False Friends. - Review - movie review

National Review, May 28, 2001 by John Simon

It would greatly help With a Friend Like Harry to be just a little more believable. Michel, a teacher; Claire, his wife; and their three small, squalling daughters are driving to their modest country house in an old, sweltering station wagon. They stop at a gas station to change the baby's diapers when, in the men's room, a stocky, grinning man accosts Michel. He is Harry Balestero, a former schoolmate who remembers everything about Michel-who, only with difficulty, dredges up some reciprocation. Before long, Harry, who drives a cool (in both senses) Mercedes, which comes equipped with a blonde and adoring girlfriend, Plum, has everyone ensconced in its comfort. They are driving to Michel's ramshackle house for a drink, after which Harry is treating for dinner.

It soon transpires that Harry had a kind of schoolboy crush on Michel: He has memorized a poem Michel published in the school magazine, and raves about the first chapter of a sci-fi novel of Michel's also printed there. He insists that Michel must go on writing, and forthwith he and Plum are houseguests of Michel and Claire. Harry has become a millionaire upon the death of his father, and, over the protests of his old schoolmate, buys Michel's family a fancy, expensive SUV to replace their broken-down jalopy. As he muscles in on Michel, Claire, and the kids, his flaunted motto is that every problem can be solved.

Already I wonder: If Harry was so obsessed with Michel, why didn't he seek to reestablish contact with him earlier? Conversely, why, having kept his distance for so many years, does he now follow him around like a large, ominously hovering hound? Michel's parents, who live two hours away, come for a visit, and Harry concludes that they are ballbusters. Michel must be made free to write again, no matter who-according to Harry-stands in his way: parents, wife, or children.

As Harry's behavior becomes more pronouncedly psychopathic, I want to know how could this fellow have such a seemingly carefree and fulfilling relationship with Plum? And just how did his father die? You want to supply a plausible back story for this jolly fellow and his cozy mistress, even if Harry oddly gets up after having sex to consume a raw egg in the kitchen-a practice that he contends is good for his virility. His madness escalates, and forthwith murder comes rather easy for him, with no noticeable unpleasant consequences.

Several things about the movie are hommages to Hitchcock, but the old master never abandoned credibility in so wholesale a manner. In the film's later phases, mayhem becomes downright risible, and we cease to care. Too bad, because the German-born Parisian director, Dominik Moll, and his French co-scenarist, Gilles Marchand, build unease and suspense adroitly in the earlier parts, abetted by fine cinematography from Matthieu Poirot-Delpech and sparing but provocative music by David Sinclair Whittaker.

The acting of the well-cast principals is impressive. The lean, quietly intense Laurent Lucas (Michel) contrasts cannily with Sergi Lopez (Harry), who is first fulsomely smiling, then earnest with seeming concern, and later scary without effort. Mathilde Seigner's Claire wonderfully conveys warmth under her increasingly edgy defensiveness, while Sophie Guillemin's Plum aptly suggests under her airheady sexiness a vulnerable human being.

There is a visual refrain: cars gliding down sunny or dark roads, shot from every possible angle, including crane and helicopter shots, to catch surrounding landscapes or expanses of pitch-dark night. These journeys range from picturesque to diabolical, and gradually achieve an ambiguous but compelling symbolism. You never know where a seemingly innocent car trip will lead you.

--I always considered Henry James a failed Proust, and found reading him supererogatory; especially late James, as in The Golden Bowl, was too trying for my patience. Even so, I can tell that the movie Merchant-Ivory has made from it is a huge oversimplification. Granted, that happens to film adaptations of any novel whose style matters more than its plot, but that begs the question of whether such a movie was necessary. Yet who is to stop these ever-hopeful, ever-arrogant filmmakers?

The Golden Bowl concerns Adam Verver-"the first American billionaire," a title proclaims-who has made a fortune in coal and is now converting it into a diamantine trove of European art treasures. He intends to build a museum in his native, mythically named American City, and cram culture down the throats of his fellow citizens, who would prefer streetcars. He and his daughter, Maggie, are almost incestuously close, as confirmed by his marrying Charlotte, her old American expatriate friend, while she marries the charming but penniless Italian prince, Amerigo, unbeknown to her Charlotte's former-and not just former-lover.

It sounds like a soap opera, and so it is, stripped of James's prose, however bedizened in the gorgeous garments of Masterpiece Theatre, in which the producer Ismail Merchant, his director, James Ivory, and their favorite writer, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, specialize. They have shot this, probably their most lavish spectacle film, in some of Europe's grandest houses, which, I suspect, they have crammed fuller of art and artifacts than their owners ever dreamed of. The eye wanders through the film's painted and sculpted masterworks and sumptuous gewgaws, its suffocatingly stately halls and gorgeous costumes, with a satiety bordering on nausea.