Goodbye Lover

You can't please everyone. If you have a story that's easy to follow people will say its boring and predictable. If you have a richly complex story, people will say its labyrinthine and confusing. The trick is to have something in the middle, and that is what Goodbye Lover gives us.

The central thread is simple. The complications happen on the periphery. You can't watch this movie with one eye closed. You have to pay attention! How can you have a mystery when you already know whodonnit? Ah, that is the question. Are you up to the challenge?

This is a comedy. Comedies have license to be wacky and over-the-top. Patricia Arquette and Ellen DeGeneres give standout performances. I love this movie. Its very entertaining, very clever, very funny, fast paced, never boring. Isn't that what a comedy should be?

I wrote this comment mainly because there are so many negative reviews posted here and fewer positive ones and I think this film definitely deserves better. I liked it very much, have seen it twice, once on the big screen and just now on DVD. It was not the least bit boring the second time even though the film relies heavily on its plot twists and the suspense they produce. I think many people just don't come to terms with cross-overs, they want either a suspense film that takes itself dead serious or a clear cut comedy. I liked the humor in the film and its outrageous characters well played by a perfectly assembled cast. Patricia Arquette is just great, a pleasure to watch! She deserves the price for the funniest sociopath femme fatale ever seen on the silver screen. Vincent Gallo in his tiny role as contract killer is the icing on the cake! The film is superbly shot and directed and features a brilliant soundtrack. I voted it a 9.

The death of "Goodbye Lover" obviously came in its editing. Because watching it, you do see that hidden within the numerous layers of ridiculous bile, there was at some point, an actually coherent plot. Not to fault editor Bill Steinkamp too terribly, because while the story may be choppy and often unexplained and lacking a central arc due to the cuts made, one gets the overwhelming impression that, with or without editing, this film *stinks*.

It doesn't know whether it wants to be funny, tense, smarmy, sexy, or devious. It is literally as if the writers drew slips of paper titled "things we like about movies" from a hat and put it into the script. Director Roland Joffé (who did The Killing Fields - what happened?!) does his best, I guess, but that is not enough. The cast tries hard enough that it's only fair to warrant that it isn't their fault. But, there's nothing that could have saved this movie short of never making it.

"Goodbye Lover" is a quite good dark comedy about -- as Jake Dunmore says quoting his brother Ben -- "Image is everything." Everything in this movie is about image, and yet nothing is at it appears. And in this respect the very context of the movie sustains the content exceedingly well: it's a beautifully shot movie -- too pretty, in fact. So pretty it's easy to miss the fetidness just beneath the surface.

Almost every shot is too shiny, too glossy, too seamless, too meticulously composed. Many scenes are suffused with those ubiquitous cinematic blues and oranges contemporary DPs and directors like so much, but raised to such a degree that it almost enters the realm of the fanciful. Many other scenes are done in hi-tech blacks, whites, and grays. Everything is window dressing -- reality is nothing more than appearance, beautifully symbolized by mirrors everywhere. Lots of mirrors, shiny surfaces, glass & windows, all reflecting everyone to everyone else, a world of appearances without substance, without soul. And when people aren't being reflected in mirrors they're being framed behind glass, a diorama for display. The world is just one big department store window.

Yet just as a structurally crumbling, termite-ridden house can be painted to look pristine and beautiful, so does this shiny veneer hide the most vicious, rapacious, cynical behavior. Indeed, the world in which this takes place may look beautiful, but it is very very empty and ugly. And as such this is a kind of morality tale that shows the dangers to a society that lives strictly for appearance.

There are few movies I can think of which so excellently explore this tense boundary between the shiny packaging, and the rancid stuff it hides. As Ben Dunmore says, "People worry that it's a dangerous and sh*tty world. And it is our job to make it look safe and clean." Thus our hero works at a PR firm, packaging a morally bankrupt politician as a wholesome, devout family man; the president of the PR firm pretends to be a holy man -- a rather inherent contradiction; our two principals work in a church that obviously serves Mammon over anything else: religion is just another accoutrement, something to accessorize the soul; and then there's the wedding chapel in Las Vegas, where an unctuous smile sells ersatz sincerity. [Sorry.] Etc. (In fact, it's surprising how many such examples of this there are in the movie -- the writers were very inventive and consistent in coming up with such a profusion of image vs substance motifs.)

The only person in this world of appearances who doesn't belong, Detective Rollins, is a "F*cking Mook" -- as his partner, Sergeant Rita Pompano (Ellen Degeneres), calls him. For him, appearance *is* reality. His sincerity is regarded with mocking disbelief by everybody: he obviously doesn't understand the rules of the game that everyone else is playing. Even we, the audience, take sides against him -- that's how subtly subversive and well presented -- even seductive -- this world is.

And speaking of Ellen Degeneres, she is great in this movie. Others complain that she isn't funny or witty, merely insulting. But in one of those delightful twists where the line between fiction and reality dissolves, this is her payback for the flack she took from the forces of christian oppression after she came out of the closet. Ellen obviously relishes this role -- she mercilessly mocks her Mormon partner, gets to be a "guy" (and, for an attractive woman, she is laudably unattractive in this role), and, at the end of the movie, looks ridiculous when she dresses in "drag".

This may also be Don Johnson's best movie. For once he gets to play the kind of character he seems uniquely equipped to play: a high-end used car salesman, all style, all flash, sexy in his way, but empty and sleazy. It's very fitting that when he says he's "trying to get something real in his life", he unknowingly gets quite the opposite. And, since he wants to leave the game, he no longer belongs in this world -- and is appropriately removed from the game.

Sometimes the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed ("Go For It" billboard), as is the writing ("You need to go down on your knees for her." "Well, someone obviously did."). But it's all in good spirits, and I'm willing to accept its blemishes (as it were) 'cause it succeeds admirably in most other respects. And the acting in general is uniformly solid -- in fact, it's very well cast, even the curiously unfatale femme fatale Patricia Arquette.

The movie ends on a wonderfully humorous note to the tune of "Climb Every Mountain" as image thoroughly triumphs over substance, much as it does in real life -- which may be the reason this movie doesn't sit well with many people.

The filmmakers obviously had fun making this movie, and it shows. All in all, it's a very well-made, fun movie -- if you scratch its surface. [8/10]

Things are not well in the Dunmore family. Sandra is an improvement tape freak who's marriage is rocky as her husband Jake hits the bottom of every bottle in the bar. This affects his work (but luckily his brother owns the company. However Ben is having sex with Sandra. This drives Jake to the point of suicide, however when Ben comes to stop him Ben becomes the victim of a plot that sees numerous twists.

I didn't have a clue what this was about when I watched it – and that helped. The start is OK and sets it up as a quirky film, with Arquette listening to self-improvement tapes and `The Sound of Music'. However it then gets dark with the murder itself but then veers between comedy and noir right till the end where we get a `to the camera' final line. The plot itself is OK – not great but passable. However it's not helped by the film not really knowing what it is – a comedy or a noir. Due to this it fails to do well in either but is watchable as both.

The thriller/noir bits don't work because they are damaged by the comedy and the slightly farfetched nature of the constant twists. The comedy doesn't work because it's either too quirky or just plain tired - witness Ellen DeGeneres deliver one dull putdown after another. However it is still enjoyable – merely because it's glossy and moves fast.

Arquette is sexy at some points but annoying at others – she is OK but I wouldn't pick her as my choice for femme fatale. Mulroney is OK but unmemorable. Parker again is good but I can't remember much about her character – she had little to do. The best bits come from the cameo of Gallo and a good early role for Don Johnson. DeGeneres is poor because she's lumbered with a poor role and no jokes to work with,

Overall I wasn't bored and didn't hate it. However it is a mix of styles and in no way is it a neo-noir of any description. However from the director of `The Big Easy' and a good cast of good actors I really expected more.