CURDLED and 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY
A film review by Michael Dequina
Copyright 1996 Michael Dequina
Curdled (R) ** (out of ****) 2 days in the Valley (R) ** (out of ****) Those looking for evidence that Quentin Tarantino is the most influential filmmaker of the moment need look no further than not one, but two recent releases, the macabre comedy Curdled and the ensemble comedy-thriller 2 days in the Valley. Pairing black humor with bloody violence, both attempt to duplicate, to paraphrase the Coens' Barton Fink, "that Tarantino feeling"... and come up short. Tarantino himself executive produced Reb Braddock's Curdled, based on Braddock's short of the same name. The film centers on Gabriela (Angela Jones), a Miami woman who has a had a fixation on death since she was a little girl in her native Colombia--she even keeps a scrapbook of newspaper articles about murders, drawing depictions of the crimes next to each article. When she sees a TV ad recruiting people for a company that cleans up after murder scenes, she knows she's found her calling and immediately signs up. Of course, her new job puts her into contact with danger, namely one Paul Guell (William Baldwin), a.k.a. the Blue Blood Killer, who stabs and beheads women from Miami's upper social echelon. It also just so happens that Paul's murder spree is Gabriela's latest morbid obsession. The plot is enough to sustain 28 minutes, which is how long the original Curdled short lasted. Stretched out to a little over 90, the thinness of the premise is all too evident; a number of scenes and characters feel like padding, and the movie doesn't kick into full gear until the last act, when Gabriela and Paul finally meet. And for a black comedy, writers Braddock and John Maass are a little too heavy on the "black" and too light on the "comedy." While the entire package is amusing and never boring (look out for the connections to From Dusk till Dawn), real laughs are few and far-between; however, the film never skimps in terms of blood, the letting and collection of it. The wallowing in gore is more sensational and exploitative than anything else, and it is bound to turn off many a moviegoer. I suppose Braddock was trying to get under people's skin, but the subtler moments, like Gabriela's haunting retrace-the-steps-of-the-murder-victim dance, are more disturbing and funny than, say, the gruesome finale, which comes equipped with a joke that's more cheesy than hilarious. The performances are a mixed bag. Jones and her fascinating character of Gabriela (of which she played a variation in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction) are by far the best thing the film has going for it. Gabriela is an interesting paradox--a woman who always wears dresses and speaks in soft, accented, little girl tones but on the inside is far from an innocent. Baldwin, on the other hand, picks up where he left off in the awful Fair Game, relying on a single facial expression to convey certain characteristics. In Fair Game, Baldwin made his eyes bulge and gritted his teeth to convey toughness; here, he constantly makes his upper lip curl to signify evil. Mel Gorham is quite good as Gabriela's all-business cleaning partner, and MTV personality Daisy Fuentes makes her acting debut as another co-worker, but her role is so minute that it's still not clear whether she can really act or not. Strong performances are about all there is to second-time writer-director John Herzfeld's 2 days in the Valley, an interesting but none-too-funny ensemble piece. Herzfeld's knotty scenario has a murder in California's San Fernando Valley link ten diverse characters: an Olympic skier (Teri Hatcher); a no-nonsense hitman (James Spader); his icy Swedish girlfriend (Charlize Theron); a past-his-prime hitman (Danny Aiello) deathly afraid of dogs; an effete British art dealer (Greg Cruttwell); his put-upon assistant (Glenne Headly); his nurse half-sister (Marsha Mason); a has-been TV director (Paul Mazursky); and two vice cops (Eric Stoltz and Jeff Daniels). Actually, I should say _nine_ characters, for Daniels's racist cop disappears midway through the action and thus has really nothing to do with anything. Aside from his anomalous presence, Herzfeld does find interesting and creative ways to link these characters. But structure isn't everything to a picture, especially not a comedy, and 2 days's slapstick farce is more labored and silly than funny despite some high points (the vicious brawl between Hatcher and Theron being the highest). With his wide assortment of oddball characters and flashes of violence, Herzfeld was obviously shooting for a mix of Tarantino and Robert Altman--Pulp Fiction meets Short Cuts, to use the popular comparison. The film does come off as a Tarantino/Altman hybrid, but it's more like Four Rooms meets Pret-a-Porter. So just what does the mediocrity of the Tarantino-inspired Curdled and 2 days mean? Quentin, get thee back behind the camera--quick.
Michael Dequina mrbrown@ucla.edu Visit Mr. Brown's Movie Site at http://members.tripod.com/~MrBrown/
"It's not my fault If in God's plan He made the devil so much Stronger than a man" --Frollo (Tony Jay), "Hellfire"; Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
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