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The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
See Exotica instead
Ever since the truly excellent Exotica, I've kept an eye on Atom Egoyan.
But unfortunately, Egoyan, so far, has proven to be one of those director's for whom everything clicks, once, and every other film tries to replicate the beauty of that one film, and fails.
The Sweet Hereafter is not bad, which is already better than any of his other films besides Exotica. You can see how Egoyan tries again to create the multi-layered psychologies of a number of characters, interweave them, and place them all in a slightly twisted, burdensome environment, and show us how they all deal with it.
But it just doesn't work.
It starts out okay. We are introduced to several characters and each has something interesting going for them, and some twist to make them interesting. But it doesn't pan out. The personalities are never given the depth they need, and subsequently I never cared about their problems.
Over the story is overlayed the tale of the Pied Piper, but this is done with Sarah Polley narrating bits of the story to us throughout the film. This might be okay, if it wasn't for the fact that she just can't act, and what we get is an amateurish reading, which almost makes me cringe. Such a bad voice-over could ruin even a good film.
We get no revelations about any characters, unlike Exotica, where every character is a little mystery that slowly unfolds. Here, the characters are totally stagnant, and nothing new happens, and nothing new about them is revealed.
In the end of Exotica, we are given a beautiful conclusion, where everything comes together on a narrative, psychological, and thematic level. There is nothing like that here. It just sort of ends. There is a slight hint as if we are supposed to find something profound in the reasons why Sarah Polley says what she says, the looks between her and her father imply this, as well as the voice-over. But it's too weak, and by this point I was too bored to bother to even think about it.
But Egoyan has an eye, and there are a few great scenes. Ian Holm manages to turn mediocre (and even bad) dialogue into something great, and especially his dialogue with his daughter's childhood friend is excellent.
Sadly, overall, the film is just a pale, pretentious, and amateurish replica of Exotica. If this had come before Exotica, I would understand , but sadly, as it comes after, I can only conclude that Egoyan is a director for whom everything magically clicked once, and will probably spend the rest of his career trying to re-attain that perfection.
Provocateur (1998)
uninspired and unoriginal
Miya (Jane March) is a north korean spy who infiltrates an american family under the guise of a housekeeper. Of course she falls in love with the son of her new employer, forcing her to pick sides etc etc blah blah. Aside from Jane March, who is an excellent actress who is completely wasted in this film, the film is very generic and full of cliches. Cardboard characters, cut and paste melodrama, and feeble storytelling make this quite bad. If it wasn't for Jane March it would be completely forgettable.