Archive for category: Reviews

This movie signifies the decline of French civilization, or French cinema, or the career of Alain Resnais. Or maybe, as other reviewers claim, it is a masterpiece. To me, nothing made sense. Unlike Marienbad, where inscrutability created a mood and fomented ratiocinization, here the musical score was unduly portentous and the characters left me cold. I searched reviews to understand the ending, but of course reviews have an excuse for ducking that point. I did find Anne Consigny quite attractive.

A bizarre movie, Italian-style. There were shades of Antonioni and Visconti’s The Leopard, with Tilda Swinton as a blonde Russian fitting in or not. Based on the title, I was expecting a moral about love; but love seemed to go in every direction, based on which characters you considered. The director cut away from each scene before it finished, which led to the impression that he cared more for impression, and fashion, and Italianness than making a gripping story.

Five characters of five nationalities in a country estate in Uruguay, struggling over the legacy of a popular one-book author, sounds like the setting for intriguing interpersonal relationships, if not a postmodern Chekhovian roundelay. Unfortunately, only Charlotte Gainsbourg and Anthony Hopkins inhabited their roles in a convincing manner, and too often the acting resembled an early run-through of a tired, very tired, Merchant-Ivory script.  The other characters were one-dimensional, the plot was predictable, and the stakes seemed very low indeed.

I wish that the star, Thierry Guetta, had been more attractive and that he had been a better videographer, because the story of street art was inherently fascinating; I would have loved a movie all about Banksy, the nominal producer of this film (I have my doubts). As it was, Exit provided an inside, introductory look at one small niche of contemporary art, an agreeable way to pass a couple of rainy afternoon hours.

A very fine movie with beautiful stars, humor and pathos, engaging plot and a wonderful feel for the exotic Argentine culture. By telling the story through the prosecutor-turned-novelist’s eyes, director Campanella could mix fact, imagination and speculation in a way that kept us guessing, and a little enchanted, too. The “secret” in their eyes was a love story that was never very secret but provided a satisfying, albeit complicated, ending to a movie so much truer than the Streep-Baldwin-Martin tangle.