Smart talkies and dumb musicals

Among recent good French things we would include “Man on the Train,” an elegy to male friendship, gentle and loving even though it ends in a shoot-out. Jean Rochefort, who has a delicate, ruined face, plays a provincial schoolteacher who offers room, board and affectionate curiosity to Johnny Hallyday, a Parisian thug in town to case the local bank. Rochefort, you may know, was the Quixote-to-be of Terry Gilliam’s exhausted epic, and he and Patrice Leconte have worked together before, most notably in a brilliantly sardonic period piece entitled “Ridicule.” Hallyday, you may further know, is an international rock star who has rarely done good work until this film. Rochefort is expansive, talking about his most shameful habits, Hallyday is mute. But from the start there is something flirtatious, even loving, between them; each wants to know and be the other. Each allows the other access to otherness. In addition to its rare virtues, the film is unashamedly literary.

“Raising Victor Vargas,” a piece of grassroots cinema from the heartland of the Lower East Side of New York, had a freshness and authenticity to its slow, simple love story that was both moving and exciting. Peter Sollett’s film about Dominican-Americans featured unknown local actors (evident from the sheer animation of the performances) and trailed an evident history of improvisational workshopping (like David Stryker’s “La Ciudad”). Without thought or effort, the movie sidesteps all the cliches of contemporary filmmaking and the shadows in mainstream film called “acting.” The film is stocked with little fables of male aggression—moving in on girls—the moves that boys inevitably learn to make, but it’s all part of the emotional economy of the neighborhood. The young lovers are nested in the richness of Victor’s family, particularly his grandmother who rules the family tyrannically and hysterically as the price of holding it together. In this film (as in “Do The Right Thing”), the racial neighborhood is a place not of crime and violence, but of endearing charm and amazing immediacy.

What credit “The Italian Job” loses on account of its mindlessness it almost wins back for good nature. Stealing a leaf from science fiction, the technology of crime in this film is so ample and available that there is nothing you cannot steal nowhere. Furthermore, no acting is called for; the personal relations among the members of the band of outlaws are unbelievably sloppy. The notion of a high-flying criminal conspiracy at its center almost makes it an allegory of the current administration, except that these criminals are likeable. As in “Confidence,” Frankie G is great.

“Owning Mahowny” is another bank robbery film, a dull caper executed by an assistant manager in aid of his fierce gambling addiction. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who has performed such brilliant bits in other films, has a chance to shine here but, alas, there is little shine in his doggedly fine performance. His face is continually set in an addict’s sweaty preoccupation, and he is always almost coming out of his downmarket suit (there’s the shine). He is what we would call a “shvitz.” Hoffman is so down that he depresses the movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing as a film like “Little Odessa” reminds us, but “Owning Mahowney” seems to relish its depression too much. At the end Hoffman tells the psychiatrist that gambling is the only activity that gives him pleasure, but we see none of this in the glazed fixity with which he wins and loses at the tables. He wants to win only so that he may continue to experience the dull pleasure of losing. The “Owning” of the title must come from the extraordinary measures taken by the casinos to box in a potentially high loser. The Canadian manner, so evident in this film (one of its historical achievements is to be set in a Toronto that is allowed to represent Toronto) is too dour for high drama—thank God!

“Spellbound,” the prize-winning documentary about our country’s newspaper-sponsored elementary-school national spelling bees, charmed us with its skill. Following eight young people from regional championships through the national event in Washington, D.C., the hour-and-a-half film flew by. In the interest of full disclosure we have to tell you that Martha was a contender; at the age of eleven she lost the city of Chicago spelling championship, and she was most impressed by the preparation and knowledge of the young spellers.

Minnesota Musical Theater’s last production of the season, “Mail,” by Michael Rupert and Jerry Colker, has the high production values we have come to expect from this small theater gem. And the performance soars, but not too high: a certain rawness in the book and a minimal structure limits its flight. Beset by bills, his parents and an annoying fiancee, the hero Alex cannot make up his mind about career or marriage. He does a geographical and when he returns, the waiting piles of mail and messages sing and dance their contents out for him. This often leads to moments of wild satire (particularly with the various items of junk mail that serenade him in country-Western, bubble-gum, or heavy metal styles) but it also makes for a static stage: all of the messages are directed to an abstract Alex and ignore the actor onstage who has nothing to do but fidget. Unfortunately this Alex likes fidgetting too well; his performance is unaccountably jumpy and as a result the production illustrates the solipsism of musical theater. Communication in a musical has always been minimal because most of the numbers are narcissistic projections. “Mail”’s second act has much more energy, and there are fine numbers and excellent performances by Crystal Manik, Aaron Gabriel and Paul Reyburn.

Northstar Opera’s able production of Victor Herbert’s “Red Mill” was done in by a moldy book that even in its heyday barely scraped the surface of comedy. A Dutch burgomaster wants his daughter to marry the governor (ho hum), but she loves a handsome sailor. Two American con men, Con Kidder and Kid Conner, stranded in town, either hasten or impede the course of true love. On opening night, voices were a little shaky in two departments: the young lovers and the comic rascals, which put a pretty big dent in the acoustic register.

The two Americans have to carry the show, counterpointing American slickness and invention to European trilling and Low Dutch burlesque. As Kid, the dependable Luverne Seifert clowns well but his maneuvres are limited in their range, and as Con, Jonathan Neil has too small a voice and too facile a delivery. The orchestra under Steve Stucki’s direction played Herbert’s lovely, forgettable music beautifully.

Productions at Penumbra Theater are always good watching but the competence and authority of the company ratchets up a few notches whenever they take on their old buddy August Wilson, this time in “King Hedley II.” At intermission we thought we might be watching a major dramatic achievement, on the order, perhaps, of O’Neill’s later plays. The second act, however, ruled this out hard. Nonetheless, there are many moments of pleasure and passion in the performances, most notably Lester Purry’s dark intensity as the title character and Tonia Jackson as his wife Tonya. Try as he may (and he does wonders with the role), Ernie Hudson can’t quite break through the slick caricaturish qualities of his “Sportin’ Life” character, Elmore. The writing, while it may not ultimately cohere as drama, is wonderfully evocative of the pain and strengths of the urban black neighborhoods of Wilson’s youth. It was a world of social breakdown in which people choked on their own anger. The tall, tough, trash-talking idiom moves the play along and also achieves the status of tragic parlance. “King Hedley” equivocates stunningly between a structureless talk-play and a drama of tragic stature.

We were lucky enough to catch Elaine Stritch’s one-woman show at the Historic State Theater, and we were blown away at the sight of this late-seventies dame in tights and a silk shirt who occupied the stage alone for two and a half hours, overflowing with energy and comic artistry. The show was cleverly structured by John Lahr as a drunkalogue: the sad life of a performer ruled by self-destructive habits whose superb comic and musical talents have led her to a stellar career.