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Charlotte Gray
*1/2
Cinema Releases - February 22, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 112
minutes. Directed by Gillian Armstrong. Written by Jeremy Brock; from the
novel by Sebastian Faulks. Starring Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Michael
Gambon, Rupert Penry-Jones, Anton Lesser, Ron Cook, Jon Pierce Jones, Jack
Shepherd.
"Charlotte Gray" leaps into an
unconvincing situation and sees it with an unsure point of view. It's a passive,
disengaged WWII drama without any grit or substance, and in one scene where
a group of resistance fighters got ambushed and shot down, I realised I had
not been made to feel for them on anything but the most theoretical
level.
Cate Blanchett stars in the title role as a young
Scottish woman doing secretarial work in London during the 1940s. She meets
an RAF pilot, sleeps with him a couple of times, and finds herself wrapped
up in one of those silly fictional romances where the participants never
learn anything about each other but nonetheless speak such lines as, "I can't
be myself, or I'd never let you go."
The pilot goes on a mission to France and gets
shot down in a southern village, so Blanchett decides she will join the
Resistance movement in the hope of getting a free trip to France and finding
information about her beau's whereabouts. Yeah, right. I never read the Sebastian
Faulks bestseller upon which this movie was based, but if this is its plot,
I'm hazarding a guess that it's one of those pretentious potboilers that
use the intensity of wartime texture to mask the fact that their characters
are doing completely implausible things in the name of
romance.
I mean, come on. Would you volunteer for the most
perilous civilian movement of the twentieth century because of a couple of
frivolous one-night stands? It's a sudden reaction, to say the least. The
dialogue doesn't help us understand the illogical plot, but instead throws
affectedly literary philosophy at us like a non-answering politician. "In
wartime," Blanchett muses, "nothing is unbelievable, so anything is possible
-- even a lie."
We're never given an insight into Charlotte Gray's
personality, and Blanchett seems to be drifting on top of the material, behaving
but not being. Within the context of a scene she may show anger, frustration,
tension or despondency, but there's no internal force guiding her role, and
she appears lost. Billy Crudup, however, who plays Blanchett's main colleague
in the Resistance, manages to take a stock role and turn it into something
focused. There's constantly something going on behind Crudup's eyes; perhaps
he thought up a detailed backstory to give his character some feeling, but
he sure doesn't come across as just a pious young commie.
The character played by Anton Lesser -- a sleazy
little informant who always seems to be shuffling around in the background
of every location, attempting to pick up incriminating information through
feeler conversations -- hints at the nuts and bolts of village life in wartime,
but in general "Charlotte Gray" goes for shallow, broad moves. Look at the
bizarre scene in which German tanks are rolling into town, Crudup starts
shouting names of missing people at them, a Nazi soldier on a tank starts
shouting back from afar, Blanchett kisses Crudup to prevent him from talking,
and onlookers start clapping at the kiss. Why would Crudup blow his cover
as a Resistance fighter? Why does the Nazi not simply shoot him? And why
the hell are the folks in the background so charmed by the kiss, when their
attention should be on the occupation of their homeland?
"Charlotte Gray" has a strong lead actress, popular
source material, rich photography, and there's even a scene where kids gets
shipped off to concentration camps -- the filmmakers are tireless in their
attempts to push all the right buttons of Moving Period Drama. But they require
a reason to tell their story, understandable characters and some logic. They
can't just rip off the surface of "Plenty" and hope that everyone will be
fooled.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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