DECEIT (1999)
"He's a fake pretending to be a man who writes about fakes."
2 out of ****
Original Title: Commedia; Starring Jonathan Pryce, Susan Lynch, Claudia Gerini, Enrico Silvestrin; Directed by Claudia Florio; Written by David Ambrose; Cinematography by Luciano Tovoli
DECEIT does many things wrong, but one of its most glaring missteps is to invite comparison to none other than "Othello." Michela, one of the main characters, is an actress. In the first scene, she is auditioning for the part of Desdemona. At the same time, a "real life" drama involving treachery, passion, and recrimination is beginning. In the closing scenes, we are shown moments from the production of "Othello" starring Michela, counterpointed with the denouement of the movie's actual story. The transparent implication is that we are witnessing events whose emotional intensity bears comparison to a work widely regarded as one of the greatest tragedies in the English language. To make such a comparison would be a mistake for a good movie; for DECEIT, contrived and self-referential and mediocre, it is suicidal.
The premise is not uninspired. A man (Jonathan Pryce) sees Michela (Claudia Gerini) at her audition and leaves her an envelope containing 500,000 lira, some scripted dialogue, a postcard, and an invitiation. He asks her to come alone to a tea shop, drop the postcard on the floor, order tea and lemon cake, and wait. He will pick up the postcard and join her, and then she should play out the scene according to the dialogue he has provided. Michela shows up, but brings her room-mate Corinna (Susan Lynch) with her, because she is understandably worried that the proposal is driven by sinister motives. The man does not join her. He sends her another note, suggesting that she should really come alone next time. Michela decides not to bother.
Corinna, intrigued, takes the script and shows up in Michela's place. The man, older, handsome, well-groomed, is nonplussed when he sees her, but proceeds with the scene nevertheless. Corinna is a bad actor, forgetting some of the lines; even so, the man agrees to pay her another 500,000 lira for another rendezvouz, mailing her a new scene.
Things go on like this for a while. Corinna learns that the man's name is Mark Walker and he is an art historian with an interest in fakes, and she is playing the role of a woman named Fiemetta. She doesn't learn more, because Mark insists on sticking to the script: no questions, he says. Corinna plays along against her better judgement, seduced by the enigma. Her boyfriend (Enrico Silvestrin) understandably does not believe her when she insists that her participation has nothing to do with sexual attraction. She is indeed attracted to Mark--but is she attracted to him or to the role he's playing? He seems to reciprocate--but is he attracted to her or the persona he has scripted for her?
DECEIT, like too many other self-important works, blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, and assumes that the mere fact that it does so is significant. Corinna is a photographer for a food magazine who takes pictures of fake food (because "real food doesn't look real enough"). Mark is an art historian who writes about fake artworks. Michela is an actress: her job is a form of illusion. There are more such references to the overlapping realms of the authentic and the counterfeit, doubtless intended to amplify the movie's central themes. Instead, they remind us of how overdetermined it all is, while failing to explore the issues it raises in a meaningful fashion.
There is nothing wrong with films which are artificial, symbolic, hermetic--as long as they don't pretend to be otherwise. DECEIT, however, insists on being accepted as mimesis. The acting and mise-en-scene are naturalistic. Despite the ludicrous plot contortions, we are intended to accept these people's lives as believable, while the roles they sometimes inhabit are scripted--but there is no distinction, it all seems equally contrived. It is also predictable: I guessed Mark's true identity and intentions about halfway through, and I'm usually hopeless at predicting plot twists.
One of the more tedious aspects of DECEIT is the oh-so-elegant air of cultured respectability it cultivates at all times. The characters are intellectuals and artists--photographers, librarians, art historians, actresses, editors--as if somehow tragedy doesn't mean anything if it doesn't happen to the intelligentsia. The exception is Corinna's boyfriend, who happens to be the most poorly developed of the four main characters. The setting is old Rome, in chic apartments and antiquated cobbled streets. Each scene is chosen with an eye for sophisticated refinement: posh restaurants, art exhibitions, theatres. (No lumpenproletariat allowed, thank you very much.) An unspoken elitism underlies it all, further distancing the audience from the drama.
The actors do what they can. The movie gains a dignity it doesn't deserve from the presence of Jonathan Pryce, who provides a subtle and humane interpretation of Mark's tortured motivations, but even Pryce cannot make us care. The movie remains at arm's length: Florio seems to have spent too much time admiring her conceit and not enough time bringing it to life. Tragedy is about people, while DECEIT is about discourse. Imagine if Desdemona had only one scene in "Othello" and three lines of dialogue, while the rest of the play was spent talking about her, and you'll have some idea of what's wrong with this movie.
Subjective Camera (subjective.freeservers.com) Movie Reviews by David Dalgleish (daviddalgleish@yahoo.com)
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