Emily, an actress in L.A., berates her mom for being a lousy mother. "Do you know that I was a compulsive masturbator because you never picked me up? It's true! I was self-medicating!" She's having the time of her life riffing on her mom's malevolent incompetence, and Judith's self-defense against these charges doesn't sound wounded at all. Emily's shtick about how she's going to spend $7,000 on liposuction, and that's cheap, cheap compared to what she'd have to spend to shed the weight by conventional means, sounds like what a beginning acting student would write for her first improv skit at some cheesy comedy club.
When Allen tries to persuade a former colleague to give him back his old stockbroker job 20 years after he retired from it and the guy tells him the business has changed, it's evidently supposed to have a Death of a Salesman poignance. It doesn't, because it's clearly a contrived scene. When Maggie's pal Bumby (Judy Dixon), equipped with big boobs inclined to fall in the noonday soup plate, joins the car trip and Allen smooches her with his semifunctional lips, it's not possible to believe that they're on the level (especially with Andrew filming the scene, which he probably wrote). Will Judith divorce Allen, like she matter- of-factly keeps saying she will? Who gives a shit? They certainly don't. Their fond kiss-and-make-up scene at the end is unconvincing, not because they don't seem fond, but because the whole divorce thing comes off as a shtick.
Thinkfilm
Aristrocrats co-director Jillette (left) and his silent partner, Teller.
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That's the bad news. The good news is, the family is a smooth performing ensemble. They interrupt and talk over one another more eloquently than anybody ever did in an Altman film. This is what Altman was after and seldom achieved: people talking as if they were all one logorrhea-propelled organism. Allen's slow, low growl sonically counterpoints the higher-pitched farcical ululations of his wife and daughters. The film's reviews have been startlingly positive, and what lots of critics are responding to is the Wagner clan's infectious sense of mischievous fun. I can see that, and many scenes are delightful. But I can't get past the dishonesty. (NR) TIM APPELO
Writer of O
Runs Fri., Aug. 12–Thurs., Aug. 18, at Grand Illusion
Prosecuted, banned, burned (by prudes and feminists alike), and never out of print since its scandalous appearance in 1954, the French novel Story of O can be read as secular transfiguration of religious devotion, deadpan parody of S&M erotica, or—as the author's amour, Parisian literary giant Jean Paulhan, concluded—"the most fiercely intense love letter a man could ever receive." He received it from Dominique Aury, his mistress and publishing-house colleague. She was 47 and afraid of losing Paulhan; he was a quarter-century her senior, married, and a big fan of the Marquis de Sade. He liked the result, and it only helped matters that local authorities proclaimed the work "violently and constantly immoral."
Pola Rapaport's slender documentary-cum-reconstruction disappoints in its workmanlike approach to such fragrant material. Catherine Mouchet's scowling, sour- bluestocking performance as Aury—mouth twisted in resentment, tremulous voice on the verge of a sob—does a disservice to the expansive, articulate woman we see in the film's engrossing interview clips, while the re-enactments of scenes from the book are tame even by cable-TV standards. Rapaport is also prone to unfortunate expressionist illustration, as when she drops in some stock footage of, um, a train entering a tunnel. (NR) JESSICA WINTER
