L'idole

Your typical American audience will salivate over a movie like L'Idol. For the simple reason of nudity and sexual overtones, truck loads of fans will pile up and wait in line to see a movie like this. Leelee Sobieski has tempted her fan base for years to star in an "art house" picture like this one. Her natural beauty has kept her a popular actress since the start of her career. The French / Polish actress has fooled around with doing swim suit moments in the Glass House and cover up jobs in the NBC movie Uprising. Now, the world gets to see some brief nudity from an actress who has millions of fans who want to see her "show all." But, the movie hasn't been picked up in America?! Two years later, a movie that should have made millions at the video stores hasn't even stepped foot in the U.S. L'Idol is considered your typical French film where sex is always the setting. Although this movie is not about sex, most of your typical French films has the hidden background of sexual struggle between characters throughout the movie. L'Idol has been greatly over looked and should be on the American video store shelves as soon as possible.

The Idol is an interesting mix that comes together into a stunning film. An Australian director working in France for the first time (in French language) with two American lead actors (one of whom apparently didn't speak any French when cast) and a script worked on by veteran scriptwriter Gerard Brach (Jean De Florette, The Name Of The Rose) could have been a mess but instead Samantha Lang has crafted a beautifully moving and delicate drama.

Brief plot outline, no spoilers: The lives of the residents of a French apartment block are disrupted by the arrival of a young Australian woman (Sobieski), a struggling theatre actress. Her neighbour is an elderly Chinese man respected by the other residents, who is considering moving into a retirement community.

The two are drawn together through their loneliness and a touching grandfather-granddaughter sort of relationship develops between them, reminiscent of that in Kieslowski's Three Colours:

Red.

The triumph of the film is the performances of the two lead actors. James Hong, given the chance to shine in a rare lead role, tackles the character and the language with an expert pitch, embuing Mr Zao with an almost mystical quality. He is both a man you wish you knew and a tragic figure that you want to comfort and care for.

Equally impressive is Sobieski displaying an acting talent that she has rarely demonstrated in her recent poor choices of role in generic American thrillers like The Glass House. At first all smouldering eyes and wry smiles she also grows over the course of the film into a sympathetic and tragic figure, allowing the audience to truly care what happens to both these characters and understand the deep core of loneliness that brings them together despite their differences.

The supporting actors also flesh out strong characters. Veteran French actor Jean-Paul Roussillon provides humour as the drunken upstairs neighbour who must sneak cigarettes from Mr Zao so that his interfering wife doesn't know he is smoking. While Marie Loboda as Caroline, a little girl who lives in the building (and bears a striking resemblance to Emmanuelle Beart) exudes innocence and charm. Both these characters also undergo changes as their jealousy of the relationship formed between Zao and Sarah (Sobieski) overcomes them.

The only negative, and it is a small one, is that the score by Oscar winning composer Gabriel Yared (The English Patient, Betty Blue), while a lovely Woody-Allenesque jazz style, seems a little out of place with this film which often seems to be creating emotions that are in conflict to those the music suggests.

The photography matches the story in its quiet mood and, along with the set design and locations adds a sense of loneliness to the film that draws you to the characters for comfort as well and therefore makes their lives all the more important to you. A particularly well played and haunting dream sequence will stay with you long after your first viewing of the film.

I say first viewing because you will want to revisit these characters and return to see this expertly measured film all over again. A tender tale of loneliness and the gentle love that can exist between two people this is a must see for anybody who wants to be moved or appreciate fine acting and a delicate unrushed story. Truly wonderful film-making.

While this is no masterpiece, the many negative comments here are rather perplexing. This is a French film about two foreigners living in Paris, an Australian woman who is quite literally a "drama queen" (she's a theatrical understudy having an affair with her director who happens to be married to the actress she's the understudy for) and a stoic, elderly Chinese man with painful memories of his youth during WWII. Their friendship has a care-giving element(on his part) and an erotic element (on her part). They are too far separated by age and culture to have any kind of conventional romantic relationship, yet they still create a kind of symbiotic but destructive dynamic that lonely and desperate lovers often do.

I'm sure neither actor speaks French perfectly, but since they are PLAYING foreigners I don't know why that is a big problem. James Hong who plays the Chinese man is a veteran character actor who handles his character quite well and gives him a quiet tragic depth that is only slowly revealed over the whole course of the film. Leelee Sobieski is a little more problematic. Her self-destructive character is a little ill-defined in the first place, and she has the same problem here she had later in the "Turn of the Screw" adaptation "In a Dark Place": She's tackling a very erotic role here, but she often seems inhibited and uncomfortable (i.e. she has a long but rather innocuous nude scene at one point, but she also rather implausibly keeps her clothes on during all her many sex scenes). She's not exactly in her element here obviously, but she is used better here than she was in her Hollywood films like "Never Been Kissed" where she plays a stunning beauty. . . uh, I mean a gawky loser who can't get a date. God knows, this is better that THAT movie and other crap she was in like "The Glass House".

This is certainly not your typical French movie. At one point the Sobieski character gets in trouble with her neighbors (shades from Polanski's "The Tenant") for having sex too loudly. Judging how the beautiful people in French films typically act, you'd think she'd get in trouble for not having sex loudly ENOUGH. And aside from Sobieski and her married lover, most of the people in this movie are actually pretty physically unattractive, certainly not what you'd expect from a FRENCH film. This is an unconventional and interesting film.

Australian director Samantha Lang has made a movie in Paris, in French, with an American actress playing an Australian actress, and a Chinese-American actor playing a Chinese-French retired chef. Intriguing? For a while. Leelee Sobieski's French is surprisingly good, much better than her acting. James Hong is a fine actor, but clearly an American guy struggling with his French lines. The story (two characters, each alientated in his/her own way, thrown together in a Parisian apartment building)is ultimately trite and uninteresting. Jean-Paul Roussillon does a nice job as the nosy downstairs neighbor, and child actress Marie Loboda could be Emanuelle Beart's little sister, much as Sobieski could be Helen Hunt's little sister.

i saw the film at the locarno festival and i was truly disappointed by the poor direction and the bad acting . The story doesn't hold up to anything and it's a real bore. It was not even the slightest emotional and i was really itching to see something finally happening on the screen which never really happened...