Scacco matto

No question in my mind, there's no question that the vitality of film these days is in the hands of Spanish storytelling: layered narrative, magical deviations from causality, sex as physics. The beauty of woman and places deeply rooted to the elegance of understanding.

There are narrative notions and cinematic qualities being nurtured in this broad community that are worth nurturing by us through appreciation. Here's a project that when you sum it all up is a dreadful movie, but it knows what it is about in terms of some intelligent ideas. It just didn't have the talent to match those ideas.

Here's the deep spine which is attempted: Pérez-Reverte writes mystery stories in a magical realism tradition. His device is usually to play between the happening of a thing and the representation of that happening in a book or painting. The idea is to fold his representation (his book) into the story, reaping all sorts of storytelling advantages.

Once these layers are established, he can jump in and out of various levels, and so can we as readers and some of the main characters as they develop insight. Layers are narrative layers, story threads, time, and almost always abstraction layers in terms of creating events and creating laws behind those events.

But the books themselves have problems. The ideas in their construction are a whole lot more engaging than the books themselves. The actual skill at storytelling just isn't masterful enough to control, channel and exploit these conceptual tides that have been unleashed.

One of his books was made into a film by a true master filmmaker, Polanski, and starred someone who knows that rare trick of layered or folded acting, where you inhabit more than one layer at a time. You had to work at it, but "Ninth Gate" really is as good as its ideas, and the ideas are in that film are both richer and crisper than in the source book.

And now we have this film of another of Pérez-Reverte's works. A simpler book in key ways.

One change it makes is to relocate the story to Barcelona and Gaudi's architecture. He is our most "folded" architect, and that change shows some real understanding of what is at stake. The filmmaker here is the guy who best exploited the environmental fabric of New Orleans to transform a simple story into a pretty interesting film in "The Big Easy."

For some reason, he is unable to do the same here. I think he could have if he had more time to get into the rhythm of the place, which is less hedonistic than New Orleans but more achingly romantic; more poundingly African under a sunny, slightly mechanical nonchalance. The project could have used this, and it was in his power, but it eludes us this time.

And that lack of control extends to more mundane production elements. The balance between realism and theatrical stereotypes/architypes was lost, probably unachievable with this cast.

The cast centers on Kate Beckinsale as our surrogate detective, who really is alluring, and in precisely the way the project demands: physically, she is made here as befitting of the place: sloppy, casual (unshaven pits), boyish face, innocent questioner on the surface -- deeply sexual and possibly powerful underneath. But she couldn't deliver that last part, the power part. Indeed, any emotion is amateurish. I haven't really paid much attention to her later work. I think it about the same.

So. What we have is a parcel of really great ideas. Important, central ones if you love movies and seriously use them in building a life and life awareness. These are all here, but mostly implicit. You have to almost ignore the movie to see them.

But along the way, you get a pretty girl, the most intriguing city on the planet, and a painting that is worthy of its role.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

A young art restoration specialist based in Barcelona is retained by an art gallery to restore a 17th century Dutch Masters paainting that has been in a private collection since it was created. The painting depicts an elderly nobleman playing cards with a younger man, while a noblewoman watches in the backgrounnd. All restorations include an xray, and this image reveals an underlying original painting on the same two men playing chess instead of cards. On the lower right, in Latin, are the words "Who Killed the Knight." The film reveals the names of the people in the painting, their relationships to each other, and how they relate to the current owners.

This is a reasonably suspenseful film with qhite a few surprises. The performances are ot bad, although Kate Beckensale's inexperience is glaring. The story, however, more than compensates for this modest short coming, and the sight of the scantily clad beautiful English actress at age 21 is quite breathtaking.

Julia (Kate Beckinsale) is a restorer working in a five hundred years old painting, which theme is a chess game: there are two men playing chess and a woman watching them. This painting will be sold in an auction after the restoration, and the amount will be split among the owner, an old man who lost his wealthy, Julia's best friend Menchu (Sinéad Cusack) and her partner. Max and Lola, relatives of the owner, are very interested in the selling. Julia has no family and was raised by Cesar (John Wood), who has a fraternal love for her. Cesar is also homosexual. Julia finds a hidden message in Latin in the paint, an after some investigation, she finds out that the translation would be `Who killed the knight?' Soon, many characters are associated to the pieces of the chess and are killed, following the movements of the game in the painting. This incredible and complex plot is a great disappointment. One of the attraction is Kate Beckinsale in the beginning of her career, with a beautiful body and breasts, but with a rough and common face. Presently, nine years older than in this movie, she is very gorgeous, very well produced in her films, with a delicate face, thin nose, beautiful and long hair and wonderful costumes. My vote is five.

The story behind this movie is quite interesting. Perhaps for some the real mystery was obvious all along, but for me, it held my attention for the whole duration, and it took a second viewing to fully unravel the threads.

The real gem in this movie is Ms. Beckinsale. She is radiantly lovely throughout, and there is a strong sensuality about her that pervades the entire movie. And yes, those who long to see her unclothed will not be disappointed. Even with clothes on, though, she manages to exude this alluring aura that is irresistible.

The supporting cast is mixed. Perhaps the best is the investigating police detective, who is a classic. The gigolo guy is rather over the top.

I also wish they had not inserted those brief historical re-enactments, as they neither fit well into the narrative thread, nor are they in any way convincingly real.

This is a worthwhile experience, despite all the many flaws the film has. It's a weak work in most of the skills you may think of, related to film technique, and film expression:

The acting is childish, this applies to practically every participant. Exception made to Beckinsale, she moves around in a naive boyish manner, but she distills sex, she is that character who concentrates attentions, without being excessively aware of that. She does it well. The rest of the acting is weak. The editing doesn't help as well. The premises for the montage work in a film such as this one weren't so hard to follow. They just had to tell physical actions, linear and common. Yet there are transitions, basic continuity problems that aren't solved, expressions in the faces that change, and so on. The music is also not well placed, it's a bad soundtrack in its own musical value, but above all in the mood that transmits. The tribal references weren't needed, and in the kind of story depicted, noir influenced, it would have been nice to have the music link the sets and evolutions in the story line.

But there are three things for which i think this is worth taking a look. One is the narrative structure, how the story moves on. This is based on a novel by Pérez-Reverte, the man who also wrote Ninth Gate. So we have a merging of art and life, the story happening in front of us was "written" or at least determined many years ago, buy an artist, in this case a painter. The first scene is masterful in transmitting this, really it was one of the most economic and meaningful first scenes i saw ever. It basically starts with a closeup of a hand in a painting (a hand as a synonym for power, ability to do things), and the camera moves away from the painting (it moves, it's not a zoom out)and we get to see the border of the painting fully merged with the "real" environment surrounding it. This illusion of merger works for a few moments after which we get into the environment and momentarily forget the painting. This really works.

Other thing is the use of House Batló, by Gaudi. It's interesting how the camera (and the editing) lies about the building, to enhance it's qualities. It's not a particularly brilliant exploration of the space, but it's quite competent: what happens is, we get Beckinsale going up the stairs that lead to the first floor, she rings the bell in that first floor. These stairs are beautiful, they curve like the back of an animal, you get the sensation of elevation, instead of going up. Than this is edited and the inner space we get is from inside the attic, which is built with bows that remind an animal spine and bones. Later in the film, we have an outside establishing shot that leads the camera, from the outside, all the way up to the attic. We understand that the character lives in the attic, not in the first floor. This was interesting and showed a specific interest in playing with the house. A side note is that this film is a good opportunity for you to check the great ground floor of the house, which is today polluted by the bars which conduct the tourists, and the tourists themselves, lining up to get in, and filling the sidewalk around. Pity. I have a theory that tourism is literally killing and sucking life out of our best places in the world, but this is another discussion.

Anyway, the touristic gaze can also be seen in the shots that depict the city. Here we also get lies, usually related to the intention of getting the establishing shots. Here i think they messed up. They didn't have to show all the known places all the time. There are fantastic relatively hidden places in that city that show more of its mood and life than the monuments. One of those places is actually used, the St Antoni market (the protagonist lives in front of it). The place is alive, and they use it well in some scenes. But than they lie about the city, so we have her going from Batló, to Rambla, to the Temple, to the market as if they were close enough to walk to, one after the other, sequenced like i said. It's a lie, i have nothing against it, but i have against making the postcard taking nothing useful out of it. A good use of common architecture is the one made with Beckinsale's house, especial its central stairs, and central lifter. The use of Park Guëll is not particularly interest, except for some movement between columns, but that's it. And in that movement, they inserted some staged flirting between couples. Very poor, very artificial, they didn't need to do it, the park has an interesting life on its own.

My opinion: 3/5

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