Barbet Schroeder – Christian Sauvé

Kiss of Death (1995)

ByChristian Sauvé 2020-05-312025-09-07 Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) The first thing anyone will notice about Kiss of Death is—holy moly, what a good cast of actors: David Caruso (back when he thought TV stardom led to a cinema career), Samuel L. Jackson (looking young!), Nicolas Cage (as a crime lord!), Helen Hunt, Stanley Tucci (with some hair!), Michael Rapaport, Ving Rhames… I mean, that’s interesting. The second thing one notices after the credits is—wow, this was a completely unremarkable crime thriller. Directed in solid but unspectacular fashion by Barbet Schroeder, it’s an update to the 1947 film noir classic that transposes the story in the 1990s, but doesn’t really do anything all that exceptional with it all. It’s not uninteresting—at the very least, you can say that it’s watchable without trouble. But it’s not anything more: moments where the film is overwrought (thank you, Nicolas Cage) almost give a glimpse into what this Kiss of Death could have been with more verve from everyone. In its current state, though, it’s having a really hard time distinguishing itself from the middle of the pack of 1990s crime thrillers: admittedly a good decade for those, but not an excuse for a film that doesn’t quite reach its objectives.

(Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, July 2021) I know, I know – it makes absolutely no sense that I would see Kiss of Death for a second time in a year when there are far, far better movies that I have either not seen or seen only once. But as seasoned reviewers will tell you: no movies are as hard to review as the indifferent ones. You can be eloquent about the great or good movies; you can be acerbic about the bad or the terrible ones, but those movies firmly in the middle? Good luck even remembering them. So it is that I decided to have a second go at the 1995 version Kiss of Death, largely because I’d just seen the original 1947 one, and there was the remake playing again right now. Alas, I don’t have much to report – the remake is just as featureless and forgettable as the first time. The casting remains interesting, what with David Caruso, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Helen Hunt, Ving Rhames, and Stanley Tucci (in the awkward balding phase of his career). And while the cast slightly elevates the material (with particular mention to Nicholas Cage, who’s given the unenviable task of measuring up to Richard Widmark’s iconic performance in the original film) it’s really not enough to distinguish what remains a somewhat humdrum mid-1990s thriller. I can understand the desire to strike a mark away from the original noir classic, but in setting out to do its own thing and update the material, this remake forgoes the psychotic vileness of the antagonist, the strong atmospheric cinematography and the impending feeling of doom for the protagonist. (The happy-ish ending is not a surprise like it was in the original, but par for the course of such thrillers.) What we’re left is largely undistinguishable from so many other thrillers of the time, executed with mere competence but no real flair. I’m reasonably confident that I’m going to forget nearly everything about this remake within days, so you may get a third viewing in the next few months.

Movie Review

Single White Female (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-11-182023-03-19 Movie Review

(On TV, November 2019) Calling a film influential is not the same as calling it good. At face value, especially when seen today, Single White Female is clearly not that successful: Ludicrous plotting, incredibly familiar plot elements, undercooked direction and an execution that seems to squander the possibilities of its high-concept premise through obvious choices. But this is nearly thirty years later, and the very qualities that made Single White Female a bit of a sleeper hit have been absorbed and endlessly repeated by a certain strain of cinema. What was novel at the time (a female-focused domestic thriller featuring a “roommate from hell,” directed by a woman, featuring two up-and-coming female leads) has become more commonplace. The premise was so compelling that it led to many, many imitators—a good chunk of made-for-Lifetime thrillers (not to mention BET original movies) veers very close to Single White Female. Watching it today is like going to the fountain from which those imitators have drunk. You won’t be surprised to see that it’s somewhat more thematically deep than surface imitations, or that some narrative beats are clunky when they are compared to later streamlined imitators. It’s clearly a B-movie, but both Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh (both of which have had decent careers in the years following their presence here) do well in the lead roles, as director Barbet Schroeder keeps the potboiler going. While much of the plot mechanics play about as well today as they did, the film is clearly stamped with its early-1990s by its portrayal of computer technology at the time, including an early use of the Internet. Single White Female is not a great movie and its imitators have made it far less distinctive, but it’s watchable enough today—especially as an example of female-produced thriller at a time when such things were much less common.