An Old-Fashioned, Bodice-Ripping "Meller-Drama"

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“In Secret” An Old-Fashioned Melodrama

By Skip Sheffield

“In Secret” is an old-fashioned melodrama that answers the seldom-asked question, “What ever happened to Jessica Lange?”

The answer is the one-time King Kong hottie got older and is now playing a bitter old biddy with a devious niece in the Paris of 1860.

“In Secret” is based on the Emile Zola novel “Therese Raquin,” re-written for the screen by director Charlie Stratton.

Jessica Lange is Madame Raquin, aunt of Therese Raquin.

Therese was an illegitimate child abandoned by her father and dumped with her cold, unfeeling aunt after her mother died. Therese is played by Elizabeth Olsen, who is a bit too young and not sensuous enough for her role of femme fatale.

Madame Raquin has a sickly, doted-upon son named Camille, played by Tom Felton, Draco Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” movies.

Therese is pressed into a loveless marriage of convenience with Camille, who remains under the thumb of his domineering mother.

When Camille gets a job in Paris, both mom and Therese come with him.

In Paris Camille welcomes his childhood friend Laurent (Oscar Isaac of “Inside Llewyn Davis”) to his family. Laurent is everything Camille is not: dashing, handsome and smolderingly sexy.

It doesn’t take long for Therese to become smitten with seductive Laurent. So begins a passionate affair right under the nose of Madame Raquin and her clueless son.

Therese masks her afternoon trysts with “terrible migraine” headaches which confine her to her bedroom.

“I don’t know how to make her happy,” Camille whines to his mother.

When Camille decides to assert himself and insists they leave the “filthy city” of Paris, Laurent and Therese conspire to take drastic action.

Because the love scenes fail to generate the desired heat, it is much more fun to watch the gradual disintegration of Madame Raquin, as Jessica Lange pulls out all the stops in over-acting into madness and catatonia. Lange, who turns 65 on April 20, is the most enjoyable part of an otherwise uninteresting, overwrought, costumed period piece.

Israel From an Occupied Palestine View

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A Glimpse Inside Occupied Palestine

We don’t get many Palestinian films in these parts. “Omar” is the Best Foreign Film nominee for Palestine at this year’s Academy Awards. Palestinian director Hany Abu Assad's controversial 2006 film “Paradise Now” was about suicide bombers. “Omar” is about the equally thorny problem of life in the Occupied Territories of Israel.

Omar (Adam Bakri) is a Palestinian baker who routinely scales a tall separation wall to visit his girlfriend Nadja (Leem Lubany). Pretty Nadja is still in school, but Omar is so smitten he wants to marry her- the sooner the better.

Nadia’s older brother Tarek (Eyad Hourani) is a fiery Palestinian “freedom fighter” who is also Omar’s best friend, as is fellow childhood friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat).

The guys act innocent by day, but by night they go out hunting the hated Israeli soldiers who enforce the law. One night one of the men kills an Israeli soldier. Everything immediately turns life-and-death serious.

“Jasoos” is an Arab word that means “traitor,” but in the volatile Israel-Palestine conflict it is something much worse than mere betrayal. Israel’s Shin Bet, which is kind of like their FBI, relies on jasoos to spill the beans on terrorist activity.

Agent Rami (Waleed F. Zuaiter) is the Shin Bet handler assigned to Omar. If Omar or his friends do not rat, Rami is not doing his job.

In essence everyone is doing their job. It’s just that everything is at murderous cross purposes. It’s a lose-lose situation, and unless something is resolved, the eternal conflict between Israel and Palestine will remain just that: eternal.

It comes as no surprise “Omar” won Best Film at the Dubai Film Festival, but it also won “Un Certain Regard” at Cannes in recognition of its deft, yes even entertaining handling of a tragic, confounding situation.

 

No Expiration Date on Romance

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It’s Never Too Late To Love Again

By Skip Sheffield

It’s not easy being single again, not matter what your age or where you live.

“Gloria” is a film from Chile. The title character is a woman of “a certain age;” in this case probably mid-50s.

Paula Garcia, who won the Silver Bear Best Actress Award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, plays Gloria, a woman divorced for 12 years and still looking.

Gloria is an outgoing woman who works at an office in Santiago. At night she gets dressed up and goes to dance clubs. Gloria is still attractive. She loves to dance. She gets hit on a lot and seems to enjoy the attention. Then one night she meets Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez), a tall, handsome man about her same age. He is a retired naval office who owns an amusement park. It’s one of those love-at-first-sight moments, and it’s not long until Gloria and Rodolfo are head over heels and rolling in each other’s arms.

Written and directed by Sebastian Lelio, “Gloria” is unabashedly sexy, and Paula Garcia is not afraid to bare her all. Her character however, is less certain of the passion she feels for a man who may not feel the same. Rodolfo has only been divorced a year, and his life his still dominated by his ex-wife and three demanding daughters.

“Gloria” is funny, especially when she challenges Rodolfo. It is also melancholy when things don’t turn out as hoped.

“Gloria” is never a downer though. It offers the upbeat hope that passion never dies as long as you stay open to the prospect.

 

Catskills Boot Camp for Comedy

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 Pictured: Sid Caesar

New York’s Catskill Comedians Celebrated

By Skip Sheffield

The golden era of the Catskills may be over in New York, but the spirit of the great Jewish resorts continues here in South Florida in the form of the comedians who got their start in the Catskills and went on to become big stars and continue to tour.

“When Comedy Went to School” is a 77-minute documentary film that examines the phenomenon of Jewish comedians. Through archival footage and contemporary interviews with such greats as Jerry Lewis, Jerry Stiller, Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason, Woody Allen, Larry King and a very young Jerry Seinfield, the film answers the question, Why are there so many Jewish comedians?

Robert Klein serves as host of this semi-academic examination of the roots of Jewish and Yiddish comedy.

“Comedy is a Jewish survival mechanism,” explains filmmaker, comedian and playwright Mel Brooks. "You laugh to survive."

“The Catskills were some place to be bad,” says Jerry Lewis, who goes on to relate how we performed with his parents as a child to earn the family an extra $5 a night. Lewis began his career as a Catskill “tummler” who performed pratfalls. It was a skill that came in handy in his comedy films with Dean Martin and on his own.

The first Catskill “resort” was a simple farmhouse owned by a family named Grossinger, who began taking in guests in 1914. At its peak in the 1950s, the Catskill resort area had over 500 hotels. Now there are just a handful left. Television, cheap, fast travel and the Internet all contributed to the decline of this “comedy boot camp.” This film provides a nostalgic look back at the beginnings of comedians who have become household names. I was amazed to realize how many of the comedians I have interviewed and met, because South Florida and its condos and performing arts centers are a regular stop for comedians who continue to perform into very old age.

The film can be seen at Living Room Theaters and Shadowood in Boca Raton and Movies of Delray.

"Once" and Always

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 Dublin Party Time in Miami

By Skip Sheffield

They are throwing a big Irish pub party through Sunday, Feb. 9 at the Arsht Center in downtown Miami. It is well worth the trip.

“Once” is based upon the movie of the same name. The small-budget Irish musical romance was my favorite movie of 2007. What made it so special was that the music was written by the two stars, who fell in love during screening.

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are no longer a couple but their fairy tale romance lives on in the movie, directed by John Carney, and in the stage show, directed by John Tiffany with book by Edna Walsh.

You know right away “Once” is a different kind of show, because the action begins before the show proper. The stage is set up as an Irish bar populated with singing, dancing musicians. The audience is invited climb up onstage and mingle with the musicians and even order a drink from a functioning bar.

In the transition from movie to stage show there were several changes in the characters known simply as Guy (Stuart Ward) and Girl (Dani de Waal). Czech-born Marketa Irglova was only 17 when the movie was filmed. Irishman Glen Hansard was twice her age. The Girl is some years older than Irglova, closer in age to the Guy. As in the movie she has a daughter, but in the stage show she is older than the movie’s toddler.

The Guy has a girl who has left him, but she has gone off to New York, not London.

The Guy expresses his lovelorn vulnerable stage in his first song, “Leaving.”

British singer-musician Stuart Ward has a beautiful singing voice and very fine acoustic guitar technique.

Dani de Waal is also London-trained, and like Marketa Irglova she plays piano while singing in exquisite close harmony with Stuart Ward the Academy Award-winning theme song “Falling Slowly.”

The wonderful thing about this production is that every character sings, plays an instrument and performs closely choreographed moves. The Guy’s Da (father) is played by bewhiskered Raymond Bokhour who plays a mean mandolin. There are two lady fiddlers (Erica Swindell and Claire Wellin); multi-instrumentalist Evan Harrington, who plays the hot-headed shop owner Billy; an accordion-playing mother of the Girl (Donna Garner), a cello and guitar-playing bank manager (Benjamin Magnuson) and an all-purpose guy named Svec (Matt DeAngelis) who plays guitar, mandolin, banjo, drums and percussion.

With such a simple plot line, the play seemed padded over the movie, but if you love playing, singing, dancing and precision interaction, you should appreciate the eight Tony Award-winning Best Musical “Once’ as much as I did.

Tickets start at $26. Call 305-949-6722 or visit www.arshtcenter.org.

We are not what we seem.

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“Old Times” Forces You to Think

By Skip Sheffield

It was Superbowl Sunday. I decided to do a profoundly un-Big Game thing: I went to see Harold Pinter’s “Old Times” at Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. The play continues through March 2.

I never watched the Big Game, but I sure am glad I saw “Old Times.”

The thoroughly British, 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature-winner Harold Pinter is a “difficult” playwright. His dialogue is spare, enigmatic, contradictory and sometimes just baffling. His 1971 work “Old Times” is one of his most baffling, yet brilliant pieces. Some critics have described Pinter’s genre as “comedy with menace.” Certainly there is menace along with some laughs in this three-character play about a married couple and a friend of the wife who comes to visit after 20 years away.

The play begins in the parlor of the couple’s converted farmhouse on the west coast of England. Deeley (Craig Wroe) asks his wife Kate (Shannon Koob) about her long-lost friend.

“She was my best friend,” Kate explains. “She was my only friend.”

“If you have only one of something, you can’t say it’s the best of anything,” Deeley counters.

And so it continues with seemingly trivial small talk about the casserole Kate is cooking and the impending arrival of the mysterious guest.

Anna (Pilar Witherspoon), who like Kate is in her early 40s, is a much more talkative, outgoing person than Anna. The small talk continues. Deeley recalls he met Anna at a movie theater that was showing “Odd Man Out.” That title will take on added significance by play’s end, when we learn some things said by Deeley, Kate and Anna are simply not true. As Pinter himself says, “A thing is not necessarily true or false; it can be both true and false.”

“Old Times” is performed without intermission in just one hour, 15 minutes. A set change is performed onstage in full view, as the parlor becomes an upstairs bedroom. Director J. Barry Lewis has cast three extraordinary professionals with most impressive credentials to play the sketchy, under-written characters. The power of the play is conveyed by the interior emotions of the characters, which is up to the actor to convey. My guest was a woman in her early 30s. She was as fascinated with the real meaning of the play as I was. We both came to pretty much the same conclusion, but the wonder of Pinter is that everything is up for debate. If you want a play that makes you think “out of the box,” this show’s for you.

Tickets are $60. Call 561-514-4012 or go to www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.

 

An Awkward "Awkward Moment"

Bromance Blooms in “That Awkward Moment”

By Skip Sheffield

The best I can say about “That Awkward Moment” is that it is not as lame as I feared. It actually has some laughs.

The film is aimed at twenty-someings, but we have all been there.

Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan star as three best friends in New York City. Jason (Efron) and Daniel (Teller) work as book jacket designers and Mikey (Jordan) is a doctor.

Designing book jackets must really be lucrative, because the guys have a big, groovy pad down in Chelsea. The “Award Moment” of the title, written by first-time director Tom Gormican, is the point in time when a woman asks a man: is this serious?, or is it just a passing fancy?

For Jason and Daniel, just chasing girls is fine. Mikey has made the commitment of marriage to beautiful Vera (Jessica Lucas), but she has cheated on him and fallen for another man. She wants a divorce.

So like the men of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” the three modern musketeers make a pledge to swear off serious relationships and just have fun.

That’s easier said than done, especially when a guy finds himself falling for someone special.

For Jason it is Ellie, played by the adorably imperfect Imogen Poots. Ellie is a rich girl who has a job in that same lucrative field of publishing. For Daniel it is his gal pal Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis), who is quickly becoming more than just a friend.

Mikey still moons over Vera, and spends most of the film secretly trying to woo her back.

That’s pretty much it, except for standard frat-boy rude sex, booze and bathroom humor. While Zac Efron is the top-billed star, it is Miles Teller who is by far the more interesting actor. Unlike pretty boy Efron (who has put on a bit of weight, ladies), Teller has “character,” not the least of which are the prominent scars on his face and neck, resulting from a horrific car accident.

Michael B. Jordan is one super good-looking dude, and if you’ve seen “Fruitville Station” you know he can act, but his Mikey as written is the least interesting character.

In all “That Awkward Moment” is fair to middling. It could have been worse.

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