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Misguided by voices

An attempt to review what may be a good film
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July 11th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Sienna Miller plays a celebrity who turns the tables on journalist Steve Buscemi.
Interview


Directed by Steve Buscemi
With Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller

By Eric Larson
For the Post

When the Dutch director Theo van Gogh, great grandson of the van Gogh, was murdered in November 2002, he was just beginning work on remaking three of his films — Blind Date, 06 and Interview — all in English, and all to be set in New York City. Since his murder, the project, dubbed “Triple Theo,” has been shopped around by his former producer, Gijs van de Westlaken, and American producer Bruce Weiss in hopes of realizing van Gogh’s vision as a kind of tribute.
Steve Buscemi was the first to jump at the opportunity. As both star (opposite Sienna Miller, who also stars in Factory Girl) and director of Interview, he has created a convincing and well-choreographed, character-driven piece that locks into the same room contemporary culture’s contempt for celebrity and insatiable appetite for it.
Maybe. I mean, I think that’s what the film is about.
If you want to know for sure, you’ll have to track down and ask the husky Czech fellow who narrates, live and quite loudly, the English-language films that arrive at Prague press screenings sans Czech subtitles, as Interview did.
Other reviews of the film report that, like all van Gogh’s movies, Interview is remarkable for its witty, fast-paced dialogue between Pierre (Buscemi), a war correspondent-cum-White House political reporter who has been assigned a celebrity profile, and Katya (Miller), the sassy, sexy celeb herself.
I know from other films that Buscemi uses to considerable effect his distinctive, mousey voice, and that syllables flow quick from his lips. But I would be lying if I wrote that I could make out more than a few of Buscemi’s articulations before pani Narrator barked his Czech interpretation into the microphone. Add to that the occasional belch, coughs and a few seconds of laughter from the good-humored audience, and well over half the film was lost.
The reviews also report that Pierre makes no secret of his cynical attitude toward such fluff assignments and their subjects. This I could guess from the pouty snarl on Pierre’s face as he waits for Katya, fidgeting in the restaurant at the beginning of the film. In Katya — who saunters in late, put out by, perhaps, but still in need of the attention her acting career has afforded her — one can see simultaneously a celebrity strutting and a girl trying not to trip and fall on her face. Words or no words, this first interaction in the restaurant, replete with rolled eyebrows and mutually disinterested looks, sets the initial tone for the film. These people are at odds.
I mean, maybe. I’m just telling you what I saw.
Then I saw Pierre getting hit by a car — bark, bark. And Katya helping Pierre into her spacious apartment — cough, bark — where the rest of the film takes place. I saw an ice pack placed on Pierre’s head — cough — a bottle of wine — cough — a bottle of Bourbon —  bark, bark.
The mood seemed to lighten with the tension broken by a Buscemic smirk and Millerian flirt. It became taut again after the characters leaned in close, then closer, then —  bark, bark, cough, cough. I saw Katya fluctuate between pensive, angry, hysterical, seductive, and Pierre try to keep up with this mania, his look softening into some yet-unnamed feeling that bridges understanding and pure pity.
I heard something about Pierre’s wife, his girl, an overdose. I saw Katya snorting coke, and Pierre staring into Katya’s video camera as though it were his confessor. But I couldn’t understand what he was confessing — bark, bark, cough, cough.
Of the words I did hear, three stood out: “I’m very tired.” Pierre says it in a couple of feeble attempts to leave the apartment, and Katya says it in equally insincere attempts to get him to go. They both seem beaten by this tiredness. It appears to be their lot in life. And yet, clearly, they are each driven by it.
Or something like that.
I could be wrong.
Ask Pan Narrator. He’s got the script.
Eric Larson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (11/07/2007):

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