AMATEUR
A film review by Ben Guaraldi
Copyright 1995 Ben Guaraldi
Directed by: Hal Hartley Photographed by: Michael Spiller Written by: Hal Hartley Edited by: Steve Hamilton Music by: Hal Hartley and Jeffrey Taylor Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Martin Donovan, Elina Lowensohn, Damian Young, Chuck Montgomery, David Simonds
AMATEUR involves you. One becomes attached to the eccentric characters and their confused lives right from the start. This should not often be considered an extraordinary feat for a movie, but with the way this film jumps wildly about from philosophical commentary to deeply felt emotion to murder scenes right out of Monty Python, this trait is somewhat surprising. Add to that acting that is nearly uniformly dry, characters that develop with massive contradictions and scenes that have no jokes (yet still manage to be quite funny), and one finds oneself with the surreal aura that makes this preposterous story believable.
But let us begin with the characters, who are something to behold: Isabelle, the nymphomaniacal (and virginal) ex-nun (Isabelle Huppert); Thomas, the amnesiac pornographer who wants to lead a new life (Martin Donovan II); Sofia, the child porn star whose naivete is intriguing for one who has lived so long on the seamy side of life (Elina Lowensohn); Edward, the sympathetic accountant who is electrocuted and becomes insane (Damian Young); Jan and Kurt, the well-cultured ex-accountant hit-men (Chuck Montgomery and David Simonds); and the deeply bass disembodied voice of the double-crossing Jacques. To even conceive of these wildly anti-stereotypical characters is one thing; to integrate them into a coherent story is quite another. Hal Hartley, the writer and director, manages to do both, weaving in new characters and sub-plots with the seeming ease that life weaves such things into our experience.
But Hartley doesn't truly believe in the randomness of life, as betrayed by his use of color; these characters descend from bright colors to black and white as they get deeper and deeper into the underworld. It is inevitable for the color to disturb them again, with the bright blue of the police officers' uniforms at the end. Even with this idea of pre-destiny, Hartley sets up an interesting dichotomy; Isabelle says that God has told her that it is her mission to save these people, but Hartley has quite a different idea, ending with the climactic slaughter at the nunnery's steps.
And yet what is the point to this entire movie? The key to understanding this is within the title: Amateur. This word refers to Isabelle, who struggles to be both a nymphomaniac and a pornographer; Thomas, who is finding what it is to be a new person and Sofia, who attempts to blackmailing for the first time. Then one must look at the last line, "Yes, I knew this man." Isabelle still knew little or anything of Thomas' past life or past wrongs, but she still asserts that she knows who he is, clearly saying that it is different than who he was. Herein the author makes a significant argument for the ability to start anew.
And it is this argument, not any of the crowd-pleasing bawdy humor that it is at the heart of the film. Hartley's almost bored treatment of the bleeding heart missing persons cop coupled with his rushed montage of electrocuted Edward's escapades show that his heart is not truly in these scenes but is more in the deadpan, dryly humorous philosophizing that fills the rest of the movies. Perchance, however, Hartley will soon find a way to tie these two widely different brands of humor together. Then he will have enough practice in both to make films that adhere them together and cohere as a whole.
-- Ben Guaraldi b.guaraldi@dartmouth.edu http://coos.dartmouth.edu/~jaundice
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