La Montre, la Croix & la Manière

I saw this movie when it first came out and really liked it. I recall it didn't do that well, perhaps because the trailer for it was so badly done.

I decided to watch it again, and it's still very entertaining. It starts a little slow but gets nuttier and nuttier as it goes along. Jeff Goldblum is excellent as a volatile pianist and Bob Hoskins quite good as the meek protagonist. The plot is quite ingenious. The movie is quite silly and odd, and I can certainly see it wouldn't appeal to everyone, but for those who like quirky indie films, this is a great bet.

Louis Aubinar (Bob Hoskins) is a photographer specializing in pictures of religious figures. He lives in Paris with his oddball sister Elizabeth and her crazier food like grinding up a whole swordfish. He does a favor doing a voice-over job. He is shocked to be dubbing porn beside fellow voice actor Sybil (Natasha Richardson). She confides in him about a depressed pianist (Jeff Goldblum). They worked at a restaurant and a spoiled girl offered Sybil a watch if she makes the pianist act happy. Sybil flirted with the pianist which improved his playing. The restaurant gained respect and then one night, the pianist became jealous of the violinist over Sybil and attacked him. He is taken to prison and now he is being released. Meanwhile Louis is having trouble finding the right Jesus until he sees the rain-soaked pianist in his window without knowing that he's Sybil's pianist.

This is a weird movie. Dubbing porn is hilarious. The rest are strange and lovely. I really only laughed at the porno scenes. The movie is quirky but not outrageous enough to be consistently funny. The energy is a bit on the low end. It needs a faster pace and some more energetic music.

This is a new approach to comedy. It isn't funny.

The joke is that this, in and of itself, is supposed to be funny.

The story is based on a French short story, located in Paris, and the characters have French names. Louis Aubinard, for example ... played by ... Bob Hoskins? The movie also stars the equally French Jeff Goldblum and Natasha Richardson. The situations are similar to and the characters perform as if in those Carry-On movies from years back.

I believe these are also jokes - to cast these actors who make no attempt to act French in any way, to have them cavort in the manner of broad English dance hall comedy, and to leave the whole bloomin' mystery unexplained to the audience.

In the humour department, this is practically the Algonquin Round Table, isn't it?

The movie tries to be charming and quirky, and I guess these characteristics are sort of funny. Not as funny as Duck Soup or Love and Death, perhaps, but funnier than The Deer Hunter or The Battleship Potemkin.

It is an example of personal filmmaking. It makes no real effort to reach out and share with the audience, but stays true to its premise and its internal logic. Although all the situations are unbelievable, they are logical within the film's own bizarro world.

I generally like this kind of eccentric movie, but I found this one to be paced too slowly, to be dull-witted, tedious, and to provide too few pleasurable surprises or genuine wit. It just kind of meanders in predictable and sophomoric ways, and wastes some wonderful talents along the way. It has to be the low point in the career of each of the major stars, who are all otherwise distinguished players. I found it to be the biggest waste of talent since The Betsy, and I wish I had never seen Goldblum and Hoskins in this thing.

So, call it an interesting miss, and pass on it as a rental unless you really have a lot of time to kill.

This movie is certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Mine it is, big time. Rarely have I seen a movie that I liked more than this one. I wonder why others don't like it. What is it they don't see that I see? Or is there something that bothers them but not me? The pace is slow, yes, but there are a lot of details and twists to keep me easily entertained. And the pace is certainly faster than in Greenaway's movies. When I saw it the first time, I couldn't wait to see what weird happens next.

The movie is more strange that intellectual. However, I think it cannot be enjoyed by Americans who expect to enjoy a film also (only ?) if they leave their brains home. You might say there is something European in the whole thing.

This is a lovely piece of black humor and non sequitur, and I can't believe I never heard of it until a friend showed it to me last night. While it has some parts which are not absolutely necessary, most of it is splendidly daft and macabre, and seems like the sort of thing I would have heard about, considering my taste for such films as Delicatessen, Brazil, Naked Lunch, Repo Man and so on. Why didn't anyone tell me????