leefaust

An indie film to admire whether you're into every day Venice (like me), art (Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado of Madrid), an English art historian's comments on life as she dies from throat cancer, or a bit of skin (they are both very fit). This little indie film made in the ultra-realism style is extremely complex and moving but enjoyable. You can understand her trauma as a young woman faces death but wants to share everything she's learned and thought with the viewer and her lover. So she takes a romantic trip to the end enjoying every whim. Near the end she has a soliloquy on what has life become from thousands of years ago to modern life noting, "God has been replaced by entertainment".

Such a waste. The whole of the Château of Versailles as a backdrop for this film. Great period costumes. And then...........slow, boring, inappropriate music trying to place MA in the 21st century. It starts off well showing the difficulties of 18th Century life in the court of Versailles, but then tries to Americanize the experience of the young MA as though living in Hollywood in the Paris Hilton age. Total disgust. The plot slows down to show the ennui of the palace life and probably distorts it as well. The few accurate historic lines (recorded and repeated often in French history classes) just barely rectify the situation. KD is of course beautiful and maybe appropriate for the role but the script and music and length lose everything!

We were saddened to see an excellent Agatha Christie story ruined by such bad direction and acting. David Suchet as Inspector Japp was the only nice touch. In fact whenever he was on screen he stole the show. Peter Ustinov was good, but all the overacting around him actually diminished him. Faye Dunaway and the rest of the cast overacted. I guess they were trying to parody the English impression of boisterous Hollywood types (maybe they are right for that). And why portray Hastings as such a pitiful fop. The bad tone was set in the first 5 minutes with the David Frost interview and character interaction. If we had known the whole movie was going to continue on such a bad trend we would have stopped it.