Although I am a big fan of labyrinthian, inconclusive puzzles, I was completely confounded by Abel Ferrara's barely released bore "New Rose Hotel," a silly, counterproductive no-brainer that barely makes a lick of sense. A thrilling start is undone by an artless camouflage over its thin premise.
Based on a short story by William Gibson ("Necromancer") that was published in Omni magazine a few years back, the film stars Christopher Walken as Fox and Willem Dafoe as X, two industrial spies who specialize in industrial espionage. Their newest target is a millionaire geneticist named Hiroshi whose research has yielded some outstanding breakthroughs in the field. This new groundbreaking project, known as AMAAS, has something to do with the defection of research scientists from one Japanese mega corporation to another, and I am assuming that Fox and X are trying to prevent this defection from happening. So they hire a prostitute named Sandii (Asia Argento) to seduce Hiroshi and, in short, deviate his attention from his work and his family. The only problem is that X is in love with Sandii, especially when they play act their roles where X pretends to be Hiroshi. X teaches Sandii how to make love to Hiroshi, and so on. Naturally, X threatens the whole operation and Fox, for one reason or another, feels compelled to make Hiroshi's life insufferable, even after the seduction works.
In another director's hands, such as Peter Greenaway or David Lynch, this might have been at least an extraordinarily visual film, showing parallels between digital video technology and alternate realities where one can't decipher what is real and what is not (hence, there are numerous grainy video shots of Hiroshi's activities, though we never actually see the central seduction). But under the gritty ruling hand of Abel Ferrara, this is dreary filmmaking, often badly photographed to the point where we can't fathom what is happening on screen (especially the noirish club scenes). Ferrara is at his best showing the streets of New York where he deals with soulful, spiritual protagonists questioning their spiritual existence as in "Bad Lieutenant" (his finest film) and "The Addiction." Here, he is left languishing with nary a script or a theme - it is all style with no substance. And to make matters worse, the final half-hour is a virtual recap of the first forty minutes, thereby reinforcing the preceding events from Dafoe's recollection. But it tells us...nothing, and there are simply no revelations or clues.
To be fair, I enjoyed Walken's performance as always, walking with a cane and ruminating on his thoughts regarding Hiroshi and his research. I even like his brief tap dances and flirtations with Sandii. There are also some choice cameos by Gretchen Mol and Anabella Sciorra. But these minute virtues hardly make for a suitable recommendation to this endlessly repetitive film. It is a trip to nowheresville, where nothing of consequence or significance occurs. Do not visit this hotel.
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