Kontroll

Kontroll
Opens Fri., May 27, at Varsity

Kontroll is a frivolous fable and a fabulous frivol, a lighthearted romp and a dark night of the existential soul—Slacker meets Metropolis. Set in the immemorial grottoes of the Budapest subway, it's seen mostly through the smoldering-coal eyes of Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), the haunted boss of a ticket-inspector team with more rude brio than the junkies in Trainspotting. Their job is to bust fare-cheater citizens, but their scarlet armbands don't seem to grant them a speck of respect, let alone authority. They also hunt a mysterious guy in a grim reaper hood who keeps shoving people in front of trains, and his comic doppelgänger, punky Bootsie, who spritzes folks in the face with shaving cream and hotfoots it down the labyrinth.

For a movie that's all about subterranean walls claustrophobically closing in, it's got a lot of exhilarating chase scenes set to the jaunty industrial drone stylings of Neo. Movies about aimless youth often settle into a Garden State–ish mood of drifty ennui, but first-time L.A./Budapest director Nimród Antal prefers to mix it up. One minute we're ennuizing with Bulcsú about his lost promise and yearnings toward the light at the end of the tunnel (or rather, the subway escalator); the next we're yukking it up over Bootsie or the insults flung at the inspectors by sarcastic commuters and their better-equipped transit-system rivals.

Team sports—fights and "railing" (footraces along the tracks while pursued by trains)—alternate with solo scenes sketching our antiheroes man by man: the grizzled, sagacious old "Professor," the innocent newbie, the hyperactive narcoleptic who yaks compulsively prior to collapsing like John Belushi on a coked-out "Weekend Update" rant. The love story is charmingly elusive. Bulcsú courts a drunken subway driver's beatific daughter (Eszter Balla), who dresses in a bear suit with a rump Kirstie Alley could call overupholstered. Can this girl be real? Or is she a vision? Anyway, she's leading him to the light, and he'll follow her fuzzy butt through commuter hell.

It soon becomes clear that Antal has no overall plan, and no intention to make his diverse moods and narrative tracks converge into a conventional destination. He mitigates this flaw with juicy characters and niftily orchestrated cinematic rhythms. Partly, he's trying to sustain a risky, floaty limbo feeling, a spell that could be snapped by a too-insistent plot. Also, I'll bet he's better at evoking dreaminess than dreaming up plots.

I'm usually Mr. Kvetch about the Lost Art of Plotting, but I was with Antal on his entire, non-goal-oriented ride. Antal may have plenty to learn about storytelling. But he's got what most young directors, even future great ones, lack: control. (R) TIM APPELO

Ladies in Lavender
Opens Fri., May 27, at Seven Gables

Charles Dance is an invaluable actor, but his directing debut is inept. What was he thinking? A grossly uneventful story about a pair of spinsters (Judi Dench and Maggie Smith) who rescue a young mystery man washed up on their picturesque Cornish shores just before World War II, Lavender is meant to recall all those veiled-romance-but-no-sex-please-we're-British movies like Enchanted April. It mainly reminded me of the posters for those sorts of flicks—all tea and crumpets and dried flowers.

Dueling Oscar winners Dench and Smith do achieve something marvelous in their respective portraits of Ursula and Janet, sisters preternaturally attuned to each other's moods. Smith's Janet is the more horse- sensible sibling, a half-educated widow who can speak German with an appalling accent and tut-tuts indulgently when the more flibbertigibbetty Ursula does something rash. Prone to reveries about lost or imaginary youthful flings, Dench's virginal Ursula is a poignant creature—especially when hunky Andrea (the bore Daniel Brühl) washes up unconscious on the beach. The girls nurse him back to health and teach him English, but it's Ursula who obsessively caresses his lovely locks as he so angelically sleeps. Janet's better at the British art form of repressing desire.

At excessive length, it turns out Andrea is a genius Polish violinist knocked overboard from his voyage to Carnegie Hall. (Virtuoso Joshua Bell supplies the actual bow work.) Presented a villager's fiddle, he knocks 'em dead with the classics, then attends the local lowdown hoedown, belts down beer, and goes folkie to universal acclaim. Much of the pleasure of such films is the made-in-England quality of the local color; Lavender has a sense of place that'll make you want to visit Cornwall. But not the theater; a subplot about townsfolk who fear Andrea is a German spy sputters out suspenselessly. Eye of the Needle it's not. Another subplot has the sisters losing Andrea's attentions to Natascha McElhone, a tourist—I told you Cornwall is beautiful—who turns out to be the sister of the world's greatest violinist. Small village, huh?

Lavender is a rigorous test of cineaste sitzfleisch. To savor the deep acting of Dames Judi and Maggie, you must endure a story that goes nowhere slow and a director who keeps all emotions at an infinite distance. There's art to be seen, but you must suffer for it. (PG-13) TIM APPELO