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INTERVIEW
Directed by Steve Buscemi
Produced by Bruce Weiss & Gijs van de Westelaken
Written by David Schechter & Buscemi, based on the film Interview, directed by Theo van Gogh
Director of Photography, Thomas Kist
Edited by Kate Williams
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
USA. 83 min. Rated R
With Sienna Miller & Steve Buscemi
DVD Features: Director commentary. Featurettes: “Interview: Behind the Scenes” & “Triple Theo: Take One.” English & Spanish subtitles

Before his murder in 2004, which has been connected to his short film about violence against women in Muslim societies, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh had planned to create American remakes of three of his movies: Interview (2003), Blind Date (1996), and 06 (1994). After his death, his longtime producer and friend Gils van de Westelaken approached New York filmmakers to continue this “Triple Theo” project. Steve Buscemi signed on first, followed by his actor/director friends Stanley Tucci and John Turturro.

Van Gogh’s films are taut, challenging dramas about the tension and power struggles that shape male-female relationships. They are spare, slightly surreal, coarse, and psychologically brutal. Van Gogh has been lionized since his death, but in life he was controversial. As a journalist in the 1980s and early 1990s, he made statements that widely offended the Jewish community by criticizing the lingering Jewish historical study of Auschwitz. Of historian Evelien Gans, for example, he wrote, “I suspect that Ms. Gans gets wet dreams about being f***ed by Dr Mengele.” In his later writings on Dutch Muslims, he referred to them as “goat-f***ers.”

This background on Van Gogh is essential for viewers of the American remake of Interview. Political journalist Pierre Peders (Buscemi) reluctantly agrees to lower his standards and interview starlet Katya (Sienna Miller), which begins an emotionally intense battle of egos. Peders – sexist, blunt, and vulnerable – has some obviously autobiographical overtones.

Director Buscemi's Interview fails to meaningfully explore the sinister game-playing intensity and sexual cat-and-mouse aspects at the center of Van Gogh’s work, but it also remains foreign, failing to capture the atmosphere of the different American media worlds. Miller’s character, Katya, is meant to be a Sex and the City-style television star, yet there’s a resolutely European vibe to her loft and her frank character.

Would the Interview remake have been more successful had Van Gogh been alive to direct it, or do the script and characters simply not translate into the world of American celebrity? Buscemi was new to Van Gogh’s work when he took on the project, and his choice to star in Interview as well as direct it was misguided. Buscemi is almost always a fine actor, but this film suffers from a lack of directorial distance. Both actors seem to be too trapped by the staging to give spontaneous performances - they stiffly maneuver around a cavernous loft, woodenly delivering their memorized lines. The script, the setting, and performances feel forced. Where Interview could be dark, it’s merely clunky.

The DVD extras of a short behind-the-scenes documentary and the audio commentary by Buscemi are more interesting than the film, and shed light on Buscemi’s process and vision. He was relatively unfamiliar with Miller’s work when he cast her – he screened two of her films and thought she was good in them, but still didn’t have enough information about her as an actress, and it was watching interview footage of Miller as herself that convinced him she was a serious actress with intelligence. Indeed, the behind-the-scenes” footage has a promise that’s never realized in the film. Elizabeth Bachner
November 11, 2007