MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1994 Raymond Johnston
Directed by Alan Rudolph Starring- Jennifer Jason Leigh, Campbell Scott, Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals, Andrew McCarthy, Wallace Shawn, Peter Gallagher, Martha Plimptom, Stephen Baldwin, Keith Carradine Screenplay by Rudolph & Randy Sue Coburn Produced by Robert Altman
It would seem that the makers of ED WOOD and the makers of MRS. PARKER got their scripts mixed up. ED WOOD was about a fun film about an interesting group of celebrities. MRS. PARKER is a downbeat film about somebody declining into alcoholism and failure.
MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE can be seen as a companion piece to Rudolph's 1988 film THE MODERNS. The jazz age cultural elite of New York, instead of Paris, is prominently featured. Instead of the Paris cafe scene, the main setting is the dining room of the Algonquin Hotel. Anybody who was anybody seemed to sit at one table there. Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and Edna Ferber were among the most notable. The 'good natured' sarcasm of the critics and playwrights assembled still turns up to fill the small stray spaces of magazines.
From this group, Rudolph focuses on verse poet Dorothy Parker and erudite humorist Robert Benchley. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Campbell Scott respectively turn in fine subdued performances in the lead roles. Leigh gets a lot out of her emotionally distant Dorothy Parker character that always has to be ready with a verbal barb. Scott manages to find a level of insecurity in Robert Benchley, the face behind the mask. Most of the other roles in the film are just cameos, people that Parker and Benchley encounter along the way and fail to connect with. Wallace Shawn has an amusing turn as the Algonquin waiter. Keith Carradine, star of THE MODERNS, turns up very briefly as Will Rogers.
The plot of the film is very loosely structured, so much so that it can hardly be called a plot at all. Days at the Algonquin when famous people turned up to say famous lines are punctuated by Dorothy Parker's increasing dependence on liquor and empty sexual encounters. Her later years, in black and white, are intercut with her pastel colored memories of her time in the national eye. It is more a series of events than a story. And while we often see the characters drink, we seldom see them write.
Both as a double character study and a recreation of bygone era MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE is quite successful. It avoids the common tendency to automatically deify the subject of the film. Quite to the contrary, depicting the human failings of the famous people of the jazz age seems to be the project of the film. The famous witty jabs somehow don't seem quite as funny when the nature of the "vicious circle" is revealed. Mostly they become forced vain attempts at comraderie.
As with all of Rudolph's work, the film is visually stunning if perhaps a little slowly paced. The audience for the film is also perhaps a small one. Watching the film evokes the same feeling as reading New Yorker magazine, which published work from Dorothy Parker and others depicted. If you don't enjoy one, you probably won't enjoy the other.
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