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Can
you hear me now? Basinger in Cellular.
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I
Got the Hook-Up
By Ann Morrow
Cellular
Directed
by David R. Ellis
Directed with careless, cheeky energy by David R. Ellis, Cellular
is sort of a reversal of Phone Booth. Instead of being
held hostage by a malevolent caller, Ryan (Chris Evans) is
connected through his cell phone to a desperate kidnap victim.
Though based on a story by Phone Booth writer Larry
Cohen, Cellular doesn’t have the psychological suspense
of that movie; instead, the amateurish screenplay (by first-timer
Chris Morgan) is driven by throwaway humor and clever twists
based on the title technology. Presumably, the movie is about
an unlikely Good Samaritan. Possibly accidentally, it winds
up being breezy, cheesy fun.
Ryan is a beach dude who gets dumped by his girlfriend because
he’s irresponsible (Evans starts out by redialing his role
in Not Another Teen Movie). Cruising down a Los Angeles
freeway, he gets a call from a distraught woman claiming that
she has been kidnapped for no reason. The woman, Jessica (Kim
Basinger), who lives in a Brentwood mansion, has indeed been
kidnapped, by three professional-type thugs who dragged her
off to an unknown location. A science teacher, she rewires
a broken phone and randomly reaches Ryan, who assumes the
call is a prank, until the desperation in her voice convinces
him otherwise. “They’re going to kill me, you’re my only hope,”
she tells him in one of the less clichéd lines of dialogue.
Ryan takes his cell phone to the police station, where he
is brushed off, thus beginning a series of shamelessly contrived
action scenarios. When his phone runs low on power, he holds
up a cellular store during its grand opening. Then he hijacks
a Porsche belonging to a hilariously shallow L.A. lawyer in
order to chase the bad guys, who have made off with Jessica’s
young son. Jason Statham as the ringleader doesn’t have much
to do other than menacing Jessica with threats to kill her
family, but William H. Macy, as a bored, burned-out detective
planning his retirement, more than makes up for it. Cast absurdly
against type in a typical late-stage Clint Eastwood role,
Macy—the penultimate hangdog—is drolly comic (perhaps unintentionally),
especially when soaring through the air horizontally with
his gun a-firing.
There’s also a nifty bit regarding Jessica’s knowledge of
anatomy, which she uses to fend off one of the thugs. And
Evans does give the impression that Ryan is so caught up in
his own daring that he’s compelled to ever-greater involvement.
It also seems as though Ellis, a former stuntman, was having
such a good time with the tricky opportunities of telecommunications
and with Morgan’s sneaky sense of humor that he either didn’t
notice or didn’t care that Ryan’s single-handed efforts to
rescue Jessica are flat-out preposterous. Audiences would
do well not to notice, either. Laughs at the movies this summer
have been few and far between, so enjoy ’em when you get ’em.
Stop
Looking at Me
Facing
Windows
Directed
by Ferzan Ozpetek
How trite they sound: pat sayings like “Be careful what you
wish for” and “The grass is always greener on the other side
of the fence.” Most of us can remember a parent intoning those
sentiments to us, just as we remember responding with a groan
of annoyance. Later, such warnings flew in the face of actions
which, we insisted, proved our independence or signified our
unwillingness to conform. And then, as we matured, we realized
that those sayings bore more than a kernel of cold, hard truth.
Director Ferzan Ozpetek plays with that notion in Facing
Windows, in which 29-year-old Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzagiorno),
an unhappily married mother of two who works as an accountant
at a chicken factory, enjoys spying out her kitchen window
into the apartment of Lorenzo (Raoul Bova), a handsome bank
manager. Unbeknownst to her, Lorenzo has been staking out
Giovanna as well. The two finally meet when Giovanna is assisting
an aged amnesiac, Simone (Massimo Girotti), whom her kindhearted
husband Filippo (Filippo Nigro) has brought home—and left.
The instant connection felt by the two would-be lovebirds
is palpable, particularly as together they try to unravel
the mystery of Simone’s past, a past that includes hints of
forbidden love and broken hearts.
For all its swelling music (a lush and gorgeous score by Andrea
Guerra) and scenes of Italian café life, much of Facing
Windows is grounded in the mundane reality of Giovanna’s
and Lorenzo’s respective situations. Adrift in a lifeless
marriage in which both partners blame the other for their
disappointments, stifled in her work situation (she’d rather
be a pastry chef) and strapped by the lack of freedom that,
seemingly, money could provide, Giovanna is tempted to succumb
to Lorenzo’s passion for her. The director films the moments
of Giovanna’s life in such a way as to make us sense the smell
of other people’s cooking that lingers in her apartment, just
as we hear the sounds of other people’s televisions or stereos
filtering in and enveloping Giovanna and Filippo as they argue
or make love. Eventually, Ozpetek employs a Rear Window
facsimile, to the point that, when Lorenzo rhapsodizes about
how long he has observed Giovanna, she finds a new appreciation
for the life she would so willingly toss aside.
The movie’s dual storyline, told in flashbacks, touches upon
the Holocaust and intolerance, with the newly restored Simone
regaling Giovanna with tales of love and loss, exhorting her
not to waste time dreaming of a better life but to go out
and make that better life happen. The filmmaker’s attempt
to merge these two love stories, separated by decades, is
admittedly weak; we realize that Simone’s lost love weighs
heavily on him, and that his heart is full of longing and
remorse, but we never get the sensation that Giovanna’s and
Lorenzo’s brief interlude has the same permanence. Striving
to make the connection confounds the problem by making the
viewer vaguely aware that perhaps Lorenzo’s constant gawking
at his beloved is, well, creepy. And then Ozpetek switches
gears altogether, giving us something like the Food Network,
Roma style, with Simone and Giovanna happily concocting creamy
bombes and tortes. This unevenness further dilutes the little
touches of reality and simple grace that the movie had accomplished,
and merely reminds us that this is a story whose shelf life
isn’t much longer than one of Simone’s baked delicacies.
—Laura
Leon
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& Opinions
