Bebe Neuwirth

  • Modern Persuasion (2020)

    Modern Persuasion (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) Expectations matter a lot in how reviewers approach movies. You can take a look at Modern Persuasion and come away with two different conclusions simply based on what you know about it beforehand. If you come at it having read the Jane Austen repertoire, you already know that it’s a (as the title says) modern retelling of Austen’s last novel Persuasion… and you’re not likely to be impressed. Even a casual trawl of reviews available on the web will show a recurring theme of literate reviewers being disappointed in the adaptation. But not everyone has read the novel, and this is one of the cases where ignorance is an advantage. (Wait, did I really write this?)  Viewers coming to Modern Persuasion expecting just an average romantic comedy — or better yet, coming off a string of bottom-grade Hallmark movies—are likely to get a different impression with striking characters and blisteringly fast-paced dialogue. Our heroine is that favourite of modern romances: the funny, capable, beautiful heroine who, somehow, doesn’t have time for a boyfriend and so remains completely available when an old flame (well, the one old flame) walks back in her life, flush with dot-com cash. We all know where this is going, but Modern Persuasion does have the good sense to push the supporting cast to hilarious extremes and to layer rapid-fire dialogue to keep our attention. Alicia Witt does well in the lead role, but the supporting cast is filled with scene-stealers, most notably Liza Lapira as an outspoken pregnant lesbian, Mark Moses as an older executive trying to stay hip, and Bebe Neuwirth perfectly in her element as a sharp-tongued aunt. The dialogue is what powers most of Modern Persuasion — running at a mile a minute, piling up elaborate similes with punchlines in a way that may be exhausting but always worth a listen. The result is not without its weaker moments — there’s an attempt at creating suspense over an engagement that doesn’t work, for instance, and you can certainly argue that the cast is slightly too large to be consistently interesting. But as far as contemporary comedies featuring urban professionals, I can think of several worse choices than Modern Persuasion. Just don’t expect it to be the second coming of Jane Austen.

  • Fame (2009)

    Fame (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Having seen the original Fame a while ago, I was more curious than hopeful that the 2009 remake was going to be any good, especially considering my decidedly mixed feelings about the first one. I was not exactly surprised nor disappointed. The first film had a serious problem in trying to cram years of high school for an ensemble cast into almost two and a quarter hours. Now the remake makes things even worse by shortening the time to barely 107 minutes and magnifying the superficiality of the treatment in such a way that the characters barely get a handful of scenes to move through an entire four-year arc. (It doesn’t help that the blandest characters get the most screentime.) I’ll say it again for good measure: the best way to do something like Fame is to do a miniseries. Four years in four hour-long episodes, if you want to be snappy about it (plus the audition as a first episode of five). Then there’s the dummying-down of the themes: The R-rated original definitely felt rough and gritty in presenting the darker underbelly of performance arts even at the high-school level—suicide, attempted rape and dead-end aspirations were its stock-in-trade. While this PG remake doesn’t quite scrub everything clean, it’s considerably more upbeat about what happens to its characters: suicide is prevented, sexual assault headed off, characters not graduating but doing it with a smile on their face. Fame clearly doesn’t want to stray too far away from the performance art dreams of the High School High generation (and various reality-TV shows promising instant fame) in making it look exhilarating and cool and glossy. This is a group of students able to think up an impromptu multidisciplinary jam at lunchtime, and the film does juice up the glamour of even a Halloween party. I’m not, surprisingly enough, completely opposed to a big glossy musical—at times, I could see in Fame the rough outline of what a twenty-first century musical could be. But being too closely wedded to the original movie puts this remake in an uncomfortable position, unable to do justice to the serious themes of the original, and yet unable to strike out on its own. No wonder that it sank without much of a trace—and, poignantly enough, that none of the young cast has gone on, eleven years later, to fame—the only recognizable names and faces here are the established actors playing the teachers, from a gruffly likable Kesley Grammer to straight-talking Charles S. Dutton or the ever-wonderful Bebe Neuwirth. This Fame remake is watchable enough, especially if you’re in a generous (or mindless) frame of mind, but it’s nowhere near where it should or could be.

  • Green Card (1990)

    Green Card (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) Part of the point of casting known actors is to transfer some of the emotional impact of earlier films into a new one, and I certainly experienced some of that going into Green Card. The film, a romantic comedy about two strangers technically marrying for personal gain (a green card for him, a coveted apartment for her) features Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu as romantic lead. While I like McDowell a lot (and not necessarily for her average acting skills), I’m not so fond of Depardieu—although some of this may be tainted from his rapidly declining twenty-first century personal image and reputation. As of 1990, however, forty-something Depardieu could still pass an acceptable romantic lead … but it’s up to the film to convince us of that. And while there’s nothing particularly surprising in Green Card, writer-director Peter Weir does know how to handle a movie. As we move through the expected set-pieces (sometimes with cleverly handled expectations—I defy anyone sitting midway through the piano sequence not to expect his character to be a fraud), the film does play the attraction game savvily. The actors also do their best. MacDowell remains limited in her range (although her character here is written as more restrained), but Depardieu does earn audience sympathies, and having Bebe Neuwirth show up for a few scenes certainly helps. It all leads to a conclusion that does manage to reassure Americans about their immigration system (a few lines have unique relevance in 2019), while providing a sufficiently distinctive romantic climax to keep audiences happy. This is not a particularly good movie, but it plays better than I thought it would, and Depardieu does make it work.