Don's Plum

Yesterday I saw this piece in a small cinema in the basements of berlin. Great Expectations! LeoTitanico in a film he seems to be ashamed of now. But it´s only about a few guy and girls, hanging out, joking and crying, flirting and hurting. I felt touched and amused like watching nick Cassavetes Jr. doing a remake of one of his grandpa´s "everybody gets drunk except the d.p."-kind of "Pre-Dogma"-movies. You can see in Leo´s acting, that he´s not very concerned about "real" acting... He plays an arrogant but hurt young guy, blaming everyone for the mood he´s in and seems to be interested in nothing but f**king. I felt so old, nearly everyone in the plum is about 20! And I´m 26. So afterwards in the subway-station I read the press-notes and I couldn´t believe my eyes: "If you are over 25 you might not like this film" they say. I hate and love you guys for that!

Rather dull film overall. It was a stretch to turn this short shot in 1996 into a feature length film, but still interesting to see some of Hollywood's hot young stars improvising in low budget cinema before they were the mega stars that they are today (notably leo pre titanic and toby pre spiderman).

When I rented this film, I was not aware that it was hard to get. I thought it hadn't released in the cinema in Belgium because it was too dark and had simple ended up in a dim corner of the rental place. I didn't have too high expectations. Afterwards I checked for user comments here and felt people were being a bit too harsh. It is true that impact is a little bit lost sometimes because it's hard to relate with the characters. It's hard to admit for anyone that they've asked out a 'friend' sometimes just for accompaniment and self-gratification like the characters seem to do in this film. But I'm a 100 % sure that everyone has done it at least once in their life. This film is hard to watch cause it takes this very aspect of relationships and puts in under a magnifying glass. I even had to interrupt watching it, cause the brutality was making me nervous. I think the film is good in the way that it had it's desired effect. It's not your cup of tea if you want to watch something entertaining, something fun with your friends. Acting is very interesting. Because it mainly plays in the same room and the film is in black and white attention is focused on the words, and even more on the gestures and facial expressions of the characters. It's worth watching if you want to watch something that's not main stream. I hope I've helped constructing the right expectations for this film.

Don's Plum. The first time I heard the name, and about the controversy surrounding it, especially with DiCaprio and Macguire, I thought it was a gay romance. On watching it however, I found it to be an interesting, insightful and sometimes confusing bit of film making. Some of the characters are very well portrayed, with their own quirks, and it was the first movie I'd where Leo actually acts. His character, Derek, is not a cute, romantic, retarded guy. He's an annoying, selfish try-hard that seeks attention from the group by whatever means necessary. Ian, Toby's character, is fantastic. He's like a kid with ADD, and for all we know, he does. He's a pacifist, a non-conformer and he's slightly out of it. Macguire does an awesome job with Ian, and it was nice to see a different character from him, other than a wishy-washy pussy-whipped wimp like in Pleasantville or Cider House Rules, or a try-hard super-hero like in Spiderman. The female stars by far outshine their male counterparts. Jenny Lewis is amazing as the dope-addicted Sarah. She brings out a real sense of pathos, though her script needed some work. Amber Benson role as Amy is small, and the only reason Amy is there is to show how much of an arsehole Derek is. The movie is a good sample of what can happen with experimental film. The idea works very well and the small soliloquies in the bathroom are just great. The editing is a bit choppy in some places, and the sound mix could be better, but overall I was very satisfied with the end product. Why Leo and Toby wanted the distribution of the Plum to be suppressed is beyond me.

This film was shot in the mid 90's, and after Titanic became a hit, the makers of the film wanted to release it, but it was suppressed by Leonardo DiCaprio and (to a lesser degree) Tobey Maguire. One would think it's an embarrassing, awful film considering Leo sued the makers and tried to stop it being released. Well, guess what? It's not a great film by any means, but it's not really that embarrassing and it's your typical 90's Gen X talk fest. Basically, a bunch of Gen Xers sit around at a diner, have cigarettes, coffee, food, and talk about "edgy" topics like sex. This was the kind of stuff that was being made in that decade. Basically indie talk fests. This is typical of those films for better or worse. Those type of films often started out well but got more tiresome as they progressed and they were never as "smart" as they thought they were. This one is like that, too, but does that mean it shouldn't be seen? Of course not. It's a decently made indie movie, shot on low contrast 16mm black and white, like Kevin Smith's Clerks, which came out a year before this film was made. Why DiCaprio hated it is beyond me. It's not THAT bad, Leo.

If you're feeling nostalgic about the 90's, check it out and this will take you back to that time.