Happily married, never satisfied

With Valentine's Day approaching, I decided to revisit one of my favorite "relationship" movies. Below is a little blurb I wrote about it several years ago (originally posted on my "Sorely Missed" page). I have no new observations other than that it remains romantic and provocative.

So what is it with these happily married couples? Is the prospect of spending your life with one person really as unrealistic as it seems? I found Massy Tadjedin's 2011 film "Last Night" provocative and telling. Being married doesn't mean you won't be attracted to other people. Being married doesn't mean you married the right person. Cheating isn't always physical. And none of these things mean that you can't stay happily married. 

The film is well-paced, handsomely shot and doesn't try to be more than it is -- an examination of a young marriage when temptation rears its inevitable head. It's worth a look if for no other reason than to ask yourself what you would do in the four protagonists' shoes. 

Director: Massy Tadjedin | Writer: Massy Tadjedin | STARRING: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes & Guillaume Canet   

What happened to the heat?

I was not aware of the 1971 film “The Beguiled” until the release of Sofia Coppola’s 2017 remake of the Gothic thriller. The original was the third film featuring Clint Eastwood as star and Don Siegel as director. Their most popular collaboration is “Dirty Harry,” released the same year as “The Beguiled.”

“The Beguiled” was an unusual project for a director and actor best known for their action movies. In fact, Siegel believed the movie’s failure at the box office was due to Universal Pictures’ marketing it as another Eastwood actioner. But their work on “The Beguiled” showed there was much more to their storytelling talent than showing the hard edges of testosterone-laden crime and punishment. They don’t abandon crime and punishment in “The Beguiled,” but women are running the action as the movie examines lust, loneliness and Southern sensibilities.

I also find it interesting to see how men perceive female behavior and motivations; the material is based on a novel by Thomas Cullinan. Yet we get to see those perceptions through the lens of screenplays written or co-written by women in both the 1971 and the 2017 adaptation. The 1971 film was written by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp, both using pseudonyms, and the 2017 version was written by Sofia Coppola.

Jo Ann Harris and Clint Eastwood in "The Beguiled" (1971)

The story is simple enough. The women of a Confederate boarding school decide to harbor an attractive, wounded Union soldier near the end of the Civil War. Their isolation makes him especially predatory and makes them especially susceptible to his charms. It becomes a cat-and-mouse situation – but do the women represent cats or mice?

It’s an interesting story, and both films are well-made, but I’m afraid my biggest concern is the utter absence of heat in the Coppola version. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the story is the sexual tension and potential for release between the wounded soldier and the women at the school. Although I don’t think of Clint Eastwood as a sex symbol, but I do find him sexy in some of his early films, and this is one of them. His potential paramours in “The Beguiled” include Geraldine Page as the stern and stifled headmistress; Elizabeth Hartman as a chaste teacher; Jo Ann Harris as the minx; and Mae Mercer as a wise servant. All four actresses are excellent, and Eastwood generates considerable heat with all of them.

So I was expecting major fireworks in the 2017 remake, especially since Colin Farrell, essentially sex incarnate as far as I’m concerned, plays the lustful soldier. There’s a scene in the 2002 thriller “Minority Report” where Farrell quickly steps in front of Kathryn Morris to stop her from walking away from him, and the sex appeal he exuded in that completely nonsexual moment literally made me gasp.

Both movies feature sex scenes, but Coppola chose to leave a lot more to the imagination as far as the multiple seductions the soldier attempted – seductions that were far more important to the story than any consummation. There appeared to be a chemistry problem in her version as well. There was no chemistry between Farrell and Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning, and only minimal chemistry between Farrell and Kirsten Dunst.

Coppola won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and her film is a lovely, austere, ethereal meditation on how vulnerable creatures are not necessarily harmless and the true nature of femmes fatale. She also keeps the war at bay, focusing strictly on the women and school girls and the soldier. But her film lacks the earthiness and realism that makes the original 1971 version so erotic in its crimes, understandably culminating in the extreme passions that insist on punishment in the end.

Classic cinema's stellar host

So sad to hear of Robert Osborne's death. Such a gracious and engaging man! Was honored to co-host The Maltese Falcon with him in 2009. @tcm pic.twitter.com/8NWJ1sDs6N

— TheIncredibleMontage (@IncredMontage) March 7, 2017

The life of the dinner party

"The Invitation"

'Tis the season for all things creepy, and with Halloween being right around the corner, I'd like to share a few words about "The Invitation." Released in 2015 and directed by Karyn Kusama, “The Invitation" is a highly creepy suspense film that I have been recommending to everyone I know because it is so rare that I am riveted by a modern scary movie. Logan Marshall-Green plays Will, a man attending a dinner party at the home of his ex-wife, Eden. Eden, played by Tammy Blanchard, and her new husband have been away and have invited a close-knit group of their mutual friends to catch up over a great meal. Will even brings his girlfriend, played by Emayatzy Coriealdi, for support, and they both seem pretty steady going in (despite a grisly incident with a deer they hit on the way that sets a forbidding tone for the viewer). But even though everyone else seems to be having a grand time at the dinner party, Will is uneasy, sensing an undercurrent of something dangerous with all the locked doors, inaccessible cell phone service, and two peculiar new friends also in attendance. Is he just being paranoid? Resentful about his ex-wife’s newfound happiness? Or is there really some kind of dark plot afoot?

The bulk of the film is trying to figure out exactly what’s happening or, more precisely, whether anything troubling is happening at all. The movies I find truly frightening are the ones involving real people experiencing things that could happen in real life. Real people dealing with really crazy people. Not zombies, not aliens, not monsters or vampires, not ghosts or demons, but actual disturbed people living among us. That’s not a knock on those sub-genres; I can name favorites from all of them, from “28 Days Later” to “The Exorcist” to “Alien.” But real people in everyday circumstances are the ones who instill fear. “The Invitation” puts you among people you might like to hang out with, but it keeps you off-balance with things that could be nothing but also could be the end of everything.