Amateur
Written, directed and produced by Hal Hartley
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Martin Donovan and Elina Lowensohn
Screening at the Sydney Film Festival
Reviewed by Barry Healy
Here is the strange world of Amateur: an ex-nun writing pornographic short stories for a living meets an international gangster with amnesia. Their lives become entangled and lead to some shoot-em-ups with baddies and cops. There is also a pornographic movie star.
Large numbers of cigarettes get smoked.
The pace is slow and the dialogue intentionally ridiculous. It is meant to be a comedy, a spoof on the gangster film genre. But few people laughed at the preview I saw.
You're not meant to. The tone is so flat, so drop-dead cool that to laugh would be to expose oneself as a nerd (I admit to sniggering in places — there are some very amusing scenes).
"Cool" is the trade mark of writer, director and producer Hal Hartley, who is possibly the hottest new auteur making films today. The young New Yorker is known internationally for the art house hits Trust and The Unbelievable Truth.
Amateur could be called "The Unbelievable Plot Line" or "The Unconvincing Characters", but that would miss the point.
What is the point? That will be thrashed out by the cool literati in small coffee houses after late night screenings. Debate will cover the wonderfully inventive lighting, camera work, scene framing, sound, music and editing. Hartley's ideas will be cloned into video clips and TV commercials for years to come. He is a tribute to the film school that trained him.
Will the concept of emotional involvement intrude into the discussions? It is the major feature lacking in the film. Amateur is intelligent, but its wit is sardonic. Its coldness feels like a study in applied alienation.
Going home, not much remained with me about the film except the sensation that Hartley's real cinematic achievement is the fact that he was able to raise millions of dollars to produce it. Extraordinary.