Movies into Film
Narcoleptics in Love
Irons and Kaas (Photo: Paramount Classics)
AND NOW…LADIES & GENTLEMEN
Directed by Claude Lelouch
France, 2003
If Jeremy Irons seems here more relaxed than usual, it’s because playing dress-up cuts him loose. As a jewel thief who dons elaborate disguises for each heist, Irons can tap into comic wellsprings that his earlier roles obscured. Yes, he gets in drag; I, however, was more amused by his longhaired hippie send-up, a folksinger whose twangy pickin’ and grinnin’ are so resolutely awful that a store manager bribes him to leave.
A much better vocalist, the French jazz chanteuse Patricia Kaas, makes an impressive screen debut opposite Irons. Lelouch tracks both stars in parallel stories, then weaves the lines together after a generous hour or so. Irons and Kaas are given to mysterious blackouts—she, memorably, while performing in a hotel bar (walking off in a trance mid-lyric) and he while piloting a sailboat on the open seas. Ultimately, our two sleepy people cross paths in Morocco where they brave burning sands in search of a cure.
“Not here, hippie” (Photo: Paramount Classics)
Kaas is a major find. Her élan suggests Diana Krall with a dash of Marlene Dietrich, and her opening number, a duet sung into cell phones, is as thrillingly alive as anything in Chicago. The one mistake that weighs AN…L&G down is Lelouch’s relentless use of close-ups. I wanted to scream, “Pull the camera back!” Otherwise, it’s glorious catnip for grown-ups and those who’d like to be. – NPT
June 2003
Movies into Film
© N.P. Thompson, 2004
npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com