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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
APPLAUSE Essentially a one-woman tour de force, Applause chronicles actress Thea Barfoed’s attempts to overcome her personal demons while triumphing nightly onstage. In a succinct if obvious 84 minutes, director Martin Pieter Zandvliet relentlessly pushes Thea in our faces. We first see her onstage as a biting Martha in Edward Albee’s nastily witty Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Thea’s complete command speaking Albee’s bitter dialogue contrasts sharply with the emotional wreck she is otherwise. Divorced from husband Christian (who has since remarried), Thea gingerly tries reestablishing relationships with her two young sons, who barely remember this strange woman whose alcoholism contributed to the disintegration of her family. Although showing Thea in Virginia Woolf—which lead actress Paprika Steen actually performed in Copenhagen, excerpts from which are shown —tellingly comments on her offstage difficulties, the more the Albee play intrudes, the less effective the conceit is. After playing an onstage scene of Martha threatening to wage total war on her unseen husband George, Thea considers taking her former husband to court to regain custody of their children. Zandvliet and co-writer Anders Frithiof August are more successful at dramatizing intimate matters, like Thea’s moments with her sons, which are well-handled. The scene where she gives them presents of Viking helmets and swords and plays “Erik the Red” with them is the film’s most touching. There’s also a nicely observed subplot of Thea’s tentative flirting with a businessman whom she meets (and first dismisses) at a local bar that ends up not going as far as both would like. Obviously,
this one-note character study of a woman’s mental disintegration would
completely fail if Paprika Steen didn’t invest every inch of herself as
Thea. Her performance brings to mind the fearless, naked acting of Lena
Endre in Faithless, Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the
Influence, and Liv Ullmann in any number of Ingmar Bergman films.
Steen acts up an emotional storm, both onstage and off, and her
remarkably unself-conscious presence helps Applause appear more
insightful than it really is.
Kevin Filipski
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