Wednesday, August 26, 2015

 

The devil is a woman, what an invention!!!

ROMAN POLANSKI – JOHNNHY DEPP – THE NINTH GATE – 1999

A small film with a rather big budget travelling from New York to Spain (more or less not famous places) and to France, Paris of course. A film about the Devil or Satan or Lucifer had to be produced in the satanic year 1-999, just before the diabolical new millennium.

Apart from that the plot is so light we could think it was bought as a premium in a barrel of washing powder. The only interesting element is the suspenseful editing that makes the film have good rhythm. But the rhythm of the editing is not enough to make a good film.


 Clichés upon clichés. The best ones are the baroness in a wheel chair with a “secretary” that looks like a prison warden and goes out in the morning to buy oranges. The younger desk clerk in a four or five stars hotel in Paris who is authorizing a woman to go to the main character’s room because she claims to be his wife. The concierge will apologize later on but it will be too late. I guess that younger desk clerk had not gone through the proper vocational training.

The best cliché is the fact that the devil is a woman, white of course and blonde of course again. She is s devilish person obviously since she can move around without any means of transportation except thin  air. But she is the excuse for Polanski to put some female flesh on the screen. He is a lot more modest about male flesh. Why did he get Johnny Depp then? A fatso like Depardieu would have been just alright, and a lot more impressive.


Johnny Depp is underused indeed. He is static, unexpressive, cold like a slithering snake, badly dressed and hardly human.

Well enjoy it if you can. I guess with a good shot of vodka maybe. . .


Dr Jacques COULARDEAU



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