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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE CHAMELEON The Chameleon is the type of movie that may have seemed like a good idea in pre-production. It may even have resembled something interesting while filming, but watching the final product is a complete exercise in banality. Based on the true story of a kidnapping, the story centers on Nicholas Martin (Marc-André Grondin), who is found curled up on a road in the France Alps. Seemingly shell-shocked, he finally breaks down and tells the police, in heavily accented English, that he’s Nicholas Martin, kidnapped four years earlier—in Louisiana. He returns home to his family in Baton Rogue, and everything seems set for a happy reunion with his sister (Emilie de Ravin), mother (Ellen Barkin), and brother (Nicholas Stahl). Or is it? With a FBI Agent (Famke Janssen) suspicious about Nicholas’s true identity and a reunited family ripe with tension and undercurrents, all is not what it seems. All the actors give somewhat game performances that seem nonetheless wooden, regardless of whatever emotions they are trying for. Janssen plays the dutiful but somewhat weary civil servant well enough, and de Ravin and Stahl cry and storm around angrily in turn, but it’s difficult to tell whether Barkin is phoning her performance in, or if she really cares. Clearly director and co-writer Jean-Paul Salomé thought the story would stand on its own. However, the costumes are the ultimate in American rural cliché (and in Barkin’s case, she wears what appears to be—oh God, I hope it is—a terrible wig). Along with the dreariest soundtrack in the history of dreary soundtracks, the film moves at a snail’s pace. Whether this is an attempt at slice of life or subtlety is difficult to determine. What is
easily realized is the utter lack of anything compelling in the
characters, the plot, and the atmospheric scenic shots. We get the gist.
Things happen. They don’t happen. Nicholas talks like a French person.
There’s a Mardi Gras parade—or just a parade where they happen to have
Mardi Gras beads. Who knows, who cares, and 93 minutes have never seemed
so long. With a story that seems prime for a Lifetime movie, I wanted,
nay, craved juice. Sadly, never has tabloid fodder seemed so dry. Give
me The New York Post and the Casey Anthony trial any day.
And when that case is made into a movie, for God’s sake leave it for
Lifetime where it belongs. Don’t try to make it into a serious independent
film. Seriously. Don’t.
Lisa Bernier
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