film

Rip It Up, Issue 167, 1 June 1991, Page 30

film

LA STORY Director: Paul Bogart For its first hour, LA Story is very funny indeed, easily sustaining the deft and daft credits setting the city in perspective. The opening shot, with Charles Trenet crooning ‘La Mer’ over - a scene in a rooftop swimming pool, a patch of Hockney blue against a scarred cityscape, sets the pace and the rest of the credits follow. Nominally a romance, in which eccentric weatherman Steve Martin wins the crisply BBC Victoria Tennant. LA Story gets most of its laughs from the decadent vagaries of the West coast life-style. It may be with a single shot of palm tree shadows sweeping around like magic to the tinkling of new age music, or with the recurring ritual of dining, which is responsible for some deliriously funny scenes. Many of the best moments stem from the sheer physicality of the performances — Steve Martin roller-skating around the County Museum, or the energetic Sarah Jessica Parker as SanDeE who makes good use of her balletic background to give Martin an inside leg measurement to remember. Martin’s script is sharp and even makes us accept his guidance from a talking billboard on the side of the freeway — only in the Santa Barbara scenes does the farce become earthbound. A couple of misty wistful ballads by Enya seem extraneous but recurrent Shakesperian references are well-knitted into the text (including the gravedigger scene from Hamlef) and one can even sense the spirit of the late Stan Brakhage in zooming shots of freeway-headlights. WILLIAM DART

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS Director: Tim Burton Burton’s first film since Batman is another to have a delayed release — in the States it was very much the big Christmas event. This is a much more personal work than anything Burton has done so far, and a movie that demands a lot, perhaps too much, of its audience. -

Six years ago with Peewee’ Big Adventure, it was apparent that narrative wasn'’t Burton's strong point, but his projects have managed to thrive without it. With the more substantial material of Edward Scissorhands in which he is very much demanding an emotional engagement onthe part of the audience, it is sorely needed. Johnny Depp plays the hero as a soulful punkster, sheathed in black leather, with huge scissors for hands (his creator, Vincent Price’s ' Frankenstein-like inventor croaked before he could finish the job). Coaxed out of his gothic castle by Dianne West's ingenuous Avon lady, Depp is thrown against the vacuousness and viciousness of small-town America, which swoons for his hedge and hair trims. Although | thought the satire could have been a little more telling, Edward Scissorhands does work as a parable of persecution. Predictably, as happens in the original Frankenstein, the townsfolk murder their benign monster. Visually, Depp’s Edward presents an image of ineffable sadness, but the prison that he exists in as much one of the script as of the physical limitations of his character. WILLIAM DART