"FOR A GREEDY MAN EVEN HIS TOMB IS TOO SMALL". -Tajikistani proverb
The hustlers get away with it in this cool-toned film: its based on the Abscam scandal of the 1970s-80s, an FBI sting operations, so amoral - s*** finding its own. Amy Adams plays feigns an English aristocrat inexplicably in love with the sleazy con artist Christian Bale. Bradley Cooper is a sly FBI agent who tries to play with crooks but doesn't quite succeed. The criminals remain in play, and he only catches the bottom-feeders, members of Congress who get caught taking bribes.
The con involves faked paintings; the film ends with Amy and Christian running a for-real gallery. The film's many levels revealing the energy of immoral greed are fascinatingly narrated.
That the art market is included is a fine touch that speaks to how corruptible just about every institution and office in modern capitalism has become.
The bodices of Amy Adams dresses are quite amazing - they are mostly slit to the waistline and opened to reveal the inside curves of her breasts. Between marveling at the hustlers' juggling acts, one waits for wardrobe slippage that seems only avoided by a merciful editor.
Most critics liked Jennifer Lawrence's performance over Amy Adams; really not sporting to force a choice about this. Jennifer's New Jersey girl/trailer park but vulnerable quality is always perfect; Adams has versatility and princess-ice about her. Their characters' contrast enriches the story of swindle; class is a valuable commodity for use in exploitation.
A bookend for the film Wolf of Wall Street. These two depictions of modern American capitalism are strong medicine. Anyone direct me to the nearest commune?
Yawn. Who ARE these people? Ruined choirs, where once the sweet birds sang? That's only the city they don't deserve, not these artificial planched shells dancing madly. They snake around the lavish terrace, circling around truths they deny with pleasure.
They take poses: flanêur, activist, gritty realist, wanna-be; their lives snuffed by the social roles to which they cling.
Jep's baroque indolence is revealed by the contrast between his smile, revealing stained yellow teeth and his multi-hued sport jackets and the Saint, Sister Maria, who has a ragged toothless mouth gasping for life and air. Her thin grey gown drapes a withered stick of a body and she looks like a souvenir wooden santos, her eyes glazed pale and glowing by cataracts.
Her spiritual practice seems at once sincerely transparent and didactic, little different from Jeb's cool, the Cardinal's foolish foodie-talk,trading on his expectation to be Pope, and the absurd performance artists the social set takes seriously.
Knife thrower, paint-throwing child, nude head-banger: how can anyone endure these attempts at art-making when surrounded by Roman architectural magnificence?
Occasionally Jep and his social set are quite witty, smarter, their barbs truthful and amusing - a style out-of-fashion among most politically correct, self-esteem promoting folks I know.
Unsolicited Facebook affirmations,
exercise mantras, medical advice, and daily reports of environmental debacles fill my days. Don't drink, don't smoke, no drugs, no clubs, constant dieting, Pilates, treadmill. It's called self-discipline, I recall. Luckily, the hublet still provides some laughs.
Oh, I'm implicated after all: a backyard swimming pool, terrace, grill and painting studio,to relax in the late day.
Rome is beautifully photographed. At the beginning of the film a Japanese tourist takes a photo of the Janiculum Hill, smiles with pleasure and satisfaction, then falls over dead. Isn't there a saying: "See Rome and die?" One could do worse.
A pleasant languid ode to Fellini and death's power to dull and energize life, should one only choose.
Excuse me now, I'm going for a hike. Sun and rain and new leaves.
A few critic's quotes:
"...a wildly inventive and sometimes thrilling ode to sensibility and to some of its linguistic cousins, like sensation, sensitivity and sentiment". (Manhola Dargis, NYT)
"...more a style show than a deep philosophical treatise, but with surfaces this sleek and faces this interesting, I'll take style over substance any day." (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune)
"...The melancholy in this film is just as trumped up as the frenzy." (Peter Rainier, Christian Science Monitor)
