Pretentious

Last night we saw a movie prior to its release entitled Cold Souls which has a very interesting premise. It stars Paul Giamatti and it is about the idea that one could extract one's soul and put it in storage. The joke is that all NYers put everything in storage and that god forbid it should ever be shipped to NJ, they would be horrified. The other funny bit is that his soul looks like a--chick pea. And that is just about the gist of what is worth watching. The director, Sophie Barthe spoke and was a very pretty, very intelligent, very French, very pregnant young woman. She was very definite in her "art" and her opinions. I really enjoyed the first third of the movie. And then it took such a dive that I actually could hardly stand to watch Janet Maslin ask her questions.

The definition of pretentious is "he act of pretending; a false appearance or action intended to deceive. A false or studied show; an affectation". And that is very much what this film was because she was trying to meld together Woody Allen's Sleeper with all the French surrealist films but ultimately ripped off some of the ideas from Being John Malkovitch and other movies of that genre. It is completely derivative.

Part of the film centers upon the play by Chekov Uncle Vanya. All of a sudden the movie turns into a Russian moody and dark "play" about mules carrying souls back and forth to Russia. It completely loses us there. It is at least 30 minutes too long and is filled with scenes of Paul staring off from the icy shores of St Petersburg (?) and then from Brighton Beach. It hits you over the head with metaphors and devices but to me they were all a cheap trick. It could have been so much better. So much more interesting because of the idea of what a soul is and what it could mean and it almost goes there. But it failed, in part because she actually sacrificed the ideas and the humor to make it an "important film", a film that touches on what a young Frenchwoman thinks is "art" or references other "important works". In a way, by doing this she is no more than a copy of a label. Not Gucci but Gocci.

The thing is, maybe I am just really disliking the film because I really wanted to like it and her and couldn't. Just like the movie, her interview with Janet Maslin turned for me when she describe the sci fi aspect of the film and how it is kind of like "the crazy little old Jewish ladies who would buy cyrogenics". How dare she! and I am really pissed off at myself for not asking about it. My friend said, oh but maybe she is Jewish. And that makes it better? Then I looked her up. She is french but was raised in the Middle East and Latin America in Iran, Abu Dhabi, Algeria, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, and Paris . She has been living and working in the US though, and making money here. I started looking through her interviews, all close to exact replicas of the questions and answers her publicist must have given Janet Maslin. Honestly, I felt duped. It was a "false and studied show" and certainly complete affectation. And then what capped it is her interview with the Village Voice.

Barthes admits the protagonist is ultimately an extension of herself: "When I wrote the screenplay, I felt very trapped mentally in this country," she says, mentioning George W. Bush, the war in Iraq, and Americans' complacency and—shall we say—soullessness. "I couldn't bear it any more," she continues. "I literally felt my soul was shrinking."

Yuck. She is so entitled in her attitudes and so pretentious NYer who moved here to go to school at Columbia. She pays homage to the "NY intellectuals" and the LA movie elites. She also sounded completely entitled--well I thought I might get "Woody" but I settled for Paul Giamatti attitude.

When you get down to it is utter pretension. As she is selling her movie now to Americans and reaching into their wallets she isn't calling us "souless". Luckily, I doubt anyone will want to watch it.