FairyMail Reviews

Human Nature (2001)

A must-see for Americans

[5 March 2003]

There are many different kinds of movies. This is one of a rare species: a film with a message. Other people might hear different morals when watching it, or none at all, which is okay, too. But to me, Charlie Kaufman wants to tell us "deprive an adolescent of his right to a natural sexual development and you create a violent outburst".

Director Michel Gondry presents you a satire. The comedic element comes from grotesque, which is a relief after the all too juvenile teen movies that pathetically try to generate laughter by gross embarrassment and over-emphasized sounds of rearward body functions.

Instead of telling the story of average parents struggling to deal with their teenage son, you will find a) a woman with excessive body hair (in my view representing all your everyday discontent with your true self), and b) a man with an obsessive compulsion to demand perfect table manners (which of course stands for the misuse of parental power to force his unfounded views onto his "son")

The adolescent in this film being troubled by his sexual awakening is not the usual cool, hip, handsome high-school kid that all the real cool, hip,... okay-looking high-school-kids don't want to identify with anyway. It's Puff (Rhys Ifans), a young man who was raised by a deranged father to believe that he is an ape. This brings him in a situation not totally unlike that of a (human) teenager: somehow like the other humans, but being told that he's all weird and that everything he knows is suddenly wrong and bad. Eager to learn and please, he tries his best to conform, but to "control", that is, to ignore and deny his sexual curiosity, is just asking too much and he is forced to resort to deception.

It always amazes me how we Americans keep wondering why we have about 200x more shooting deaths than (other) civilized countries. One reason can be seen in the ratings for this particular film. Europe: around 12 (France: PG), USA: R, for it's hard to spot nudity. This is ironic confirmation of what the film is trying to draw attention to: by demonizing Puff's sexuality and using violence to suppress it, both Nathan and Lila become guilty of creating violence in turn.

For viewers who find this to be what this movie is about, I strongly recommend Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (Title 0310793 here on IMDB.com) only it is not so funny, because it's a documentary.

Bounce (2000)

Outstanding

[4 March 2003]

I just had to counter the rather inappropriate appraisement of the previous reviewer. So Ben is handsome in that movie and Gwyneth not blonde. I would prefer to watch the characters in a movie, not the actors. In fact, I was already hooked by the credible and real-to-life (-and-death) performance until I realized it is Paltrow. This may be the film's problem: all the actors, including the children, give shockingly real and believable performances. No indestructible super-heroes boringly dodge strings of bullets while outracing scores of patrol cars (or a nuclear blast) in a sluggish street vehicle. Apparently, this is not what makes the longest line at the box office.

Those who have gone through comparable traumas will recognize the honesty of the acting. This points to sensible directing from Don Roos. Affleck plays Buddy Amaral, an extremely arrogant, vain and blunt guy who seems to believe that while it's generally bad to lie, it's OK for him because he's so great. His feeling of guilt for not having been on the plane that crashed (what appears to have puzzled the other reviewer but is nonetheless a well-known problem for disaster survivors) seems to confuse and annoy him.

Amazingly, the film does not need explanations, it's through subtleties that you come to know the characters. You see reactions in their faces and you expect them to talk about it, because that's what you get in other movies. The thing is, you're not sure if the other character gets it and you wish they would communicate better.

At one point there is expressis verbis, where most people (speaking for myself here) probably would not be able to feel the troubling dichotomy that is going on inside the widow until she tells her mother.

This may not be the best romance and I would not have put it in that category. The tagline is prone to have you expect a lighter kind of film. It's a very touching, at times disturbing, at times consoling, drama with outstanding performances that prove to me that both Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow have not been required to give their best in some other movies.