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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE
For a film with love in the title, Thomas Vinterberg’s follow-up to The Celebration
(1998) is surprisingly creepy. Set in a frigid,
stylistically retro future, John (Joaquin Phoenix), a
Polish literary figure, becomes fed up with his
frequently absent wife, ice skating star Elena (Claire
Danes, with a graceful Polish accent). Flippantly
deciding their love is geographically impossible,
John sends her divorce papers, which Elena will not
sign, believing their marriage isn’t over.
Determined to complete the paperwork, John follows
Elena to the frighteningly apocalyptic New York of the
future. Outside of the limo lies a city
littered with children’s dead bodies, shoved in
garbage cans and lying on the road. Soon the
adults too begin dropping like flies, and like true
New Yorkers, Elena and John simply step over any
corpse blocking the subway entrance. “People are dying from a lack of intimacy,” says
John’s friend Michael (Douglas Henshall), suggesting the existence of love
between the couple is literally a matter of life or
death.
The world
climate, echoing the new frigidity between John and
Elena, has begun to enter the ice age. The city now
sees snow storms in the middle of
summer while the people of Uganda suffer a loss
of gravity.
And Elena’s skating stardom comes with a high
price. The Mafia-like family managing her
career decides to have her replaced, believing Elena’s tainted heart will eventually cost them
their empire. Soon Elena is
face to face with screeching, brain-damaged clones of
herself. And with a price on Elena’s head, John decides to
aid her in her escape.
Director Vinterberg chose to shoot the film
going against the Dogma 95 filmmaking rules he
created with Lars von Trier. While the Dogma system
requires entirely natural settings and handheld
cameras, Vinterberg chose instead to opt for high-gloss film quality and entirely artificial sets.
Although
the over-stylized look works to
echo the film's theme, it winds up looking
very much like the Cremaster film series.
The actors, and most noticeably Danes, come off well, evoking enough off-the-wall
emotion through the devastating chain of events. These visually horrifying scenes succeed in scaring the audience, but like the cold world it depicts, the film never holds a
heartbeat or a spot of warmth. Desolate and empty, It’s All
About Love proves that a world without love and a film
without soul are truly horrifying things. Adrienne Urbanski
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