The Shape of Things

Terrifying but so true tale about the way people can control us and the reasons we just let them do it. Rachel Weisz is amazing as art student who makes changes to a lonely guy who just wants to fit in. The story in true Neil Labute fashion takes a macabre turn and makes you question everything that you have done in your relationship and gives you a well deserved punch in the stomach in the reality department as well. The acting is beyond top of its game with Rachel Weisz proving once again to be one of the most talented and gifted actresses of our generation. Her performance is beyond brilliant and she single handily carries this movie on her shoulders with her performance. Paul Rudd, Fred Weller and Gretchen Mole do great work as well and Neil Labute proves once again to be a profound playwright of uncanny wisdom of the evil that resides in the human heart.

I do hope that Weisz and Labute work together again.

Adam Sorenson (Paul Rudd) is a simple, insecure and shy student that works half period as a security guard of a museum and in a rental. He meets the anarchist and transgressor student of Arts Evelyn Ann Thompson (Rachel Weizs) trying to paint a penis in an important statue, and after arguing with her, in the end they schedule a dinner. Evelyn becomes his girlfriend and he introduces his best friends, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phillip (Frederick Weller), to her. As long as they stay together, Adam's behavior changes and his appearance and confidence improve influenced by Evelyn. He has an affair with Jenny, betraying and lying to Evelyn and to Phillip, and destroying their friendship. When Evelyn presents her thesis for the Master degree, Adam is surprised with revelations.

When I saw the cruel "In the Company of Men" in 1997 or 1998, I became a great fan of Neil LaBute. However, his next good movies have never been in the same level of his debut. In "The Shape of Things", Neil LaBute is in shape again and presents a magnificent cruel and heartless tale of seduction and manipulation. I felt the same surprise as Adam with the plot point of the story, which is a great study of human behavior, with excellent performances of Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Arte, Amor e Ilusão" ("Art, Love and Illusion")

This film was absolutely not what I expected it to be. In the first half an hour, I even got a little bored, because it seemed like the story was going nowhere. Fortunately, I got my happy ending - no, not at all a film with a happy ending, just an ending that makes the film precious! It really makes you stare at the black screen, with the cast moving in front, and think about what you've seen over and over again. Of course, the brilliant play of Rachel Weisz cannot be left unmentioned, but I think that the others did a great job as well. "The Shape of things" is a film with actually just four actors and one great idea, and trust me, it is worth seeing. I am just wondering how would I feel the second time I watch it!

Years ago, when I was young and naive about movies, I read a harshly critical review of "The French Connection." The critic's main objection was that the movie deliberately rubbed the viewer's nerves raw in scene after scene, and then when that wasn't enough, applied something like cinematic rubbing alcohol to the abrasions to goad still more extreme reactions. The critic felt bruised and manipulated when the movie was over.

This movie doesn't rub nerves raw and then apply rubbing alcohol; it drills holes straight into the viewer's skull and pours in battery acid. The trouble with this approach is that the viewer is lobotomized almost instantly, unless the viewer is old enough and crusty enough to have seen the kinds of tricks that Hollywood uses to goad us into strong reactions. There's a scene where the anti-protagonist tells the people attending the unveiling of her latest art project that she knows some people will have strongly negative reactions to her work. "Diversity is good," she says in one of the only lines in the movie where her delivery registers just slightly above the robotic, "just don't be apathetic."

That's what the makers of this movie believe in. Love it or hate it, just please please pretty please don't yawn during the movie.

Well, I yawned.

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of every novel Ayn Rand ever wrote, in the sense that its "story" is really a manifesto, and it shows. Sure, if you're young and still intellectually a blank slate, but hungry for ideas, it can provide the starting point for vigorous debates. I suppose. For those of us who don't view the people around us as bugs in a collection, however (probably because we've already had our turns at being treated as a bug in a collection), this movie is just more pseudo-intellectual bile-venting all dressed up as serious, grown-up thinking. Consider such profound observations as, "Cute guys always develop a potty-mouth sooner or later; they think it makes them more adorable." Does this sound like Hegel to you? Or just a cheap cliché?

I wasn't outraged or shocked or horrified or invigorated or captivated or astonished or anything else by this movie, any more than I am by some modern art exhibit that consists of an empty room with flashing lights, or the feces of an artist in a tin, or a severed penis in a jar. No: Just bored. I've seen it before. Five or six years down the road, someone else will come up with essentially the same idea, but they'll have to twist the knife just a bit harder to try to get a reaction from an ever-more jaded audience.

Maybe this time the artist will kill her ersatz boyfriend. In the movie after that, she can cook and eat him. And in the one after that, she'll announce that the hors d'ouevres that her guests are nibbling are none other than the hapless Addam. Each will feature the same huge banner that reads, "Moralists have no place in an art gallery" (remember to make the letters EXTRA BIG like a Wal-Mart banner) and the same pale, Botoxesque, expressionless, emotionless "artiste" that the movie is lauding and skewering at the same time.

Yawn.

While a well done film, it's not enjoyable. There are enough mean people in the world without voluntarily subjecting yourself to another one that is the heart of this film. Rachel Weisz plays convincingly in this film as a heartless art student who subjects Paul Ruud to her talents as a sculptor of humans. The best thing about this film is Paul Ruud's subtle transformation from geek to chic. By the end of the film, you've realized how convincing his change was. However, just because a movie is well made and well acted does not mean it is worth watching. When I left this movie, I felt as if I had spent two hours in the company of evil and meanness. If you like a think piece that leaves you feeling negative, then this is the perfect movie. But if you're looking to spend your hard earned money on a movie that leaves you feeling better for having spent it, choose another flick.