alanbittencourtx

I love Johnny Depp and I love Tim Burton. Together they can be sublime. Look at "Ed Wood" and "Sweeney Todd" Here, well here they seem kind of lost. Everything is in over the top tones without getting to the root of anything. The performances are shrill and disconnected with the exception of the wonderful Helena Bonham Carter. The script is underwritten and the story is tired and unconvincing but in the present film going landscape it is more enjoyable than most others. I'm tempted to advise Mr. Burton and Mr.Depp to be a bit more daring in their intentions. We're all aware of Burton's visual wizardry and of Depp's remarkable beauty and talent, why not put all that at the service of something meaningful?

Irritating at times but only at times when the writer, director, producer puts himself in front of the camera and all we see it's him. But, most of the time this is a surprising, smart comedy of pains with a sensational Annette Bening - her best performance without a doubt - her disintegration is, apart from everything else, shattering and absurdly entertaining. She descends her psychic road wrecking havoc wherever she wants to do "the best thing for you". Under the effects of the medication and the advise of her con-shrink she slides away, brilliantly. Alec Baldwin has three little moments that he manages to wrap with so much truth that his character lingers in my mind. Well, there you are, I'm talking about the performances because that's what makes this movie really fly. Jill Claybourgh, Joseph Finnes, Brian Cox, Gwynneth Paltrow, Evan Rachel Wood and Joseph Cross with his literary future and his thing for hair, they all transform this stranger than fiction real life tale into something memorable, yes, memorable. I don't quite understand why this film was so mistreated by critic and public alike. I found more rewarding elements here than in most of what 2006 had to offer at the movies. Give it a try.

Strange what happens with some movie experiences one has as a very young person. "La Leçon Particulière" is one of those films that I've been trying not to see again because I have a tingling memory about it and I know it could reproduce today that tingling sensation that provoked in me then. Well, I was right. I saw it, and although the film is as light as a feather I could remember what was it that made me love it. It wasn't the gorgeous "older woman" played by Natalie Delon (Mrs Alain Delon then), but Renaud Verley. I though he lighted up the screen and he did. I predicted then an enormous career for him but other that a smallish part in Luchino Visconti's "The Damned" I've never seen him in anything else. His beauty, sexiness and charisma will be forever stored in this little film. That in itself is something to talk about and to recommend it for.