THE DROWNING: Bette Gordon's adaptation of Pat Barker's novel, Border Crossing, misfires

Award-winning British writer Pat Barker's novel Regeneration received a good film adaptation back in 1997 (the movie has since been re-titled Behind the Lines), but so far as I know, most of her work remains unfilmed. This changes some, though not for the better, with the release of the new movie THE DROWNING, based on Barker's 2001 novel Border Crossing. The filmmaker here -- Bette Gordon -- is one whose work I have much admired, especially her 2009 movie Handsome Harry. Not having read the source novel by Ms Barker, TrustMovies can only go by the screenplay adaptation, credited to Stephen Molton and Frank Pugliese, which is pretty much a hash. It seems to want to keep us guessing, regarding of one the story's leading characters. Yet, because it also keeps pointing rather directly to that character's guilt and total inability to be trusted, the result makes the other lead character, our protagonist, seem like a total jerk for continuing to behave as he does.

Ms Gordon, pictured at left, gives her film a moodiness that does go a certain distance in pulling us in -- the bleak New England scenery proves a help here -- and her opening is indeed a grabber, as a loving couple takes a walk, only to be hit with the sight of what appears to be a young man, below, about to commit suicide by jumping into uncertain waters.

Yet what follows -- tons of coincidence that reeks more of plotting and planning than of happenstance -- seems so deliberately and aggressively created to keep us off-balance (remember Jagged Edge: the granddaddy and best example of this sort of thing?) that it all soon grows more tiresome than interesting.

The good cast -- a couple of B-listers and one up-and-comer -- does what it can with this scenario. Josh Charles (below, right, and at bottom) plays the would-be "hero," a shrink who turns out to have more than a nodding acquaintance with the young man he rescues from that water, but the under-rated Julia Stiles (below, left) is rather wasted in the completely re-active role of the shrink's wife. (If you haven't seen Ms Stiles' ace performance in that terrific black comedy It's a Disaster, put that one on your list).

In the role of the "suicidal" antagonist, Avan Jogia (below), keeps us guessing until he begins to mostly annoy us -- given his character's rather obvious traits. Is this kid evil? Or not? And whose responsibility might it be to take care of this?

Everyone we meet, from his parole officer (Tracie Thoms) to his shrink to his dad to -- well, you name 'em -- has evidently been compromised in some major way. This would appear to be the kid's special skill, but the movie also lays much of this at the feet of the far-too-stupid characters, especially our shrink, below, who surround him.

If you make it through the finale, you will indeed get a drowning, but by then, the movie has totally gone off the rails. There is no depth to any of these characters -- just a lot of creaky, pasted-together exposition to explain the past. Consequently, the question that the movie's poster (at top) asks: If evil exists, can it be transformed? gets no real answer.

From Paladin and running 99 minutes, The Drowning opens in New York City tomorrow, Wednesday, May 10, at the IFC Center and is said to be moving from there into limited national release. 

Bette Gordon's HANDSOME HARRY opens... the door to a discussion of male sexuality

 

Having earlier this week used Bette Gordon's new film to demonstrate the difference between a gay movie (Pornography: A Thriller) and a movie with a gay theme (Ms Gordon's HANDSOME HARRY), TrustMovies finds he must give away spoilers in now writing at length about this powerful new film. There is no way to properly discuss the movie without going deeply into Handsome Harry's homosexual element.

You can claim, with some justification, that Gordon's film (the director is shown at right) is really about love -- strong, passionate love -- and about fear, guilt and the slipperiness of memory.  But because the love story at the heart of the movie is between two men, there is no avoiding the homosexuality here, though god know, the men in the movie (including our Harry) try to do this and, in fact, have been doing it for most of their adult lives.  The more-than-serviceable screenplay, complete with some excellent dialog, comes from Nicholas T. Proferes and points up, without undue exposition, the various shape in different men that this avoidance takes.

Harry (a sterling, revelatory performance from Jamey Sheridan, above, that ought to be remembered at awards time), is a widower who has relocated to a small town where he's a small business owner now somewhat estranged from his adult son, who lives in another state.  He is also clearly the town's good-looking and most sought-after older man.  In one of the early scenes, the waitress (Karen Young) in the local diner propositions him, and his reaction to her offer of a blow job seems strikingly off-base.  Then an old navy buddy (Steve Buscemi, shown at right, below) calls to inform Harry that he is dying and needs to do penance for the past -- setting off a road trip that brings up everything Harry has spent the last 30 years trying to keep buried.

Hardsome Harry is a gorgeous film to view. Gordon, her cinematog-
rapher (Nigel Bluck) and editor (Keiko Deguchi) steep the frame in smoky beauty and keep the images coming -- and changing often enough that we never tire of looking.  The past is recalled as a kind of paradise -- whether it be the music of a piano duet, listening to jazz in a 60s bar, love, sex or companionship.  The hell of the present is envisioned via the lives of Harry's four ex-Navy buddies (Buscemi, John Savage, Aidan Quinn and Titus Welliver).  Each actor is sensationally right in his role, bringing a full measure of truth and an emotional grounding to his few minutes of screen time.

Handsome Harry is about a man for whom the ultimate love of his life is another man. Because he could not acccept that state of affairs, he has betrayed that man and himself and seen his entire life go by for naught.  It's a shorter, leaner Brokeback Mountain, and another volley  in the cinematic war on America's blinkered view of sexuality, particularly male sexuality -- realizing that this is much more complicated and varied than either religion or the state is ready to admit.

Harry is certainly capable of having sex with women: Married for years, he fathered a son, even though the marriage at last collapsed.  Even now he gives over to a rousing roll-in-the-hay with one of his mates' soon-to-be-ex wife (an at-first angry, then beautifully open performance from Mariann Mayberry).  But his deepest attraction is toward that early male partner from his Navy days, brought to rich life as an older adult by Campbell Scott (shown above).

Music plays an important part in Harry's life and that of the film, and it is very well chosen, from the individual numbers and the piano duet by the young lovers (above) to the a capella singing done by Harry and his group and the impromptu duet with his ex-Navy friend's wife.  The women on view -- the waitress and the wife -- are given their due, via the performances and the screenplay.  Though Harry is a decent guy, he cannot conceal his lack if interest in Young (shown at left, below) at the dance they attend.  She sees this, and responds in kind.

The film is far from perfect: The set-up is obvious and the individual meetings between Harry and each man feels somewhat manufac-
tured -- occurring at precisely a time of dramatic change (the character played by Savage) or as a very odd intrusion (during Aidan Quinn's university lecture).  Yet the dialog is always believ-
able and honest, and the performances are all you could wish for. Here is a film, like the recent IFC On-Demand Overbrook Brothers that sheds increasing light on the variations of male sexuality and the  prohibitive cost that society still charges for these.

Handsome Harry, another excellent film distributed by Paladin, opens Friday, April 16, in New York and Los Angeles.   Click here for complete information on cities, theaters and further openings.