Welcome to New York (18.)
Directed by Abel Ferrara.
Starring Gerard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset, Marie Moute, Drena de Niro, JD Taylor and Paul Calderon. 124 mins
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the former head of the International Monetary Fund who was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a maid at his hotel in New York. Prior to that he was a prominent figure in French politics and a prospective Socialist party candidate for the presidency. The New York case was dropped but since then other allegations of rape and involvement with prostitution rings have emerged. You couldn't find a better example of the callous, wealthy elite that run the world; he's pure evil.
Even so, does he really deserve to be played by Gerard Depardieu in the film? Or maybe more to the point, do his victims (sorry, alleged victims) deserve to have their attacker portrayed as a ridiculous, laughable figure – a sex addict who gets out of breath taking his trousers off?
The morbidly obese Depardieu plays him as a constantly puffing, sweating physical wreck. He waddles about like The Penguin gone to seed. For Depardieu the performance is an act of abasement, a hideous embarrassment. (In some scenes when he speaking in English, he looks to be reading off cue cards.) During the prison sequence, he is strip-searched and you get to witness the full physical decline and you wonder why he would want to submit himself to such an indignity.
The films states that it is a fictionalised account: based on transcripts of the court case but with all the characterisations made up. Thus its central character, here named Devereaux, can be found entirely guilty. The first half hour is almost continuous sex scenes. The assault scene clearly shows him committing the offence and after that we have flashback to his womanising ways and an attempted rape. At the start of the film, in a staged press conference, Depardieu tells his questioners that he likes to play people he hates, so maybe he is trying to link his own physical decline with the moral turpitude or the rich and powerful – he indicts them with his stomach.
The film isn't so light on its feet either. Ferrera shots in a casual, matter-of-fact style, not worrying about blocking the actors, and with almost no score. It rambles on especially in the torturous improvised scenes between Depardieu and Bisset who plays his wife. It is noticeable that though the film is an attack on the arrogant indifference of the wealthy, the victim is almost totally ignored so the film can follow the privileged Devereau.
Directed by Abel Ferrara.
Starring Gerard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset, Marie Moute, Drena de Niro, JD Taylor and Paul Calderon. 124 mins
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the former head of the International Monetary Fund who was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a maid at his hotel in New York. Prior to that he was a prominent figure in French politics and a prospective Socialist party candidate for the presidency. The New York case was dropped but since then other allegations of rape and involvement with prostitution rings have emerged. You couldn't find a better example of the callous, wealthy elite that run the world; he's pure evil.
Even so, does he really deserve to be played by Gerard Depardieu in the film? Or maybe more to the point, do his victims (sorry, alleged victims) deserve to have their attacker portrayed as a ridiculous, laughable figure – a sex addict who gets out of breath taking his trousers off?
The morbidly obese Depardieu plays him as a constantly puffing, sweating physical wreck. He waddles about like The Penguin gone to seed. For Depardieu the performance is an act of abasement, a hideous embarrassment. (In some scenes when he speaking in English, he looks to be reading off cue cards.) During the prison sequence, he is strip-searched and you get to witness the full physical decline and you wonder why he would want to submit himself to such an indignity.
The films states that it is a fictionalised account: based on transcripts of the court case but with all the characterisations made up. Thus its central character, here named Devereaux, can be found entirely guilty. The first half hour is almost continuous sex scenes. The assault scene clearly shows him committing the offence and after that we have flashback to his womanising ways and an attempted rape. At the start of the film, in a staged press conference, Depardieu tells his questioners that he likes to play people he hates, so maybe he is trying to link his own physical decline with the moral turpitude or the rich and powerful – he indicts them with his stomach.
The film isn't so light on its feet either. Ferrera shots in a casual, matter-of-fact style, not worrying about blocking the actors, and with almost no score. It rambles on especially in the torturous improvised scenes between Depardieu and Bisset who plays his wife. It is noticeable that though the film is an attack on the arrogant indifference of the wealthy, the victim is almost totally ignored so the film can follow the privileged Devereau.
