Ancient lessons: Inuit epic stands out among summer alternatives. . - At The Movies - The Fast Runner; The Lady and the Duke; Thirteen Conversations About One Thing - movie review

National Catholic Reporter, July 5, 2002 by Joseph Cunneen

The duke had hoped to be a moderating influence but is forced to confess that the crowd is now leading him. His subtle debate with Elliott is conducted with both passion and decorum: She is loyal to her friends, and he has given his trust to the republic. Rohmer is not interested in costume drama nor in explaining the historical factors that made the revolution inevitable; what he does make clear is that it becomes harder and harder to maintain one's principles once events are out of control. Although Elliott gets the duke to promise to vote against the execution of his cousin the king, his eventual abstention reveals the weakness of his political and moral understanding.

"The Lady and the Duke" is not a love story, though the two principals retain their affection for each other throughout. Raising complex questions about history and ethics, this very French movie openly admires an Englishwoman who opposed republicanism; at the same time it exhibits a sympathetic understanding of the portly Orleans, whose political idealism was overwhelmed by a reign of vengeance. Rohmer makes his history lesson both nuanced and entertaining: In a penultimate sequence when extremism threatens to land Elliott in jail, it is Robespierre (Francois-Marie Banier) who spares her because the revolution has more pressing goals. At the very end, however, Robespierre himself has lost power.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing is a puzzle that one viewing didn't enable me to crack, but the time in the theater didn't seem wasted. Jill Sprecher's film raises somber questions about happiness and luck as they affect a series of dissatisfied New Yorkers, shifting quickly from one story to another and suggesting surprising ways in which its characters are connected. We gradually realize that the events being presented on the screen do not always occur in the same order as that in which we experience them.

The screenplay, by Sprecher and her sister Karen, prefaces each sequence with a cliche about fate, chance and everyday misunderstanding--"Wisdom comes suddenly," "The mind is its own place"--but their cumulative implications seem meager. Walker, a Columbia physics professor (John Turturro), who later writes the ominous word irreversible on his classroom blackboard, has a meal with his wife (Amy Irving) that projects an atmosphere of near-total alienation. An ambitious prosecuting attorney (Matthew McConaughey) rushes from courtroom success to a barroom discussion with Gene, a fatalistic insurance officer (Alan Arkin). Beatrice, a young woman who spends her days as a house-cleaner (Clea DuVall), is sustained by the conviction that everything will work out for the best.

Developments are deliberately inconclusive and ironic. The professor remains self-absorbed and dissatisfied even after taking on a colleague as mistress. The lawyer, driving off from a hit-and-run accident that leaves Beatrice badly injured, plunges into an office conflict between ambition and his ethical conception of justice. Gene, depressed by his failure to build a relationship with his son, is aggravated by the overly upbeat attitude of one of his assistants. During a company downsizing, he fires the optimist but diplomatically passes on a strong recommendation to a friendly executive. Beatrice, not yet fully recovered, sheds some of her earlier naivete but emerges from a brief lapse into cynicism.