Movies into Film
Connie and Carla
Directed by Michael Lembeck
USA, 2004
In Praise of Toni Collette
Collette and Vardalos: In the closet. (Universal Pictures)
Connie and Carla lacks the richness of Some Like It Hot and Tootsie, two films to which it will inevitably be compared. It’s a thinner, almost throw-away construction, and although Connie and Carla is entertaining and funny, there’s never the sense that much is at stake in the protagonists’ charade. This confectionary fluff of women who pretend to be male cross-dressers also invites comparison to Victor/Victoria. But here Connie and Carla surpasses its source of inspiration. Neither Nia Vardalos nor Toni Collette has the vocal presence of Julie Andrews, yet the light touch of Michael Lembeck’s direction and Vardalos’ screenplay are miles from the heavy-handed laboriousness of Blake Edwards.
While Connie (Vardalos) and Carla (Collette) run from the mob in a manner similar to Lemmon and Curtis, their predicament serves mostly as a pretext for show tunes. Dozens of well-known songs are sung and danced, some more aptly than others, in the course of the movie’s slender 97 minutes. These tributes—to South Pacific, Yentl, Evita, Oklahoma, Funny Girl—are staged as feel-good, campy fun (i.e. the soap bubble wigs in “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair”). Yet there’s one number, when the two heroines audition at a drag bar, that carries a frisson of darkness not found in the others. When Collette and Vardalos sing Kander and Ebb’s “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, and Vardalos dons a short, black, flapper wig that intentionally evokes Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago, the two women hold the screen in such a quietly powerful way that I longed to see what they might do in a real musical.
Now we come to the film’s defining split. The story belongs to Connie. Vardalos wrote the script and co-produced. Of course, it’s her parade. The movie, however, belongs to Collette’s Carla. Even though the actress has fewer scenes (Vardalos gives Connie a romance to pursue while Carla stays conveniently out of sight), Collette has such an unusual, imperfect kind of beauty, with her wide, thin, trembling mouth, her jagged teeth, her saucer eyes (the lids of which are often smeared in gleefully tacky blue liner), that she commands more attention than the script gives her. Collette also submerges more deeply into this cotton-candy and finds some rough edges there. Confronting Connie before the mirrors of their dressing room (their stage act has become a hit and they must prolong their imposture), Carla bellows, “I need to get out of this closet!” Connie hisses back: “Well, you can’t!” That’s as close to social commentary as the movie ever comes. Undoubtedly, there are plenty of men in need of two women to voice that cry in this context.
Elsewhere, Collette acquits herself to Connie and Carla’s I Love Lucy-style slapstick extremely well. If I were the sort of writer prone to hyperbole (and Lord knows, I’m not), I would probably venture out on a limb here to say that, based on the twin strengths of Japanese Story and this film, Collette establishes herself as the best actress of her generation. (She was born in 1972.) Certainly, in moving from the depths of tragedy to a frothy, physical comedy (a musical one, at that) with such aplomb, Collette has a level of versatility unmatched by any Kidman or any Watts or, going back a couple of decades, any Streep. Collette uses her entire body in creating a character; she especially works miracles with her eyes. Look at the symphonic range of body language she orchestrates when she encourages the other drag queens to test out the realism of Vardalos’ “falsies.” (The preview audience I saw the movie with applauded this scene.)
Among the supporting players, a miscast Stephen Spinella, who looks barely passable in male accoutrements, becomes one ugly woman; Debbie Reynolds (as herself) looks great for 71, although the one song she sings doesn’t suit her talents; Boris McGiver expertly plays a hit man who develops a taste for Broadway tunes; and surprise of surprises, David Duchovny comes through with a breezily perfect light comedian love interest role to play opposite Vardalos. Duchovny sometimes speaks with a Southern cadence—sometimes not. What matters more is that he and Vardalos send their suspension of disbelief courtship into a stratosphere where mistaken identity clichés are made new. — NPT
April 14, 2004
Movies into Film
© N.P. Thompson, 2004
npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com