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June 23, 2006

And so the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival launched with the biggest venue ever - about 1400 hundred seats - with about 1000 seats taped off for V.I.P.s from Fox, L.A. Times and Target, sponsors of the festival, leaving about 400 seats, mostly in the balcony, for the riff raff (like myself).

But at least the opening night film was a tough, edgy indie that LAFF was introducing to an audience that might otherwise miss it.

Well, maybe you never thought of The Devil Wears Prada that way, but hey, gotta go with the flow.

It was that kind of night. Truth is, I want to support the LAFF every step of the way because, selfishly, I would like at least one world class festival in this, the home of the movie industry. And at the opening after party, I got to meet lots of the filmmakers from this year, had a chat with some brilliant vets, and saw every indie publicist in Los Angeles.

Opening night had all the indie cred of the Independent Spirit Awards, which lost their true independent spirit a few years back.

As for the movie… more ambivalence.

Meryl Streep… brilliant. Stanley Tucci… brilliant. Emily Blunt… brilliant.

Really, all three are perfect. Meryl Streep has always been great at comedy and this is not different. She hits every note they ask of her, better than they ask of her, and does the layers of a mostly one-note character, as written, with the kind of skill that reminds you why she is deservedly seen as one of the greatest actors of all time.

Stanley Tucci has become an unstoppable scenery chewer in recent years, yet here he gets cast in one of his most flamboyant roles on the page and goes the other way, underplaying, for the most part, to great effect.

Emily Blunt gets a thankless role and turns it into comic magic with just the right measure of beauty, vanity, stupidity and aggression.

And that is why I found this film so very frustrating. Because you add a very interesting young actress like Anne Hathaway and it should all make sense, right?

I find myself calling this film No Sex & The City, with sex as a symbol not only for a lack of sex, but for a lack of any edge whatsoever. Basically, it seems that screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and the development team at Fox decided to make The Princess Diaries III with Vogue as a backdrop, adding the Devil from The Devil Wears Prada as the Wicked Bitch of The East.

The problem is, for me, that the fashion world is a lot tougher and a lot more fun and sexy and druggy and edgy than this PG-13 movie allows. This feels like a TV movie. And it doesn't help that director David Frankel has precisely the skill of a TV director.

The core reason why the Streep, Tucci, and Blunt characters work so well in their context is that they all have clear character focuses. Streep's Miranda Priestly is never unclear about what she is after, even when she is knocked off course. Tucci's Nigel is a willing participant in Hathaway's character's evolution - he is precisely a gay take on the Hector Elizondo character from Princess here - and again, he is always moving towards his goals. The same is true with Blunt's Emily, who is drawn with a straight razor.

But Hathaway's movie heroine, Andy Sachs, is as ambivalent as her name. She never really knows what she wants… not at the start, not in the middle, not in the end. When Streep catches her deluding herself, there is no payback, only a quick run to the easy, obvious, uninteresting next scene. Even at the very end of the movie, she is not a real human being. And I blame Ms. Hathaway for none of that. Not her fault. She didn't write the movie.

In the Princess movies, the goals are easy and classic. Become a true princess. Become a married princess. Here, the goals are blurry and Andy Sachs never takes the responsibility or the weight of any of her actions.

Fox intelligently realizes that teen girls may be sucker enough to go for that and if they had made the movie more real, they would have 1) risked an R, and 2) alienated girls identifying with the character. And so, we get sop.

Never for a second do we believe that Ms. Hathaway's character is living with Adrian Grenier's character, sleeping with him, in love enough with him to move to New York City with him. Not for a second do we believe that there is anything truly sexual going on between her and overt journalist pigboy Simon Baker.

And on top of that, there is never a hint of cocaine being used the endless parade of woman who fit into size 2 or size 0 clothes in the fashion world of New York. Tucci's Nigel is the only overtly gay man in the film and he is what I would call "safe gay." Daniel Sunjata's James Holt character seems to be gay, but he ain't no queen either.

The character turns in the last 10 minutes or so are just f-ing irritating. Cheap. Sophomoric. Almost unfair to the characters, especially Streep, who makes it work even though it is dead wrong for her well honed character.

And none of these things on their own matter much. But as a whole, they make for a movie about a wild world that is spayed and neutered.

Still, watching Streep work is an undeniable treat. And the other two hit home runs as well. So you can't really kick the movie to the curb and warn people off of it. I don't really know whether teen girls will bite. I don't know if women the ages of the characters in the film will adore the story. But I do know that there is a lot of interest, and with Steep leading the way and lots of great clothes (though the very sexy Ms. Hathaway really doesn't ever look right in these clothes… she simply doesn't have a couture body) and some good cutting lines, the film can be expected to have a strong following. It really isn't as good as Bridget Jones. But it is a niche. And there is nothing else filling that niche all summer long (except a little on My Super Ex-Girlfriend).

And so begins LAFF. It can only get better.

E Me:

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