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The Shape of Things
***1/2
Cinema
Review - December 31, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
96 minutes. Written and directed by Neil LaBute; based on his play. Produced
by Neil LaBute, Gail Mutrux, Philip Steuer, Rachel Weisz. Starring Paul Rudd,
Rachel Weisz, Frederick Weller, Gretchen Mol.
The dramas of Neil LaBute are full of long dialogue
scenes, usually in stationary shots, held from a distance. They will be everyday
situations -- two men chatting before they get on a plane; a guy and a girl
meeting for the first time, making little chit-chat but really trying to
suss out if they fancy one another; college friends hooking up after being
busy, and not having had time to see each other for the past couple of weeks.
But the way LaBute holds back and peers at them, we can feel him scrutinising.
Asking if these situations are fake. Asking if we're all fake, or deluded,
even in the moments when we think we are most sure of
ourselves.
"The Shape of Things" has that attitude
in its very title, and when it has finished and we realise just what has
gone down, we look at the title and have to deny that it is true. This can't
be the shape of things. If human communications, and the secret reasons behind
our relationships are really like this, there isn't much point in
living.
At first, it all seems simple enough. Paul Rudd
plays an undergraduate in a swanky American college. He works part-time as
a museum security guard. His clothes are sort of scruffy, and he could do
with losing a few pounds. One afternoon he meets a sexy art student played
by Rachel Weisz. She's going to spray-paint over a sculpture; she considers
herself a fine art activist, and she just don't give a damn. He's nervous.
She's unphased. They chat. They arrange a date.
They start going out with each other. It seems
nice enough. They're comfortable. He is witty and tender. She is confident
and fairly cultured. Of course, women like to change their men, and soon
she starts to make little suggestions, hinting that she'd like him all the
better if only he took them up. Maybe you should get rid of that jacket --
fair enough. You'd look better if you went to the gym a bit more -- yeah,
that's probably true. God, you'd be such a perfect specimen if you only got
that nose straightened out -- uh, wait a minute.
But it happens gradually, so sweetly, and it makes
a sort of sense. And hey, this is the give and take they always say relationships
are like, right? And I probably would look better with a nose job, huh? LaBute
holds back, and we do sit and wonder to what extent people let their actions
get manipulated and perspectives clouded by those who they love or cling
to. Rudd has two close buddies played by Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller;
they notice the changes in him, they like it at first, and then they get
concerned. She's a blonde who wants to marry young; he's one of those vain
guys who wears sunglasses all the time and struts around like hot stuff.
We think maybe they're a bubble-head and a jerk who Rudd never got on that
well with, deep down. Maybe they are. Maybe they're really looking out for
him. Or is it a bit of both? When you get down to reality checking and weighing
up all the signs, how well do we really know anyone?
I find it astonishingly absorbing when a movie
can make me wonder about these things just through holding back and not
cluttering up the screen with a whole lot of unnecessary style. "The Shape
of Things" is based on LaBute's own stage play, which ran with the same cast
in London's Almeida for something like a year and a half. Some critics have
called the film stolid and stagy. I think the way it sits still and looks
hard is just the point, and the key to its effect.
The movie is about the phoney edges in love lives
and friendships, and the way the edges have the potential to drift across
the centre, in the same way that "In the Company of Men" was about strong
and weak personality types, and interdependence, and losing one's own
individuality. They're uncomfortable things to think about because they're
so subtle, so insidious, so easy to drift into and not notice. By the time
"The Shape of Things" finishes, we realise it's a lot more dark that it seemed
at the start. To call LaBute's view of the world cynical would be like calling
gunshots an inconvenience. What's brilliant about it is how involving it
is, and how therapeutic it feels to look at its characters' small and large
deceptions, and realise that at least we don't have it that bad. Do
we?
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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