This poses two questions. Am I so out of touch with modern film-making that I consider this a terrible film? Or are the jurors at the Cannes Film Festival and a whole raft of critics so out of touch with modern film-making that they think it’s a great film.
One of the problems for proper critics – that is the people who see every single film that comes out as part of their job and are hired to offer their opinions in eminent media as opposed to the self-styled critics who have podcasts and blogs but pick and choose what they watch – is the sheer volume of product.
From speaking over the years (over the decades) I know that one of the perennial problems facing the critic is boredom. They see so much dreck and are equally turned off by earnest movies or by seeing the same old same old that they tend to get extremely excited when they come upon something that’s new, refreshing, different. Added to that they want to champion new invigorating film-makers rather than poke holes in the latest Hollywood disaster.
So there’s a tendency to over-champion and to patronise, pumping up films which critics feel audiences should see. And over the years there’s been no shortage of forgettable movies that enjoyed a moment in the sun, picked out by a critic as the next best thing in a very dull week, and over-praised, or by a critic who simply wanted to get behind home-grown product or a particular favored director or star.
There’s a sense that critics feel they are needed more than ever in order to steer audiences in the right direction, forgetting that moviegoers are perfectly capable of making up their own minds. The Cannes Film Festival hasn’t usually had an iffy reputation. Sure, for every game changer like Easy Rider (1969), Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) or Pulp Fiction (1994) and solid successes like The Piano (1993) or The White Ribbon (2009) or Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) there are king-sized stumbles. Let’s not hear it for the likes of Elephant (2003) or Tree of Life (2011) – efforts to buff up fading reputations – and Triangle of Sadness (2022) which took a long time going nowhere. But poor choices are a relatively minor phenomenon.
This is worse than any of them. The worst of the worst. It’s not even redeemable like yesterday’s Doctors Wives (1971) which is one of the best so-bad-it’s-good pictures you’ll come across. Some clever dick tagged this as a contemporary Pretty Woman (1990) but it bears as much resemblance to that picture as Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
If you’re aiming for a Cinderella story involving a sex worker you’re going to need the oodles of narrative charm and screen charisma that proved Pretty Woman’s major selling point or you disguise the commercial instincts of the female lead beneath a sheen of “presents” as in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).
Even better, you just learn how to tell a story. And that doesn’t mean repeating the same scene with minor variations for nearly half an hour. Stripper Ani (Mikey Madison) is hired for a week of sex by juvenile Russian playboy Vanya (Mark Eidelstein). When they’re not having sex in every possible position and she’s subtly trying to make him last longer, he’s off his head with drink and drugs and playing computer games. That’s basically it for a full hour. Initial lap dances, off to his amazing mansion, then sex, drugs, computer game, sex, drugs, computer game, sex, drugs, computer game. Am I boring you yet?
Yes, there is some mild backstage bickering at the strip club and partying with his friends but that’s just minor interruption to sex, drugs, computer games, sex, drugs, computer games, sex, drugs, computer games. Vanya is so out of it he asks Ani to marry him, which she does, in Vegas, possibly with the ulterior motive of him getting a green card. But he doesn’t seem to have a single thought in his head beyond sex, drugs, computer games, and that kind of conniving would require a more competent brain.
Anyway, of course, mom and pop back in Russia get wind of their son marrying a sex worker and send Toros, a Russian Orthodox priest, to sort out the mess. Best scene in the film is Toros, carrying out a baptism in a crowded church, taking a text message in the middle of the ceremony and dumping the unbaptized baby in the arms of the astonished parents and rushing off. If the rest of the film were up to the originality of that scene, we might be onto something.
Maybe there were great scenes to come. I couldn’t tell you. And maybe I shouldn’t be reviewing this at all because I walked out just after the baptism.
Nobody comes out of this well, least of writer-director Sean Baker whose last effort Red Rocket (2021) was similarly concerned with sexual low-lifes. Mikey Madison (Scream, 2022) and Mark Eidelstein get their kits off to no avail.
A mess.
The Magnificent 60s 