 |
and High Crimes |
|
Film Review By John Demetry
The totally famished expectations of the current movie audience allow such trite as these two films to pass quickly. Pause the process. One could make some interesting "comparisons and contrasts" (as high school English teachers would say). The experience of The Sweetest Thing and High Crimes need not be a total waste.
I expected little from director Roger Kumble's The Sweetest Thing. His previous film, an adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses called Cruel Intentions, was an unaccountable abhorrence. With The Sweetest Thing, Kumble again fails to credibly portray modern romantic rituals -- even licentiously, much less with moral scrutiny. On the other hand, I always have high hopes for High Crimes director Carl Franklin. The director of the 1992 cable mini-series Laurel Avenue -- a masterpiece -- proved him capable of great things, of an open-hearted awareness of modern sexual, familial, and political turmoil. In High Crimes, he replaces such insight with his undeniable craft. Stars Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, and James Caviezel have never looked better.
That describes the crime of High Crimes. Its silly analogy: a lawyer (Judd) knows as little about her husband's hidden past as she does about her country's own secret history. High Crimes links the two as a self-help guide to self-fulfillment (read: self-involvement). The movie lets Judd off the hook from the responsibility that the discovery about the United States' clandestine involvement in South American politics ought to impart. Similarly, Diaz's character in The Sweetest Thing is more femme facile than fatale - she fears "commitment." One of her friends, played by Selma Blair (so incisive in Storytelling this year), however, endures enough embarrassment to scare anyone from the dating scene. A near-classic sequence involves her bringing a cum-stained dress to the dry-cleaners. The sequence never achieves climax; it never penetrates accepted cultural norms. Both films ultimately revel in hegemony-endorsed red herrings. In The Sweetest Thing, that red herring is homosexuality. In High Crimes it's the racial other.
Fear and fascination with homosexual subcultures aptly - honestly - reflects the anxiety of sexual license in modern dating - hetero or otherwise. Here, at least, it's played for laughs -- an airing out of recognizable, shared discomfort - rather than the menace of homo prurience in Cruel Intentions. In High Crimes, Judd projects her anxieties, best aimed at scrutinizing her husband and country or herself, onto an alcoholic, African-American lawyer played by Freeman. To Black filmmaker Franklin's credit, the audience is aware of Judd's mistake -- but Franklin manipulates it for mere suspense mechanics.
The "propaganda" of these movies is not dangerous and will not influence viewers. Rather, the removing of character motivations from social context evidences the way people treat movies and their place in the world. That's what puts the culture in the proverbial crapper: the fear of commitment to the art -- and to life. |
Cameron Diaz stars in The Sweetest Thing
The girls of The Sweetest Thing
Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman's talents are wasted in High Crimes