Nocturnal ■' Emissions, and whose performance you'll see repeated in a few months in She-Devil. Only Arnetia Walker seems to have lines worthy of the considerable energy she puts into them. At one point in Scenes a diaphonously gowned Bissett dances around her bedroom, cocktail in hand, to Aretha Franklin's 'You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman'. Here was the subtle and incisive touch that the whole movie needed.

WILLIAM DART