4 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2002
'Frontal' Mixed Bag
In my naive, fantasy-world view on cinema, I look at the role of a film director as that of a magician—a person who uses a bag of tricks to extract the proper emotion at the proper moment.
Of course, some believe magicians are nothing more than shysters. Many film theorists see directors as manipulators who have control issues and could care less whether they satisfy the audience.
Full Frontal, the docu-drama-expose on Hollywood opening tomorrow at Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts, speaks to the latter theory.
On the surface. Frontal is a documentary on the sad and twisted satellites that circle Planet Hollywood. Functioning below the celluloid is an examination of why directors have God complexes and feel the need to mess with their audiences. While uncovering this shocking revelation, Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh gets the smug desire to do a little manipulating himself.
Full Frontal begins as a documentary on the La-La Land of Gus the Producer (David Duchovny), which includes a bored married couple (David Hyde Pierce and Catherine Keener), a masseuse
Showtimes
Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St., hopes to show Full Frontal next week. In the meantime, if you're up for a drive, check it out at the following Kansas City, Mo., locations (call for times):
Cinemark
Cinema mark
Palace at the
Plaza 500
Nichols Road
(816) 758-5833
FILM SNOB
Regal Kansas City 18 Casino Station on Armour Road (816) 452-3554
Their tangled stories are juxtaposed with the film Rendezvous, co-written by Carl (Pierce) and starring Catherine (Julia Roberts) and Nicholas (Blair Underwood). The film is designed to drop all sorts of hints, most of which become red herrings, about Carl's personal life. By the halfway mark, we see the actors from Rendezvous merge with the characters in the film that is in the foreground.
to the stars who seeks refuge in Internet dating chat rooms (Mary McCormack), and a screenwriter named Arty (Enrico Colantoni).
It all leads to a climatic party where most everyone has a big revelation. Some people get together, some break apart, and some just die as they asphyxiate while trying to pleasure themselves.
But if only if it were that simple. Full
Contributed photo
this is Blair Underwood and Julia Roberts in Full Frontal. Contributed photo
James Owens jowens@kansan.com
Frontal's plot may seem complicated and dense, but one must realize that it all plays into this major experiment by the director.
Characters in Rendezvous begin to acknowledge and address the camera when the audience is under the assumption that they were not a part of the documentary.
Actors who are playing actors in the film give self-effacing performances that seem like they are truly acting as themselves when the cameras are not rolling. (Some of Robert's primadonnaisms are reminiscent of the stories of her off-stage antics.)
This all falls into Soderbergh's hypothesis that an audience can never really trust what a filmmaker is going to do and how they will do it.
Accordingly, the story often backtracks on itself and suggests, "Oh. Did you think we were doing that? Because we were really doing... THIS! Ha, suckers!"
While such stunts are rather smug, Soderbergh's treatment of the film is admirable. Primarily shot on digital camera over a two-week period for under $2 million, the look of the film is stark and overexposed, quite appropriate for a film called Full Frontal. And the actors, who were required to provide their own wardrobe and their food, were encouraged to improvise lines. This is where the film reaches true moments of honesty.
One of those moments should go down in Film 2002 history: Underwood's deconstruction of the Black Actor as Leading Man to Roberts.
To fully appreciate this moment is to understand that Roberts allegedly pulled some pretty unprofessional stunts in her attempt to lobby for her buddy Denzel Washington to receive Best Actor at last year's Oscars for his role as the nasty, murderous cop in Training Day.
Underwood scathes the Hollywood establishment for accepting an actor like Washington or Wesley Snipes as a gun-toting bad boy but not as a romantic lead. Especially with a white woman. Soderbergh's camera remains unrelenting on a speechless Roberts through the scene.
Full Frontal is a mixed bag examining the myth and lore of Hollywood and filmmaking. To be fair, most films on these subjects are self-effacing and obnoxious. It's just hard to take filmmakers seriously when they try to prove their childlike antics and oafishness are justified in the name of high art.
James Owen is a law student at the University of Kansas.
Read more reviews by Owens on www.filmsnobs.com.