Um Estranho na Cidade

I can't believe the tone of the external reviews linked to this entry...these guys didn't get this film at all!!! What in god's name did the bozos expect from a film adapted from a novel in French by an author of obvious Eastern European descent?

"Julian Po" is a fable, folks, about life and death and all the states in between. It's funny and sad and bewildering and tragicomic in the way good European fiction can be and even good American fiction rarely is. It's beautifully cast with people from some of my favorite TV series, from "West Wing" to "Homicide" to "Remember WENN" and from some damn good films such as "Fargo" and "Kill Bill". It also has Christian Slater's best performance since "Heathers" and manages to be "quirky" in a way different from those generic indie films that equate quirkiness with quality.

It IS a little slow, because it moves at the pace of life, but this allows it time to fill each moment with the stuff of life. It misses being great because it doesn't have the final twist that takes it beyond our expectations, but it is nonetheless the best surprise I've come across in several years -- a genuine small, unheralded, lost gem.

Please don't read too much about it before you see it. Judge for yourself, with your heart and your head. This film should appeal to both parts of your anatomy.

This movie has an intriguing plot that is carried out by strange and wonderful characters. It examines one man's time spent in a small town where the townspeople put undue faith and expectations on him.

Because the people believe the man's time is coming to an end, they seek guidance and knowledge from him that he isn't necessarily qualified to give.

The subsequent changes in people and their stories carry the audience through a variety of emotions and leave one contemplating the nature of human existence.

Highly recommended. Slater and Tunney are particularly good.

This is the kind of film you can only sit through after midnight whilst flicking incoherently through the channels. That is how i came upon such a strange film, one which i could not stop watching, despite the efforts of the oncoming dawn light telling me to.

Slater plays his role very well as the confused outsider, a role that the audience can only find themselves joining him in, and Tunney's performance as the attractive girl who wants to run away from home is also well performed. All in all, this is a good film to sit through only if you are in an open minded mood, if you are feeling at all skeptical, leave it on the shelf.

Poetic, tragic, pathetic, funny, and romantic do not do this movie justice. A great and subtle piece of film-making with great performances and a splendid and unobtrusive soundtrack. There are no easy answers. There is no Hollywood ending.... See this movie!

Julian Po is a film that I hadn't heard of until a casual channel surf stumbled me onto HBO. I was hooked immediately. The characters in this town are so unbelievably strange and almost creepy. Julian (Christian Slater) is a wanderer, narrating his own story, who goes to a small town in order to end his life. When the townspeople find out, it becomes a sort of obsession with them. The children follow him through the streets, he's offered gifts from shop owners, and a beautiful, intense woman, Sarah, (Robin Tunney) falls in love with him, creating a very karmic bond between the two of them. Ironically, in the course of his procrastinating his death, he changes the lives of everyone around him. They ask him for advice in life matters. A man "comes out of the closet", a Priest denounces God, etc..

Julian Po left me sad. It doesn't end the way anyone would think, but it left me with one recurrent theme running through my head. Life is a beautiful thing, not to be taken for granted. Never make life or death decisions when you haven't even experienced life. And maybe one more thing... a real man sticks to his obligations... :-)