Claire Dolan

i usually am not the sentimental type but when i heard of katrin cartlidges death, believe me, i burst into tears. we lost one of the most charismatic, talented and intense actresses ever and this film proves it. her enigmatic, scene-stealing presence can´t be matched. this film is as haunting as kerrigans debut CLEAN SHAVEN. that´s all there is to say about this original piece of work. and i can´t wait to see kerrigan´s new film IN GOD´S HANDS which is still in the making.

After seeing this film I was immediately struck by its similarities to Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman. Certainly, they are very different films, but there is a significant overlap, not just in subject matter and character--Jeanne and Claire--but also in approach. So much of Claire's life passes in silence or repetition that the parallels to Jeanne are fairly strong. Also, viewing Claire in the context of Jeanne at least suggests that having a child will not at all be the answer and solution that Claire is looking for, as motherhood did not make Jeanne Dielman's life wonderful. This film never looks as stark or as imagistic or as metaphorically thought through as Akerman's film, but as it moves along, and despite prosaic and occasionally clumsy scenes, it does attain a visual presence, and aspires to some imagistic displays. When her pimp asserts ruthlessly deterministic views of Claire, they cast a huge shadow on the events left unresolved, and few viewers can come away from this film with anything approaching an upbeat reading; but as a reminder that humans are fragile, frustrating, frustrated and often just aimlessly pathetic, this can stand alone, a stones throw away from a brilliant experiment like Akerman's Jeanne Dielman.

One's first impression might be that the characters and scenes in this movie are simply too cold and emotionless. However, a careful study reveals the "seething" emotions going on in each player; from the pimp Cain who "seethes" with a misogynistic disdain of the women working for him to Elton (played with excellence by Vincent D'Onofrio) who seethes with longing to fulfill something greater in life than just being a cab driver (the attempted mugging scene whereafter he breaks down is just superb!). I think that the final two scenes of the movie--one between a "converted", pregnant Claire being approached by a former john, the other between the Cain and Elton with his wife -- excellently display the tormented, soulful emotions of the characters involved in this story.

"Claire Dolan" isn't normally my kind of film - sex and betrayal and self-hate and the like - but it has a few things going for it. Vincent D'Onofrio gives a typically good performance, with the kind of subtlety that he does so well. Colm Meaney is also good, extremely unlikable here. Katrin Cartlidge, in the title role, is a bit of a mystery. She's excellent, but tough to identify with.

I watched the film mainly for Lodge Kerrigan. I'd previously seen his other two films in a similar vein. Which is, to say, stories of loners emotionally cut off from the world around them. But in this case, I found myself thinking that a little more distance would be appreciated. In his first and second films, "Clean, Shaven" and "Keane", the characters are so distant that they're practically on another planet. That is an approach that Kerrigan is much more successful at. Here, the relationships drag down and unfocus things a bit too much. Which brings me back to D'Onofrio. He is the best part of "Claire Dolan". All scenes with him are the best, the most intense.

The cinematography is good. Clean, crisp, and harsh. Teodoro Maniaci does great work here. He shot Kerrigan's first film, "Clean, Shaven", and he brings out the same sense of alienation here. In the end, this is a pretty good film. Not nearly as good as it might have been, but there's something to be gained from the experience.

An excellent evocation of urban alienation, this film has a consistently minimal style that reveals a lot without showing much. Pure cinema, one of the most interesting independent American movies (actually it looks like a genuine European film) of the past few years. It establishes director Lodge Kerrigan as one to watch.