Not unfamiliar

We were about 20 minutes into Love Lies Bleeding, when I realized: "Oh. This is True Romance." The latter is a Quentin Tarantino scripted and Tony Scott directed film about two lovers in the midst of darker circumstances than either really wants to engage in, who end up being forced to engage and fight their way out. In the latter film, it's Christian Slater, playing a nerdy comic book store employee, and Patricia Arquette, playing a vagabond turning tricks to try to make it somewhere. In Love Lies Bleeding, it's gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) and bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian) who fall together, pursuing or avoiding their own dreams and then get wrapped up in a scenario that is way beyond what either expected and, of course, have to fight their way out. The one slight difference is the inclusion of some degree of phantasmagoria, which reminded Tricia of Natural Born Killers, which is another good reference to the type and style of film that this is, including the preponderance of gore and the willingness to show sex as the human thing that it is, rather than the Hollywood style that it's often glossed with. But having said all of that largely positive stuff, the obvious rejoinder is that the whole package isn't exactly original, either, other than the central couple of the story being two women, as opposed to the hetero pairings of the other two films.

That's not to say that it was a bad film, because it wasn't. It was pretty entertaining, all things considered, even if the screenplay trended toward shock value more than story depth. But it was the entertainingly familiar, rather than something that grabbed you by the brain and said: "This is new. Pay attention." It's set in the late 90s, as we hear radio announcements about the fall of the Berlin Wall, which seems like a rather arbitrary time period, at first, but later becomes more apparent when the question of readily available steroids becomes a part of the story. I wonder sometimes, as well, if films get set in the recent past to avoid the complication of cell phones and the instant communication that they now provide, which is a good way to blow holes in your story of tension and mystery that would otherwise be sapped by someone picking up their phone and using GPS. (This reminds me of one of my favorite perspectives on William Gibson's Neuromancer, the novel that invented the concept of cyberspace, and how he was able to imagine a world run entirely on an interactive cyber network 50 years from now, complete with self-aware AI, but people were still using pay phones...)

As with many films in this situation, the performances are what carry it. Both Stewart and O'Brian play characters that are human, in that they display poor judgment, rampant emotion, and a predilection for decisions made by passion, rather than reason. Similarly, Ed Harris is great as Lou's shady father, Lou Sr. But the characters themselves give the whiff of being stock-obvious. Jackie is a bodybuilder looking for fame from bog-standard Oklahoma, rather than somewhere more unusual, like a Jersey suburb. Lou Sr. has a fascination with beetles, which serves as nothing other than a detail before a shocking moment right near the end. It doesn't form any part of the character other than as a distraction. Contrast this with Ted Levine's Jame Gumb is Silence of the Lambs, who was fascinated by moths (specifically, Death's-head hawkmoths) because of their inherent transformation from larva to moth, as he was attempting in his transition from male to female. That attraction to bugs reflected the essential nature of the character, whereas in this film, it's just something for the audience to ogle at ("The bug guy?" "Yeah, the bug guy.") Similarly, Lou is the frustrated person who detests both of her parents and doesn't talk about them with anyone if she can help it, but the story eventually pries her story out of her. This is where the screenplay might have let down the talent of the actors involved and the film as as a whole.

The final scene, which involves the aforementioned phantasmagoria, is somewhere between amusing and eyebrow-arching. Yes, we weren't really sure whether our "heroines" would survive or not and that's always good in terms of a story, but when it arcs into the fantastical, we kind of lose the emotion behind their otherwise very real and expected circumstances that led them to this point. You could say that the end of the film is where we arc into romance novel territory, which is a complete departure from Jackie and Lou's relationship to that point (including the sex scenes) and which is commendable, IMO, as far as writing goes, just to throw the audience for a second and get them to sit up and pay attention. But the ending moments can also be seen as maudlin, even if hilarious, and that's when I circle back to questioning why this screenplay seems like so many that have come before it, rather than branching out into its own approach that would make this film stand alone as its own production. So, yeah, worth a watch, but not compelling.

Furious path

When Pulp Fiction was released in 1994, it changed the film industry. Not only was the writing and pacing something that was largely unknown (outside of Tarantino's previous effort, Reservoir Dogs), but being an indy release, instead of something from a major studio (which would never, ever have taken the risk that both the material and the host of "non-bankable stars" presented), made many people inside and outside the industry sit up and take notice. But one of the main factors was the theme of the whole film. This was a gangster flick with realistic dialogue; with people who spoke about goofy, random stuff like real people, rather than always directly contributing to the plot ("You know, like Caine in Kung Fu.") One of the instructors at UCLA's prestigious film school said that the year after Pulp Fiction was released, every single senior project resembled it in at least some way. Now that Everything Everywhere All At Once has turned Hollywood on its ear about absurdist comedies, it's likely that we're going to be seeing many more of them. I don't want to accuse Polite Society of borrowing that approach, as it's probable that the latter film was in production long before EEAAO was released, but I feel pretty safe in thinking that almost everyone in the theater on Tuesday had the former film firmly in mind when writer/director Nida Manzoor's production started blossoming into what it becomes.

And, in truth, the overall premise of the film was much more like RRR, which was more fantastical than absurdist, and you can see Manzoor both mocking and embracing the Pakistani culture that is hers, and demonstrating its distinction from the staid English surroundings, even as teenaged Ria (Priya Kansara) does her best to try to fit in. That is, as long as "fitting in" means she can still embrace her alter ego (The Fury) and eventually let it lead her to her preferred career of stuntwoman, like her idol, Eunice Huthart (a stuntwoman in our "real life.") If that sounds like a great foundation for a comedy, it absolutely is, even without the central plot, which is Ria attempting to save her sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), from what Ria believes will be a disaster of a marriage to what seems like the perfect man. Indeed, I could've seen what might've been just as successful a story simply following Ria around and seeing what she (and The Fury) stumble into in the course of daily life. But that would've been much more like Tarantino and not nearly as much a fantasy as the story turns out to be. Throughout, I had a feeling that Manzoor had simply come up with a story that made her laugh and then did her best to convey that sense of humor to everyone else which, for the most part, she succeeded at.

What also made the film funny in a meta sense is that Kansara did so much work that it was almost a star vehicle for an actor not yet a star (but whom almost certainly should become one.) She was the lead and, in many ways, the whole film, as all of the other characters moved in her orbit and she was the driving force of almost all of the action, whether as angst-ridden teenager Ria or The Fury, who always needed a target upon which to focus her furiousness (much like another hero of yore.) One such target is family friend, Raheela (Nimra Bucha) who did a great job of stealing just a bit of the focus from Kansara, turning what resembled a borderline superhero film into more of a Bond-esque exercise in a battle of wits between the presumed bad guy and the hero who needed a mission in life. Alongside of that and one of the elements that kept the film rooted in some form of reality were Shobu Kapoor and Jeff Mirza, Ria and Lena's mother and father, who did a great job in bit roles trying to come to grips with The Fury while keeping up with the Jones-Nawazes. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri, as Ria's friends, Clara and Alba, as well. The two of them were a constant source of humor in the whole scheme, with Beh especially diving into the absurdist themes of the film and her role with gusto.

It's fair to say that perhaps a bit too much time was left to Ria dwelling in the aforementioned angst, as you can feel her frustration at not being understood, but also feel your own frustration when she kept falling into the most obvious of social obstacles, but that's what happens sometimes when one character is carrying so much weight. I'm engaging in a lot of comparisons to try to explain the film, which is kind of complimentary in its own way, since it was still definitely its own thing, even as much as it resembled so many others, intentionally or not. As a long-time fan of comics and superhero stuff, in general, and firmly burned out on the whole Marvel thing, Polite Society was a welcome reminder of just what these kinds of stories can deliver. Recommended.

Homage to the lack of interest

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino still doing what he's always been doing: spending time imagining how the American film industry could have been different, while offering a paean to what it was, anyway. The only real problem is that he's not doing it as well, anymore.

Tarantino has long been criticized for his use of homage to other films and film styles. Reservoir Dogs, for example, has been cited for a number of similarities to Ringo Lam's City on Fire. Tarantino hasn't shied away from these implied insults, suggesting that what he does is reference the work of other authors while putting his own spin on it. This latest film, though, is what amounts to an homage to a time period and is subsumed in cultural references to that period, using the famed Manson murders as something of a real world backbone to what was happening in the fantasy land known as Hollywood. In fact, both male leads are based on actual people, with Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton being a pastiche of actors like Tab Hunter and Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth representing long-time Burt Reynolds stunt double, Hal Needham. Margot Robbie, of course, plays the actual Sharon Tate (and, on that note, Mike Moh's Bruce Lee is both well done and fairly amusing.) The period in question was one of transition in Hollywood (and the nation), where tried and true stalwarts like Westerns were giving way to the New Hollywood of more introspective pictures in the hands of names like Scorsese, Coppola, and Altman. Tarantino takes time to emphasize that societal change with Dalton and Booth's constant references to "hippies" and how they're seemingly appearing everywhere, with occasionally bloody consequences, while Dalton lives out the creative change, with his type of performer no longer being in demand.

So there is a story here, of Dalton's career struggle and Booth's faithful assistance. And there is a message here; of transition, of social transformation, and of the continued presence of violence in all of it. But what's missing is anything particularly memorable about the film. Tarantino made his bones with dialogue. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Inglourious Basterds, even his segment in Four Rooms are all memorable for the way their characters communicate. Who can forget the conversation in the diner that veers from a discussion on whether pigs are fit to eat to the seeming nobility of a lifestyle change? Or the tension of a farmhouse in France while an SS colonel expounds on work, duty, and milk? Or the matter-of-fact explanation of a murder? Nothing like that exists in Once Upon a Time. There aren't really any memorable scenes, outside of a violent confrontation near the end and Dalton's occasional rants about himself in a mirror. One of them was dialogue-light and the other was dialogue-neutral. Despite the acting prowess of most of the people in the film, the one or two memorable lines come from child actress (excuse me: "actor") Julia Butters who stuck out as an homage to Kim Darby's role in True Grit. If you go into this expecting a Hans Landa or a Jules Winfield or a Calvin Candle, you're going to be disappointed. Tarantino took some criticism for his previous film, The Hateful Eight, being a wholly predictable and somewhat formulaic Western. Now he's made a film about the (temporary) end of Westerns that is no less predictable.

DiCaprio is his usual intense self, bringing energy and animus to a routine role. Pitt's job on screen is basically to be cool. Pitt is very good at being cool (see: Ocean's Eleven), so he handles it with aplomb. But that's as far as they both go. There's not enough in this script to give them moments that would leave an impact in the minds of the viewer. No one is going to be walking out of the theater reciting Ezekiel 25:17 or giving the plantation owner's opinion on the structure of power in the Old South. Watching a stuntman's personality expressed in his driving style and Sharon Tate's giddiness at her own success onscreen is interesting enough to keep the film moving, but there's frankly nothing that one walks out with and says "That's a Tarantino film!" until we get to the faux commercial during the credits for his long-time fictional Red Apple cigarettes. Again, this is an homage to an era, so we get a lot of looks at signage, architecture, car fenders, and other signs of the real world of that time surrounding the fantasy world and that's all well and good for a decent film. But it doesn't quite reach the level of a great one and, having been a Tarantino fan since the early 90s, that's usually what I'm expecting.

There have been some comparisons of this film to Jackie Brown; generally considered the weakest of his efforts but also the most languid and most personal of the stories that he's told. I think the comparison is apt, as this is a personal story, slowly played out amidst the foibles and contrasting outer lifestyles of the two leads, but whose lives intersect in their careers which, again, are part of the homage. Bit appearances by the usual suspects of Tarantino (Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, etc.) are fine as inside jokes for those who've followed his films, but they don't add much, either (those seeing this as a meta reference to the former studio stables of actors are likely getting the joke.) I read about a poll the other day that mentioned the higher percentage than normal of attendees seeing the film because of the director and because of the actors involved. That actually says a lot about the film itself and why I can only passably recommend it. It's not bad. It's just not that great, either.