The Architect

Any movie with Parker Posey in it deserves a chance. I gave this one a chance. Of all the movies I have seen with her in it, this is the worst. Her character is so typical; there is nothing unusual. The part could have been played by thousands of other actresses.

The movie is about the project of designing and building a home and the interaction among the husband, wife and architect. In the movie, the husband is a successful, logical, practical financial person. She is an artist. They are highly incompatible and constantly disagree. The architect is a typical artist; he claims to consider practicality to be important but that is actually at the bottom of his priorities. He and the project (the house design) amplify the incompatibility between the husband and wife. The architecture might be creative but that is the only creative part of this movie. There is very little romance; the story is not much more than three (or four if you include the builder) people arguing. Even when she announces she is ovulating, there is no romance.

The ending is logical and not a big surprise either; in other words, not creative. And yet, the ending is sudden, as if the writer knew that there was enough material and had to end it somehow.

An absolutely ironic film, the architect makes you burst into laughter with exquisitely caricatured characters that act a contemporary and very light version of Madame Bovary. This film will not win an Oscar nor will it be in the selection of best films of the decade, but it is always good to spend an afternoon laughing at corny scenes and stereotyped discourses. The architect ironizes the imposture of the current petty bourgeoisie with its appetite for high culture. The musical reference to A homme et une femme de Lelouch is just one of the winks that this gentle comedy gives to French cinema.

There are two characters in this movie. The husband needed to be fleshed out, or he was just an annoying one-dimensional sideshow. There was also a baby that came along and was ignored. There was a twist at the end. Even the obvious romance was glossed over. If the film was not gonna give us anything else, that would have sufficed. No. One shag and they don't talk until the end. When the twist all happens in two minutes. I didn't have a problem with the things the architect says, but this isn't a message about art either, because that was also not given time. Just a bit more footage would have made it at least make sense. Surely savaged by the editor, to make it quippy and funny, when it didn't need to be.

'The Architect' never reaches the level of either drama or comedy as its sit-com story unfolds with the zest of a soggy blueprint. The plot relates how a pair of prosperous married suburbanites try to paper over their differences by commissioning a pretentious avant-garde architect to design their dream house. In the real world, a village idiot would require only a brief minute with this insufferable narcissist before dismissing him as a fraud. Worse yet, the credulous couple are never fleshed out to anything more substantial than cardboard cut-outs, and their dilemmas become increasingly far-fetched as the film proceeds.

It's tough to watch Parker Posey trudging through this humorless sludge when she's created so many idiosyncratic characters from unconventional material. At this point in her career, she seems better suited for the role of a scheming seductress, than that of an artsy airhead housewife in a lame comedy. The biggest mystery of 'The Architect' is how this sputtering slapstick-sophisticated hybrid vehicle ever got green-lighted.

This had got yo be one of the worst movies of the year. James Frain wasn't funny. He actually turned my stomach he was so bad. Granted, the role he was given was a ridiculously written character but he did absolutely nothing to try to bring the character to life in any way. There was do much more that could have been done with this film. As it stands it was a poor 21st century remake of "The Money Pit" but with no stars with any talent and little future based on this ridiculous farce. Bleck.