Boarding Gate

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.

This is not quite as muddled as made out to be, but it's not any kind of Hong Kong pistol stuff that it may appear to be based on plot and cast either. It's the kind of film that presents itself as a thriller but is actually about people and the structure.

It's a two-part complex. The first part plays like an emotional upskirt peek at the tormented soul of this woman, who loved at the hands of a man who tossed and toyed her around for pleasure. She's played by Asia Argento who so effortlessly can channel sex mixed with pain - one of her early film roles after all was back in Italy for father Dario, where she falls victim to a serial rapist. We get some stuff about drugs, pistols are whipped out then forgotten again.

Now the French touch, our first pointer about what it's all really about; she becomes the character she has written about, a fictional sci-fi woman who controls men.

Tables are switched, and turns out she was really manipulating this whole time from inside the image he had been used to subdue. For the second part we fly down to Hong Kong where it threatens again to become a thriller. Pistols are whipped out again and forgotten once more. Here we come to understand that she's fallen prey to another lover controlling her for own purposes. There's another woman who is also vying for control of her strings, a sexual antagonist.

So having consummated one desire about revenge, she is not one step closer to being a free person. Her present suffering is still bound to that first violence that was a sexual desire; this is given to us as having been raped in her sleep, and so the horrible hurt of an unconscious drive, repressed, felt to be beyond any control and so any responsibility. Aptly enough, this second part is about self-discovery then; she's vulnerable for the first time, no more games or roles, conceding to flow where it may.

It is film noir as far as world dynamics go, make no mistake. To pursue desire is to be trapped helpless in a self-generating chimera.

Usually in noir that desire was codified as the femme fatale and who is here our protagonist but rendered as an image, a fictional guise, full of cracks suggesting the distraught person behind.

Finally she follows this second manipulative lover so that it can be revealed to us who was pulling the strings from behind all this time. She gets a second chance for revenge. The final image is one of poignant beauty, as blurry, out-of-focus for the world of plotting and machinations that we felt as the film, she ascends out of view liberated. She is literally no longer part of the film that was pure deceit from the start.

So for all intents and purposes, it should have been a great film about karmic cycles. It's not quite, but only because, for some reason, this was felt that should also appeal to a broad audience. So, it's filmed in a syncopated manner that is associated with TV, which makes sense in context because the camera is meant to be a frantic eye searching for things as she is, but which probably threw a curveball at those who usually expect a character study in long painterly sweeps and would be otherwise rewarded here.

It didn't help that it came out in the same year as No Country, another post-noir, much more overtly cinematic, and a host of other well-received films. So not a groundbreaking film, but see it if it shows up.

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.

You have to start worrying when you see that Michael Madsen is leading the Cast of any movie. I wont go through the list of shame that is his movie career.

I watched 45 minutes and still was not sure what really was going on. The movie consisted of a love hate relationship between Madsen and Argento, Which basically was Madsen insulting her, threatening violence and generally treating her like dirt. She on the other hand loves him, then shes doesn't, then she does, the she desires him, then she loves him again......whats wrong with you woman !!!!

The Script is awful, lousy soundtrack and pointless aggressive and crude sexuality which i believe was added to entice some viewers as the movie has little else to offer. I would have given the movie a 1 but it just about managed a 2 with a little excitement in the last 20 minutes. It did actually answer one question in the final few minutes but i am not going to share that, i will make you suffer for the full movie like i did.