Sue

This film was made with sincere intentions, but I feel that characters in similar predicaments have been portrayed more eloquently and more realistically in other films. Sue is obviously influenced by the films of John Cassavettes, but fails to achieve the same poignancy.

The film is a hodgepodge of scenes where the title character, a severely depressed woman, finds herself having quirky interactions with the people she encounters. Sometimes she initiates these interactions, sometimes others are drawn to her and sometimes they just seem contrived to keep things going. The pacing of her decline seems a bit off and just when something develops for the better, the story takes another dip to ensure its procession towards tragedy. We are never clued in on the origin of this woman's condition or given other details of her background, as though it's sufficient to witness her daily trials and shake our heads at how unfortunate things are. I would have liked more profundity in some of her relationships in place of the forgettable scenes with the ditzy so-called writer (from Minnesota, but with a NY accent) and the cliché street-tough girl.

When I met director Amos Kollek last may in Cannes where he was presenting Queenie in love, I told him that Sue was one of my favorite movies ever. It's hard to describe this film, so the easiest way to do it is to say that it's one of the best portraits of a woman ever made on film. You cannot but fall in love with Sue, beautifully incarnated by now cult actress Anna Thomson (at least cult in Europe, especially in France where she's quite famous), who is one of the most touching actresses of today, not to mention her very particular beauty. Sue is a woman in her early 30's who loses her job and little by little, loses her spot in society in pityless New York city. She is swifted away from the "real" world and finds herself alone, resigning herself to a sad destiny that she's incapable to escape, in spite of the help some people are trying to give her... I think anybody who's lived in New York or any other big city and who loves real people and poets will love is film. Because Sue is a poet, only she never wrote or didn't have enough self-confidence to do so.

Anna Levine/Anna Thomson seems to have inherited the mantle of Gena Rowlands in those awful Cassavetes films of the 70's, A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria. This is woman-as-victim in a soup of hysterical emotion and over-acting. My toes used to curl in embarrassment as I watched the film spool by, hoping I'd get a respite from Rowland's suffering at the end.

Anna Levine was good as Delilah, the hooker with a slashed face in The Unforgiven, and was fun to watch as Vera, the transsexual in Water Drops on Burning Rocks (my favorite of Ozon's films) but this time she's awful in a terrible movie. Levine wears coats and scarves that seem oddly out of date, as though she was Doris Day waiting for Mr Right. She has big lips that droop but aren't expressive at all, and with the dumb dialog by Kollek, it's all very tiresome. Tahnee Welch plays Lola, the criminal hooker, with a sort of brisk efficiency which moves the story along. Tracee Ellis Ross does a great job as Linda, the aspiring social worker who leaves for California--I kept hoping she'd walk off with the picture, but no, we are stuck with Nembutal Sue.

I saw this movie at the Viennale - a film festival in Vienna. For me it was really a very impressing, but at the same way very depressing movie. It shows the needs and the incapability of people to handle human relations especially in big cities as New York. In this city that never sleeps and no one ever is alone so many people are lonely. The search for human nearness is such a central point in life but if it is getting real we often do not know what to do. That's why we often reject people who are starting to be close to us.

The movie is about a desperate woman, who has no job, no friends, and a big scare in her heart to be with out one. That's why she tries to hold on every man she meets, but not able to open herself - knowing her problems, but not actually wanting or being capable to make a change.

For me it was a very realistic movie, because I had vistited NY this very summer before, and I know the scenery in which the movie took place. The "Madison Square Park" in which finally everything ends. And exactly in this park I saw this summer a person also totally desperate and close to the end. I did not do anything. What should I? However, that's why I think it is not only a movie, or a story, but also an image of the real life.

After the movie I had the luck to ask Mr. Kollek himself about his own point of view according to some special scenes. For me it was a kind of pessimistic situation which was described by him, but he said, that he does not think that it is pessimistic, but only realistic. It is up to everyone himself to change his situation. But to be honest I have got to admit, that I did not really understand his attitude versus this point, because I think in a live there are some many dependencies that sometimes your are not able to make such a big change on your own (alone or lonely) But this might be a result of mutual mistunderstanding. And so what I wrote Mr. Kollek said have not been his words but only how I understood him. I don't want to quote him the wrong way.

After all it was a real great movie. And perhaps everybody else will see other things in it. But isn't it that, what great cinema is made of. Interpretations are always part of a movie.

I, too, was lost in Manhattan, and a few other places, so I liked this a lot. It doesn't have the outrageous explicit sex and violence some might seek -- it's mostly black humor. Sue is very fragile and can't seem to manage her own life. She's painfully lonely and a great conversationalist. I found that this was very sad, but very funny, too. So bleak, it cheered me up. If you think you have it bad, you might want to see this to help you realize that you and only you can bail yourself out. I give the filmmaker(s) a lot of credit. This is exactly the type of movie I would make if I could get it together. I think a lot of people, especially women, will be able to relate to this one. If you've never spent time in New York, you might find the actual locations, such as the Odessa Restaurant in the East Village, interesting, and if you know the city, you'll remember a lot.