Polanski and the battle of the sexes

Roman Polanski tries his hand at another stage play in Venus in Fur, a mini-movie that represents a definite improvement over 2011's Carnage, a movie also based on a play. This time, Polanski translates David Ives's Broadway production into French, turning it into a claustrophobic power struggle between a playwright/director (Mathieu Amalric) and a mysterious actress (Emmanuelle Seigner) who's trying out for a part in the director's adaptation of a novel by real-life, 19th-century author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Polanski's remarkably fluid opening and closing shots are enough to justify the price of admission. Better yet, the performances are intriguing, perhaps because they totally embody the movie's deeper meanings. Seigner's character wheedles her way into an audition. Amazingly, she already knows her lines, and she's quite good. Amalric's character reads with her, playing the part of an aristocrat. As the story unfolds, director and actress begin jockeying for position. Seigner's character becomes increasingly bold, often taking aim at the director's judgment. In Seigner's capable hands, the play becomes a sharply observed study of acting, pretense and sudden shifts in direction. Polanski's two-character drama is limited only by the material itself: It can seem more tricky than profound, but Polanski knows how to stage a battle between the sexes with the advantage, in this case, tipping toward Seigner's wily, alluring and seldom predictable chara

'Carnage' draws blood, but only a trickle

What happens when the parents are not all right?

Carnage, a big-screen adaptation of a play by Yasmina Reza, struck me as Edward Albee light, 79 minutes of burgeoning sarcasm and spewed venom that's supposed to deprive its characters of all their civilized pretexts.

But instead of feeling like a scathing revelation, this semi-satirical drama seems only to be putting its characters through a lot of pre-determined motions. The game feels rigged, and it's not all that interesting anyway.

The story is simple. Two sets of New York parents meet after the son of one has attacked the son of the other with a stick, knocking out a couple of teeth. One set of parents seems determined to use the incident as a teaching moment; the other seems vaguely conciliatory, but we know from the outset that the initially hopeful mood will give way to something far less polite.

The acting, alas, struck me as variable. Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz portray Alan and Nancy Cowan. She's an investment adviser; he's an attorney. The Cowans visit the apartment of Michael and Penelope Longstreet (John C. Reilly and Jodi Foster), parents of the boy who was clobbered.

To some degree, Carnage aims at satirizing middle-class pretensions. Only Waltz's Alan Cowan, a lawyer who's representing a pharmaceutical company in the midst of a crisis, seems reluctant to play the role of deeply concerned parent. He's too busy taking calls on his cell phone, much to the annoyance of his wife and also, I'm afraid, the audience.

Of all the actors, Winslet struck me as most convincing -- with Reilly bringing up a reasonable second. Foster, on the other hand, seems miscast as a mother who carries her liberal values with stiff determination and self-righteous fury. Foster's performance vacilates between brittle and shrill and, at times, she seemed so overwrought I feared her head might explode.

Credit director Roman Polanski for keeping the proceedings fleet and for preventing the movie -- set almost entirely in one Brooklyn apartment -- from feeling boxed in.

Reza's play, first staged in France, came to Broadway starring James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels and Hope Davis. I can imagine that being in the company of the actors would give this material a considerable boost. But on film, Carnage comes across as not terribly insightful and only fitfully amusing.

Polanski lowers his voice in 'Ghost Writer'

Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor, nose-to-nose.

In Shutter Island, director Martin Scorsese decided to bring his considerable technique front-and-center. Scorsese pushed his ingredients into a hyper chamber of thrills where extravagant visual gestures become the norm. In his new thriller The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski -- another top-ranked director -- follows a different route.

Although there are terrific images in The Ghost Writer – beginning with the opening shot of a ferry docking at a Massachusetts beach town – Polanski doesn't call attention to his cinematic virtuosity. He's telling a story, and if the story eventually bogs down in its own intricacies perhaps Polanski should be forgiven. The Ghost Writer is quietly involving, a thriller that doesn't aim for the usual adrenalin-fueled shocks.

Adapted by Robert Harris from his own novel, The Ghost Writer tells the story of a writer (Ewan McGregor) who's hired to ghost write the memoirs of a British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan). Brosnan's Adam Lang was forced to resign as the result of torture-related disclosures. Lang evidently turned suspected terrorists over to the CIA, an action that caused a furor in Britain.

After leaving office, Lang (an attractive Tony Blair-like figure) moved to the U.S., becoming a Massachusetts residentin exile. McGregor's character – referred to only as The Ghost – is hired after another ghost writer dies, an apparent suicide.

Just about everyone in the movie knows more than The Ghost, who gradually begins to understand that he may be in danger. The Ghost must weave his way through a web of intrigue and deception as he tries to uncover the truth about a former Prime Minister who can be charming but who also indulges a volatile temper.

McGregor, whose recent work in movies such as Amelia and Angels and Demons has been disappointing, pulls off a neat trick: He's playing a writer whose career has been subordinated to the lives of others. The Ghost may be well paid, but there's no public recognition of his existence. He's an authorial invisible man.

Brosnan ably portrays a beleaguered public man living in enforced privacy with his wife, the terrific Olivia Williams, and an assistant (Kim Cattrell) who may be more than a workmate. Timothy Hutton has a nice small turn as Lang's cagey lawyer, and Tom Wilkinson proves especially sturdy as a Harvard professor encountered by The Ghost toward the end of the movie's second act.

There are some great touches here. Polanski, who shot the film in Germany, gives the Langs an ultra-contemporary house that looks like a seaside bunker on the outside and yields to modern sterility on the inside. Williams makes intelligence look sexy, and we feel as if we -- like the title character -- have gained access to the private world of a once-important man who has resurfaced in disgrace. Lang is about to be charged by the World Court with crimes against humanity.

Polanski seems drawn to characters who are in over their heads, and the movie – particularly in its final scenes – does an admirable job of showing the disconnect between the earnest sobriety of public displays and the sloppy realities of private life.

During a long-ago film course, I watched scenes from Polanski's breakthrough Knife in the Water over and over again. The professor discussed the ways in which Polanski created tension and he certainly hasn't lost his touch. He has a great capacity for inwardness and concealment -- if not for selecting the best material.

Still, The Ghost Writer pulls us into its orbit, a whirlwind of intrigue and corruption that destroys anything caught in its wake, and there are bits and pieces that any director would envy: the tension that accompanies a set piece in which The Ghost tries to elude men who follow him onto a ferry or the intentionally obvious way Polanski plays a waiting game with the audience, following the progress of a note as it's passed from hand-to-hand in one of the movie's final scenes. At its best, Ghost Writer's makes us feel as if we're eavesdropping on conversations that we're not supposed to hear.

Whether Polanski's endlessly publicized, on-going legal troubles limit the movie's appeal remains to be seen, but The Ghost Writer shouldn't be dismissed. Here's a movie in which it's not the characters who are seductive, but the movie itself. Polanski's gift is one of insinuation and guile. I guess we shouldn't be surprised, then, that The Ghost Writer becomes less persuasive as its secrets are revealed.