Forty Shades of Blue

I saw 40 Shades and think this film is incredible. Ira Sachs has made a movie that is unlike the typical current American film but is all about America. Every frame is filled with people and places that make you feel like you are actually there, watching the lives of these people. This film could not have been made in Toronto or Seattle or any other place "standing in for" Memphis. All of this is important because the main female character in this drama is Russian - an outsider in this America - and we feel her estrangement in every scene. None of the film is strange to us because we know these places and these people - because we are American. It is this familiarity that allows us to feel her outsider status all the more acutely.

Dina Korzun, who plays Laura is beautiful and remarkable. You sense her alienation at every moment and understand the difficulties of her situation without ever feeling that she is the helpless victim of circumstances. In one particularly amazing moment of the film, we see her face flicker with opposing emotions from second to second... Sachs allows the camera to linger, heightening our discomfort with the scene and emotions occurring.

Rip Torn is phenomenal. He knows this character and he knows this place. He is so authentic you absolutely believe every moment of his performance and as much as you hate him you feel for him too. An incredible performance.

Darren Burrows's character Michael is perhaps the hardest to find commonality with. It's not an easy job being the catalyst in a family drama and so at times we don't understand his actions but we do sense that they are coming from a man in limbo - pathetic flailings of a man sort of trying to do something, be something but also lacking the real conviction and drive. Of the three performances this one is the weakest but that is not to imply that it is not good. It's hard trying to match Rip Torn, most can't in any movie.

In Sumary, this movie is challenging -- through its structure and pacing and especially through its story but it is a challenge we should have more often in film not one to run away from. It is also beautiful and moving. It will definitely linger in your memory...often times coming back to you as if you are remembering a moment from your own life.

First, the plot summary is incorrect in a couple minor ways. Laura, the Russian girlfriend of Alan James (Rip Torn) met him in Russia on a business trip/ conference (according to a long conversation in the film between Laura and Michael (Alan's son). Second they don't live in a penthouse, but on the banks of the Mississippi, in a sprawling 70's era house (NOT luxury but great set). Michael is not a freelance writer, but a literature Professor (as he discusses in a couple instances in the film - but would probably rather be a free-lance writer).

I saw this film at the Best of Fest (Sundance) Screening in Park City, UT, knowing that it was the juried Grand Prize Drama winner with high expectations. After having seen several other films, and having been attending the festival for 15 years, I was very disappointed and quite perplexed that it went away with this honor.

The film plods along revealing the characters as boring, sad, and shallow ghosts. The only exception is Alan (Torn) who does a wonderful job (but he always place this sort of role - a curmudgeonly, outwardly genial, jerk). The story is fairly simple, and verges on Oedipal themes, however, there is no real impact of the relationship that develops between Michael and Laura, as it takes place in a miasma of moral uncertainty. Alan and Laura are not married; Alan openly courts another girlfriend and has other transient relationships, Laura picks up men in bars and has a fling here and there, and Michael is ambivalent about most everything.

The story moves so slowly and the characters have such restrained reaction to what would seem as provocative situations, that the viewer comes away with a sort of numb bewilderment. The dialog is simply awful, and often distracting. Laura goes around saying things that you might expect a Russian Tour Guide to say (which she was year ago). It would be fine if she said and reacted in this way occasionally, from a realistically portrayed film such as this, I want more: more emotion, more anger, more. Laura is just sad - throughout the entire piece.

Michael's dialog is even worse. He's a Literature Professor, but seems illiterate. He says things that at times are harder to understand than Laura with her Russian accent. And the content of what he say's are often out-of-place and silly. His character is also the most shallowly portrayed in the film. He is simply blank. It is never believable that he would have a relationship with Laura.

Don't bother with this film. If you want to see something similar, but with considerable more depth, see The Ice Storm.

This is a quietly brilliant film, a real gem, mostly because every frame of Forty Shades of Blue reeks of cinema; it's a film lover's film, and, maybe more importantly, a lovers' film, a romance/drama that is human, complex and entertaining at the same time.

I was blown away by Sachs' attention to details and command of his actors. There's nothing flashy to his naturalistic approach, yet the three main actors/lovers shine, and the camera feels at ease even in the most intimate moments.

If this movie was in French, it would be up for an academy award as a foreign language film, in the U.S. they will treat it as a small, indie film. That's reality. But the reality this film captures, a triangle between a Russian woman, her much older, legendary music producer husband and his son, speaks to a greater truth - that people are fragile and wanting, that life in the West is so good, it makes us soft and even more fragile and wanting and selfish and human than we want to acknowledge. That at the end of the day we all want to love and be loved and be safe. When was the last time you saw a movie so simple and giving in its complexity?

It's set in Memphis, but it speaks an international language and I hope this film gets seen everywhere, not just festivals.

This is the first Ira Sachs film I've seen (his IMDb lists another feature, The Delta, and some shorts) but I'm certain there will be many more. Let's just hope Hollywood doesn't corrupt his unique talent and respect for movies and human beings.

Oh, and it's got some great music too.

Dina Korzun played an immigrant, abandoned with her son in the sordid wastelands of Merrie England, in Last Resort, and her character is in a way an extension of this part. In 40 Shades she is the trophy wife of a 'legendary' Memphis record producer, and her fragile, doll-like beauty is an extreme foil for Rip Torn's gross and menacing but superficial superstar. It is an unsettling experience to see a film like this coming from America: after half-an-hour, the plot doesn't seem to have settled on a direction. About twenty minutes have passed before we can begin to guess who everyone is, and what they are doing. None of that in-your-face stuff. The enclosed world of these people is shot mostly indoors and feels suitably claustrophobic; it's perhaps a mistake by the director to extend this feeling of claustrophobia to the auditorium where you may be watching this, though, and similarly, the exploration of ennui amongst the rich and powerful backslappers should not cross over into the darkness of the front row, like some kind of virus. Antonioni used to specialise in this kind of milieu and he (damnably) admitted that he found boredom fascinating. There is a dulled spark in there, though: Michael (Burrows), the son of the Great Man, and the lonely doll fall desperately in love, and there is an excellent scene where Big Al lovelessly declares his love for his Laura through a hootenanny P.A. while the young pretender, the hungry wolf, or Lonesome Polecat, prowls around the edge of the dance crowd. But about 40 minutes into this your reviewer began feeling the passing of time, and by the end, even this theatre's lovely new seats were arse-numbing. A noir-ish film like this should provide lots of enjoyment for the eye alone, but the camera-work was outstandingly ordinary. There is a good enough film in there, but it needs to be cut out of the block. CLIFF HANLEY

Someone must have thought really highly of this film, or it wouldn't have won the Grand Prize at Sundance 2005. I was just forty shades of bored. "Forty Shades of Blue" chronicles the emotional journey of Laura, the Russian common-law wife of Alan James (Rip Torn), a legendary music producer with a drinking problem and a wandering eye. When Laura embarks on an affair with Alan's stony-faced son Michael (Darren Burrows) the ensuing love triangle should be as hot as the Memphis summer. Instead it falls flat. Even the sex scenes are drab. There are only two remarkable things about "Forty Shades of Blue." One is what could be described as a nuanced performance by Dina Korzun as Laura. This actress can say a lot without talking, which is merciful given the dreary quality of most of the dialog in this film. The other thing is her haunting rendition of the title song. Buy the single, skip the film. 2 stars out of 5.