Boarding Gate

This movie is 100% dull, 100% pointless, and 100% a waste of time. It's only purpose is to allow Asia Argento to walking around half-nude for much of the film. Bravo for that. Otherwise, you have much better choices than this piece of crap. Try The Good Thief with Nick Nolte for a great caper/thriller.

A quick resumé: Almost nonexistent, badly chosen musical soundtrack, steady-cam filming done without the steady but with lots of coffee and a hyperactive cameraman, NO plot, and nothing ever really happens. The film goes from one dialog into another, sounding hollow, never achieving depth, never creating the illusion that you really are inside a cobweb of conspiracy, and the everybody-has-an-affair-with-everybody is just a boring excuse to show the main actress in nice underwear. (which, combined with her rusty voice certainly is nice, but nothing to base a movie on) The high point for me is the opening scene, and the film just degraded from there to a point where I just wanted to quit the film about 45 minutes into the story. I regret sitting it out.

Two things are interesting about the film.

The first and most discussed is the actress, Asia Argento. She and Beatrice Dalle are similar I think. They both have the quality of fearless commitment - like Emily Watson in "Breaking the Waves" and never afterward. They both have fumbled around facial features. They both are known as sexy — only because of nudity and the roles.

But more fundamental to me is that they both know things. I believe that an artist has to both have talent and be truly an interesting person; they have to know things we do not. Asia does. In fact, you can see it even in her first movie just as she is hitting puberty. This woman shows us a character that has qualities that this woman understands.

Streep has talent but no knowledge. Asia has less talent but she matters. This is one of her best. Don't miss it. Don't miss how she breathes. The nudity and story is nothing compared the grace of her visible breathing.

Here, she plays a woman who does what we all do: make compromises for companionship which if it has what we want we call love. The missing bits always catch up with us and with her the writer maps these pretty deftly into components of a thriller.

The structure of that thriller is the second notable bit. Of all genres, the thriller is most plastic. Allowing many flows so long as tension and guns are involved.

The story here sneaks up on you. Almost nothing is predictable. It starts slowly, and then bam. It goes off in an unexpected direction. The interesting narrative device here is that we follow her and discover things as she does. But she knows things, many things, that we do not. She does get surprised as we do, but not always so. At the end, she is allowed to write the future, for her lover at any rate.

My guess is that if she had never gotten and displayed that labial tattoo, she would have been taken more seriously. And we would be better off cinematically.

This is a good one. Angelic.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I would have never imagined that Olivier Assayas could be able to make such a thriller; I saw him more intellectual, and seeing Michael Madsen in one of Assayas' film is totally incredible, unbelievable; as if you had seen John Wayne playing in a Gerard Oury's movie. But the result is pretty good, interesting, tense, taut. It is not an action film, only a few of them, despite Michael Madsen's presence only half of the movie. It is a bit psychological and erotic too. But again, i did not think director Assayas could do such thriller movie. Financial, erotico and interesting film. Asia Argento is excellent here.

If you're an average guy like me and enjoy good acting, good plot, good scripts, novel ideas, or being entertained, you might want to skip this one. I was honestly bored from the opening credits to the very end, but tried to give the film a chance, and watched it all the way through -- only to be disappointed at every turn.

The acting was unbelievably sub par, but I'm not sure if the actors themselves are to blame or if it was the ridiculously wooden and horrible dialog coupled with an even worse script. The plot is very vague and underdeveloped and I think the audience is supposed to derive some kind of deeper meaning from it, or be able to look past it in some way, but honestly to do so would be a waste of time.

The film has a kind of crude sexuality to it which doesn't serve any purpose other than to show off some tattoos and lingerie. No one seems to have any motivation except making money off of some kind of "investment" deal that is never really explained. The connections between the characters aren't terribly clear, and there is little to no character development.

This is either some kind of sub-culture film meant for a very specific audience to enjoy or absolute crap, but you can decide for yourselves.

I gave it a 2 because it is definitely one of the worst films I've ever seen, but probably not THE worst.