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Ava Gardner #1
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scriptgirl
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clasos
scriptgirl
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delcampe
scriptgirl
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delcampe
scriptgirl
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Businessworld
Ava Gardner is my favorite Hollywood star. Not that she was a great actress although in three films (Mogambo, The Barefoot Contessa, and Night of the Iguana) she proved that she could deliver material when properly handled by a director. Of course, the quality of the script was vital, too. In fact, she had appeared in two films (Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Sun Also Rises) where given a better script and better direction she could have been really great. In most films, she was found lacking in dramatic moments. Were the script and direction more demanding she would have achieved dramatic heights. However, I loved her face, her temperament and her originality which rarely were captured in her films. Nevertheless, Ava Gardner was a Hollywood star of the Golden Age who possessed IT and more.
Ava Gardner is my favorite Hollywood star. Not that she was a great actress although in three films (Mogambo, The Barefoot Contessa, and Night of the Iguana) she proved that she could deliver material when properly handled by a director. Of course, the quality of the script was vital, too. In fact, she had appeared in two films (Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Sun Also Rises) where given a better script and better direction she could have been really great. In most films, she was found lacking in dramatic moments. Were the script and direction more demanding she would have achieved dramatic heights. However, I loved her face, her temperament and her originality which rarely were captured in her films. Nevertheless, Ava Gardner was a Hollywood star of the Golden Age who possessed IT and more.
scriptgirl
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Baltimore City Paper
To truly appreciate the brilliance of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it helps to see a second-rate knockoff like Noah Galuten's Bermuda. Galuten, who has contributed script coverage to such television shows as Boston Legal, The Practice, and Ally McBeal, is not a bad writer, but he is so eager to match Albee's raw honesty that he jumps into the rawness and leaves the honesty behind.
There are, of course, differences. In Bermuda, Christie and Michael are newlyweds, not longtime spouses. They are visited not by a couple of new acquaintances, but by a single individual, Donald, who happens to be both Michael's brother and Christie's ex. But the dynamic is the same: In their own, comfortable living room, a married couple entangles an uncomfortable visitor in the disappointments and frustrations of their marriage by saying all the things that are usually left unspoken.
In Albee, however, George and Martha maintain a false air of hospitality at all times, as if they were waving a handkerchief to distract the visitors from the thrusting stiletto. In Galuten, all pretense is soon dropped and the three just go at each other with verbal hatchets. In Bermuda, the switch from polite conversation to blurted confessions and brutal accusations is so abrupt and sudden that the play loses much of its credibility.
One moment, Christie's telling Michael sweet nothings in a baby voice; the next, moment she's saying that she doesn't care if he goes or stays. One moment, Donald's politely complimenting Christie's desserts; the next, he's grabbing at her. One moment, Michael's boasting of his happy marriage and new promotion; the next, he's barking that maybe he's not a rich, successful writer like his brother, but he's still worth something.
These drastic transformations feel prompted not by the characters' motivations, but by the playwright's impatience to get to the showy confrontations. It's not clear why he's in such a hurry. The play was only 65 minutes long on opening night, so there is plenty of room for a more gradual development of the plot when Galuten does a much-needed rewrite.
Many times performers playing members of the same family on stage appear nothing of the kind. But director Jayme Kilburn has done of good job of casting Michael and Donald with R. Brett Rohrer and Tim Grieb respectively, two actors who not only look alike--stocky torsos, square faces, puppy eyes, boring work clothes, and brown hair--but also share a kind of reticence that merely camouflages a sullen resentment. One never doubts that they are brothers.
As Christie, Alison Buckley is a welcome contrast--tall, red-headed, and fluttery in a blue blouse. She gets the show off to a good start by telegraphing Christie's insecurity about her new marriage. She tells Michael that whenever she says, "Sunshine," he should say, "Lollipops," just to confirm that he still loves her. She presents this as a sweet, romantic gesture, but he instantly recognizes it as a manipulative ploy that will embarrass him in many situations--and sure enough it soon does.
In similar fashion, Donald proposes a party game: If you were stranded on a desert island in Bermuda and you were given the choice of one islandmate--Ava Gardner or Marilyn Monroe, Adolf Hitler or no one--who would you choose? It soon becomes clear, though, that game has been suggested to make Christie think about who'd she'd like as an islandmate--Michael or Donald.
Bermuda is at its best in these early moments, when the characters are pretending to be nice as they pursue their ulterior motives. All too soon, however, the facade is dropped and the three just start venting. And while the cast does a better job with the strong, obvious feelings than with the subtle, disguised emotions, the show suffers as a result.
There's no denying the intensity of accusations flung back and forth at such close quarters, though. The small store-front space of the Strand Theater is so cramped that to reach their seats, many audience members had to walk across the stage's brown risers, which bump up against the knees of those in the front row. With the second-hand armchair where Michael flops down after work and the sofa where Christie and Donald share a forbidden kiss just a few feet away, we often feel as if we're sitting in the same living room.
To truly appreciate the brilliance of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it helps to see a second-rate knockoff like Noah Galuten's Bermuda. Galuten, who has contributed script coverage to such television shows as Boston Legal, The Practice, and Ally McBeal, is not a bad writer, but he is so eager to match Albee's raw honesty that he jumps into the rawness and leaves the honesty behind.
There are, of course, differences. In Bermuda, Christie and Michael are newlyweds, not longtime spouses. They are visited not by a couple of new acquaintances, but by a single individual, Donald, who happens to be both Michael's brother and Christie's ex. But the dynamic is the same: In their own, comfortable living room, a married couple entangles an uncomfortable visitor in the disappointments and frustrations of their marriage by saying all the things that are usually left unspoken.
In Albee, however, George and Martha maintain a false air of hospitality at all times, as if they were waving a handkerchief to distract the visitors from the thrusting stiletto. In Galuten, all pretense is soon dropped and the three just go at each other with verbal hatchets. In Bermuda, the switch from polite conversation to blurted confessions and brutal accusations is so abrupt and sudden that the play loses much of its credibility.
One moment, Christie's telling Michael sweet nothings in a baby voice; the next, moment she's saying that she doesn't care if he goes or stays. One moment, Donald's politely complimenting Christie's desserts; the next, he's grabbing at her. One moment, Michael's boasting of his happy marriage and new promotion; the next, he's barking that maybe he's not a rich, successful writer like his brother, but he's still worth something.
These drastic transformations feel prompted not by the characters' motivations, but by the playwright's impatience to get to the showy confrontations. It's not clear why he's in such a hurry. The play was only 65 minutes long on opening night, so there is plenty of room for a more gradual development of the plot when Galuten does a much-needed rewrite.
Many times performers playing members of the same family on stage appear nothing of the kind. But director Jayme Kilburn has done of good job of casting Michael and Donald with R. Brett Rohrer and Tim Grieb respectively, two actors who not only look alike--stocky torsos, square faces, puppy eyes, boring work clothes, and brown hair--but also share a kind of reticence that merely camouflages a sullen resentment. One never doubts that they are brothers.
As Christie, Alison Buckley is a welcome contrast--tall, red-headed, and fluttery in a blue blouse. She gets the show off to a good start by telegraphing Christie's insecurity about her new marriage. She tells Michael that whenever she says, "Sunshine," he should say, "Lollipops," just to confirm that he still loves her. She presents this as a sweet, romantic gesture, but he instantly recognizes it as a manipulative ploy that will embarrass him in many situations--and sure enough it soon does.
In similar fashion, Donald proposes a party game: If you were stranded on a desert island in Bermuda and you were given the choice of one islandmate--Ava Gardner or Marilyn Monroe, Adolf Hitler or no one--who would you choose? It soon becomes clear, though, that game has been suggested to make Christie think about who'd she'd like as an islandmate--Michael or Donald.
Bermuda is at its best in these early moments, when the characters are pretending to be nice as they pursue their ulterior motives. All too soon, however, the facade is dropped and the three just start venting. And while the cast does a better job with the strong, obvious feelings than with the subtle, disguised emotions, the show suffers as a result.
There's no denying the intensity of accusations flung back and forth at such close quarters, though. The small store-front space of the Strand Theater is so cramped that to reach their seats, many audience members had to walk across the stage's brown risers, which bump up against the knees of those in the front row. With the second-hand armchair where Michael flops down after work and the sofa where Christie and Donald share a forbidden kiss just a few feet away, we often feel as if we're sitting in the same living room.
scriptgirl
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A.V. Club
Carrie Fisher’s life is a perfect storm of funny. Not many folks are privileged enough to have Bob Dylan show up at one of their cocktail parties wearing a parka and sunglasses. Even fewer are capable of coming up with the perfect zinger for the occasion: “Thank God you wore that, Bob, because sometimes late at night here the sun gets really, really bright, then it snows.” Fisher’s big, beautiful brain is the perfect filter for a life too trippy and surreal for fiction.
I like to think that in every soul-shattering trauma lies an amusing anecdote. Fisher’s life beautifully illustrates my theory: she’s capable of wringing the breeziest of laughs from the most horrifying of experiences. Her delightful new memoir Wishful Drinking delves deep into the seldom-explored lighter side of alcoholism, parental abandonment, drug addiction, manic-depression, and what used to be called “electro-shock therapy” but now is known by the more sensitive term, “frying yer brain up but good to chase away them demons and spooks and brain-bogeymen and whatnot”. Oh, and waking up one morning next to a dead gay Republican. And marrying a gay man. Yes, Fisher has learned to laugh long and hard at unspeakable traumas: madness, death, divorce and most harrowing of all, the dialogue of George Lucas.
Fisher has lived to tell the tale, and what a tale it is. Fisher was born in the white-hot epicenter of fame, the progeny of Singing In The Rain superstar Debbie Reynolds and Jewish crooner Eddie Fisher, who the lady-author lovingly depicts as a neglectful, perpetually pot-addled gold-digger and shameless media wh*re. Seriously. Fisher accomplishes the formidable feat of crafting thumbnail satirical sketches of George Lucas, ex-husband Paul Simon and her dear old dad that are unsparing yet strangely affectionate. Fisher’s chapter on Star Wars for example, begins,
Fisher grew up with a bifurcated perception of Reynolds as both her mom and as a magical creature of show business, a genially insane glamourpuss with only a vague conception of how human beings are supposed to behave. For example Reynolds was so terrified by Fisher’s youthful experimentation with hallucinogens that she had Cary Grant, who famously dabbled with LSD for psychoanalytic reasons, call Fisher, who he had never met, and deliver a stern lecture to her on the dangers of LSD.
Fisher possesses both the kind of surreal experiences no one else has and the ability to distill those peculiar events into the perfect anecdote. In the case of the Grant story, Fisher transforms that bizarre conversation into a free-floating, digressive tangent that touches upon receiving an unexpected, Reynolds-engineered call from Ava Gardner, making a Wizard Of Oz-themed film with Chevy Chase, Eve Arden and a small army little people and her fame-crazed dad strolling up to Grant at Grace Kelly’s funeral and blurting out “something along the lines of, ‘My daughter Carrie is addicted to acid, and I’m very worried about her. Would you mind maybe having a talk with her?” Blam! Cue second concerned phone conversation with Grant about Fisher’s non-existent LSD addiction.
Carrie Fisher’s life is a perfect storm of funny. Not many folks are privileged enough to have Bob Dylan show up at one of their cocktail parties wearing a parka and sunglasses. Even fewer are capable of coming up with the perfect zinger for the occasion: “Thank God you wore that, Bob, because sometimes late at night here the sun gets really, really bright, then it snows.” Fisher’s big, beautiful brain is the perfect filter for a life too trippy and surreal for fiction.
I like to think that in every soul-shattering trauma lies an amusing anecdote. Fisher’s life beautifully illustrates my theory: she’s capable of wringing the breeziest of laughs from the most horrifying of experiences. Her delightful new memoir Wishful Drinking delves deep into the seldom-explored lighter side of alcoholism, parental abandonment, drug addiction, manic-depression, and what used to be called “electro-shock therapy” but now is known by the more sensitive term, “frying yer brain up but good to chase away them demons and spooks and brain-bogeymen and whatnot”. Oh, and waking up one morning next to a dead gay Republican. And marrying a gay man. Yes, Fisher has learned to laugh long and hard at unspeakable traumas: madness, death, divorce and most harrowing of all, the dialogue of George Lucas.
Fisher has lived to tell the tale, and what a tale it is. Fisher was born in the white-hot epicenter of fame, the progeny of Singing In The Rain superstar Debbie Reynolds and Jewish crooner Eddie Fisher, who the lady-author lovingly depicts as a neglectful, perpetually pot-addled gold-digger and shameless media wh*re. Seriously. Fisher accomplishes the formidable feat of crafting thumbnail satirical sketches of George Lucas, ex-husband Paul Simon and her dear old dad that are unsparing yet strangely affectionate. Fisher’s chapter on Star Wars for example, begins,
“Forty-three years ago George Lucas ruined my life. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. And now, seventy-two years later, people are still asking me if I knew Star Wars was going to bee that big of a hit.
Yes, of course I knew. We all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression—and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expression for him and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression.
Not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but he hardly talked at all. His only two directions to the three of us in the first film were “faster” and “more intense.”
Incidentally I like to think that if anyone is ever crazy enough to let me direct a movie my only two directions will be, “More gay!” and “Less gay!” What more really needs to be said? In Fisher’s telling, Lucas comes off as a sort of emotionally ******** idiot-savant, an overgrown boy genius utterly devoid of social skills yet blessed with a fierce conviction that there is no underwear in outer space. Hence Princess Leia’s fabled bralessness.Yes, of course I knew. We all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression—and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expression for him and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression.
Not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but he hardly talked at all. His only two directions to the three of us in the first film were “faster” and “more intense.”
Fisher grew up with a bifurcated perception of Reynolds as both her mom and as a magical creature of show business, a genially insane glamourpuss with only a vague conception of how human beings are supposed to behave. For example Reynolds was so terrified by Fisher’s youthful experimentation with hallucinogens that she had Cary Grant, who famously dabbled with LSD for psychoanalytic reasons, call Fisher, who he had never met, and deliver a stern lecture to her on the dangers of LSD.
Fisher possesses both the kind of surreal experiences no one else has and the ability to distill those peculiar events into the perfect anecdote. In the case of the Grant story, Fisher transforms that bizarre conversation into a free-floating, digressive tangent that touches upon receiving an unexpected, Reynolds-engineered call from Ava Gardner, making a Wizard Of Oz-themed film with Chevy Chase, Eve Arden and a small army little people and her fame-crazed dad strolling up to Grant at Grace Kelly’s funeral and blurting out “something along the lines of, ‘My daughter Carrie is addicted to acid, and I’m very worried about her. Would you mind maybe having a talk with her?” Blam! Cue second concerned phone conversation with Grant about Fisher’s non-existent LSD addiction.
scriptgirl
Active Member
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Examiner
Carrie Fisher’s life is a perfect storm of funny. Not many folks are privileged enough to have Bob Dylan show up at one of their cocktail parties wearing a parka and sunglasses. Even fewer are capable of coming up with the perfect zinger for the occasion: “Thank God you wore that, Bob, because sometimes late at night here the sun gets really, really bright, then it snows.” Fisher’s big, beautiful brain is the perfect filter for a life too trippy and surreal for fiction.
I like to think that in every soul-shattering trauma lies an amusing anecdote. Fisher’s life beautifully illustrates my theory: she’s capable of wringing the breeziest of laughs from the most horrifying of experiences. Her delightful new memoir Wishful Drinking delves deep into the seldom-explored lighter side of alcoholism, parental abandonment, drug addiction, manic-depression, and what used to be called “electro-shock therapy” but now is known by the more sensitive term, “frying yer brain up but good to chase away them demons and spooks and brain-bogeymen and whatnot”. Oh, and waking up one morning next to a dead gay Republican. And marrying a gay man. Yes, Fisher has learned to laugh long and hard at unspeakable traumas: madness, death, divorce and most harrowing of all, the dialogue of George Lucas.
Fisher has lived to tell the tale, and what a tale it is. Fisher was born in the white-hot epicenter of fame, the progeny of Singing In The Rain superstar Debbie Reynolds and Jewish crooner Eddie Fisher, who the lady-author lovingly depicts as a neglectful, perpetually pot-addled gold-digger and shameless media wh*re. Seriously. Fisher accomplishes the formidable feat of crafting thumbnail satirical sketches of George Lucas, ex-husband Paul Simon and her dear old dad that are unsparing yet strangely affectionate. Fisher’s chapter on Star Wars for example, begins,
Fisher grew up with a bifurcated perception of Reynolds as both her mom and as a magical creature of show business, a genially insane glamourpuss with only a vague conception of how human beings are supposed to behave. For example Reynolds was so terrified by Fisher’s youthful experimentation with hallucinogens that she had Cary Grant, who famously dabbled with LSD for psychoanalytic reasons, call Fisher, who he had never met, and deliver a stern lecture to her on the dangers of LSD.
Fisher possesses both the kind of surreal experiences no one else has and the ability to distill those peculiar events into the perfect anecdote. In the case of the Grant story, Fisher transforms that bizarre conversation into a free-floating, digressive tangent that touches upon receiving an unexpected, Reynolds-engineered call from Ava Gardner, making a Wizard Of Oz-themed film with Chevy Chase, Eve Arden and a small army little people and her fame-crazed dad strolling up to Grant at Grace Kelly’s funeral and blurting out “something along the lines of, ‘My daughter Carrie is addicted to acid, and I’m very worried about her. Would you mind maybe having a talk with her?” Blam! Cue second concerned phone conversation with Grant about Fisher’s non-existent LSD addiction.
Carrie Fisher’s life is a perfect storm of funny. Not many folks are privileged enough to have Bob Dylan show up at one of their cocktail parties wearing a parka and sunglasses. Even fewer are capable of coming up with the perfect zinger for the occasion: “Thank God you wore that, Bob, because sometimes late at night here the sun gets really, really bright, then it snows.” Fisher’s big, beautiful brain is the perfect filter for a life too trippy and surreal for fiction.
I like to think that in every soul-shattering trauma lies an amusing anecdote. Fisher’s life beautifully illustrates my theory: she’s capable of wringing the breeziest of laughs from the most horrifying of experiences. Her delightful new memoir Wishful Drinking delves deep into the seldom-explored lighter side of alcoholism, parental abandonment, drug addiction, manic-depression, and what used to be called “electro-shock therapy” but now is known by the more sensitive term, “frying yer brain up but good to chase away them demons and spooks and brain-bogeymen and whatnot”. Oh, and waking up one morning next to a dead gay Republican. And marrying a gay man. Yes, Fisher has learned to laugh long and hard at unspeakable traumas: madness, death, divorce and most harrowing of all, the dialogue of George Lucas.
Fisher has lived to tell the tale, and what a tale it is. Fisher was born in the white-hot epicenter of fame, the progeny of Singing In The Rain superstar Debbie Reynolds and Jewish crooner Eddie Fisher, who the lady-author lovingly depicts as a neglectful, perpetually pot-addled gold-digger and shameless media wh*re. Seriously. Fisher accomplishes the formidable feat of crafting thumbnail satirical sketches of George Lucas, ex-husband Paul Simon and her dear old dad that are unsparing yet strangely affectionate. Fisher’s chapter on Star Wars for example, begins,
“Forty-three years ago George Lucas ruined my life. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. And now, seventy-two years later, people are still asking me if I knew Star Wars was going to bee that big of a hit.
Yes, of course I knew. We all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression—and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expression for him and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression.
Not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but he hardly talked at all. His only two directions to the three of us in the first film were “faster” and “more intense.”
Incidentally I like to think that if anyone is ever crazy enough to let me direct a movie my only two directions will be, “More gay!” and “Less gay!” What more really needs to be said? In Fisher’s telling, Lucas comes off as a sort of emotionally ******** idiot-savant, an overgrown boy genius utterly devoid of social skills yet blessed with a fierce conviction that there is no underwear in outer space. Hence Princess Leia’s fabled bralessness.Yes, of course I knew. We all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression—and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expression for him and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression.
Not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but he hardly talked at all. His only two directions to the three of us in the first film were “faster” and “more intense.”
Fisher grew up with a bifurcated perception of Reynolds as both her mom and as a magical creature of show business, a genially insane glamourpuss with only a vague conception of how human beings are supposed to behave. For example Reynolds was so terrified by Fisher’s youthful experimentation with hallucinogens that she had Cary Grant, who famously dabbled with LSD for psychoanalytic reasons, call Fisher, who he had never met, and deliver a stern lecture to her on the dangers of LSD.
Fisher possesses both the kind of surreal experiences no one else has and the ability to distill those peculiar events into the perfect anecdote. In the case of the Grant story, Fisher transforms that bizarre conversation into a free-floating, digressive tangent that touches upon receiving an unexpected, Reynolds-engineered call from Ava Gardner, making a Wizard Of Oz-themed film with Chevy Chase, Eve Arden and a small army little people and her fame-crazed dad strolling up to Grant at Grace Kelly’s funeral and blurting out “something along the lines of, ‘My daughter Carrie is addicted to acid, and I’m very worried about her. Would you mind maybe having a talk with her?” Blam! Cue second concerned phone conversation with Grant about Fisher’s non-existent LSD addiction.
scriptgirl
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- 5
This is London
Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan is not a household name, but for those who adore him he’s something of a god — a god of small things. His features, most notably Uzak and Climates, tell gently paced stories about ordinary families and star amateurs (often Ceylan himself, and/or his wife and parents) whose weathered faces are more memorable than their names. Ceylan’s followers, however, may be in for a jolt. Like so many in his oeuvre, this latest project won a big prize at Cannes. Yet it definitely marks a change in tack.
Three Monkeys is a noirish thriller — boasting an explosive beginning, middle and end. The pace is still slow and the kiss-kiss bang-bangs take place off camera, but the effect is seismic.
A politician called Servet (the exquisitely sweaty Ercan Kesal) is involved in a hit-and-run accident and gets his phlegmatic driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol) to take the rap: in return for money, Eyup will spend a year in jail. The only problem is that Eyup’s frustrated, layabout son, Ismail (Rifat Sungar) wants money now and Ismail’s anxious wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), decides to ask for an advance payment.
She dresses up for the occasion and only then do we realise what a beauty she is. So does Servet. It’s one of the failings of the film that you can probably guess much of the rest.
Doomy fate hangs over the four central characters. Are we responsible for our “sins” or are we victims of circumstance? Does money allow us to escape the laws of the jungle or is it the ultimate weapon? Can our response to evil acts inspire good? What is the significance of the weird distorted infants that begin to appear?
Ceylan’s film is full of interesting questions, it’s just a little short on interesting characters. Pawns on a chess board are hard to care about. It’s not the actors’ fault. Aslan has a wonderful face, reminiscent of screen goddesses from the past (Paulette Godard and Ava Gardner, in particular) and conveys tension beautifully.
Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan is not a household name, but for those who adore him he’s something of a god — a god of small things. His features, most notably Uzak and Climates, tell gently paced stories about ordinary families and star amateurs (often Ceylan himself, and/or his wife and parents) whose weathered faces are more memorable than their names. Ceylan’s followers, however, may be in for a jolt. Like so many in his oeuvre, this latest project won a big prize at Cannes. Yet it definitely marks a change in tack.
Three Monkeys is a noirish thriller — boasting an explosive beginning, middle and end. The pace is still slow and the kiss-kiss bang-bangs take place off camera, but the effect is seismic.
A politician called Servet (the exquisitely sweaty Ercan Kesal) is involved in a hit-and-run accident and gets his phlegmatic driver, Eyup (Yavuz Bingol) to take the rap: in return for money, Eyup will spend a year in jail. The only problem is that Eyup’s frustrated, layabout son, Ismail (Rifat Sungar) wants money now and Ismail’s anxious wife, Hacer (Hatice Aslan), decides to ask for an advance payment.
She dresses up for the occasion and only then do we realise what a beauty she is. So does Servet. It’s one of the failings of the film that you can probably guess much of the rest.
Doomy fate hangs over the four central characters. Are we responsible for our “sins” or are we victims of circumstance? Does money allow us to escape the laws of the jungle or is it the ultimate weapon? Can our response to evil acts inspire good? What is the significance of the weird distorted infants that begin to appear?
Ceylan’s film is full of interesting questions, it’s just a little short on interesting characters. Pawns on a chess board are hard to care about. It’s not the actors’ fault. Aslan has a wonderful face, reminiscent of screen goddesses from the past (Paulette Godard and Ava Gardner, in particular) and conveys tension beautifully.
scriptgirl
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Art Brokerage
scriptgirl
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- 5
Hollywood Cats
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scriptgirl
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