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THE FORGIVEN – Review

Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes star as a wealthy couple who travel to Morocco for a posh weekend party at a remote desert location but when driving to their destination, they hit a local teen-aged boy in a fatal accident, with unforeseen and devastating consequences, in THE FORGIVEN.

White privilege, particularly of the variety afforded the rich, is at the center of this thoughtful, thriller-like drama, as it explores the clash of cultures between these affluent Brits and the boy’s impoverished Bedouin family, as well as the toll it takes on the couple’s already rocky marriage.

We first meet the wealthy couple on a luxury speed boat streaking towards the Moroccan coast. David Henninger is a successful British plastic surgeon and Jo Henninger is his American wife, who was once a writer of children’s books. They are headed to a lavish weekend party at the home of a friend, Richard “Dickie” Galloway (Matt Smith) and his lover, Dally Margolis (Caleb Landry Jones), for a party full of feasting, drinking and orgies, attended by a posh crowd of house guests. The Henningers are bickering, mostly over David’s drinking, and when they leave their hotel in Tangiers, after a boozy lunch, for the long drive to Richard and Dally’s remote compound, it is already late in the day. The couple find themselves lost in the dark, on a unpaved road in the empty desert. Empty except for two teen-aged boys selling fossils, one of whom tries to flag them down in the road but who is hit instead.

The couple arrive late for the party and the police are called, as their host Richard tries to soothe their nerves and deal with the situation, while also keeping what has happened from the already-partying other guests. With no cell phone reception in the desert, the panicked couple placed the boy’s body in their car, trusting that Richard, with his knowledge of the local rules, would know what to do to help them dodge the consequences, or at least the worst ones. Sure that their host has everything in hand, the couple join the party for a late supper. There is a Great Gatsby vibe in this with an added layer of insensitivity as these wealthy white folks hold their drunken party in an poorer Muslim nation.

But not all has been smoothed over yet, as the local police find it odd that the boy has no identification on him, as ordinarily would be expected, and plan to question David further. Their host tries to reassure them is it just routine but private talks between Richard and David reveal that they both know that if the boy is identified, his family may expect to be paid, as is the custom. Yet David insists the boy had no ID on him when he was hit, and both he and his wife fail to mention the second boy at all. All the police can determine is that the boy does not belong to a local family, so they assume he is from a tribe outside the area.

But the boy’s family does come looking for him and his identity – Driss (Omar Ghazaoui) – is revealed, sparking a confrontation between David and the boy’s father Abdellah (Ismael Kanater), and a companion, Anouar (Saïd Taghmaoui) who serves as a translator. Both David and Jo have to face what has happened, as David tries to navigate his way through a fraught cross-cultural landscape that includes an angry, grieving father and a host of rules David doesn’t know or understand.

Fiennes’ Henninger is pretty unforgivable, and his wife is little better. The same can be said, to varying degrees, of the guests and their hosts, Dally has dressed up his Moroccan servants in costumes, as they stand by to serve the drunken guests at this bacchanal. Cultural sensitivity is boldly absent.

Director/writer John Michael McDonagh who adapted Lawrence Osborne’s novel of the same name, uses this situation to spotlight some of the facts of the hard lives of rural Moroccans, who in this area subsist on selling fossils to wealthy Europeans and international museums and institutions. The sense of resentment on their part is thick, as is the foreigners’ sense of entitlement.

As the story unfolds, layers are peeled back and more is revealed about the Moroccan’s ways and the attitudes on both sides towards the other. Both David and Jo have to face what has gone wrong in their lives and their marriage, and grapple with their own values and responsibility for their actions.

Both Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain turn in find performances although Fiennes has the heavier lift as the troubled and troubling David. Matt Smith plays an unexpected role, as a sometimes Greek chorus commenting on the the customs and ways of the local people, revealing a deeper understanding and sympathy than we expect, and sometimes revealing awareness of what is happening under his own roof, At the same time, he continues to play genial host to his guests, smoothly ensuing they remain oblivious to what is going, and handling his more fractious lover, who judges the Henningers harshly, but mostly for spoiling the party. Matt Smith is excellent as he carries out his character’s balancing act, conveying a wistfulness we don’t expect. Caleb Landry Jones is acerbic and witty as the culturally-clueless Dally. Christopher Abbott plays a handsome American, Tom, who sets out to charm one woman after another, including Jo, as the wild party rages on.

This is not a subtle film. There are plenty of squirm-worthy moments in this showcase of neo-colonial privilege and plenty of familiar rich people excess, But there is some redemption in its later half, in the time the film does spend with the boy’s family, who come across far classier than the crass rich. What happens is not completely unexpected but the time the film spends contrasting the wild life of privilege of the rich partiers against the struggle to simply live of the people whose land it truly is, couldn’t be more pointed or poignant, which goes a way towards making this drama worthwhile. THE FORGIVEN is an exploration of cultures clashing in a growing global wealth divide, where the meaning and terms of forgiveness are unclear, or if it is even possible.

THE FORGIVEN is available on video on demand, starting Friday, July 15, and in select theaters.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars

HOUSE OF GUCCI – Review

HOUSE OF GUCCI is based on a true story, one filled with wealth, power, ambition, family, tradition, high fashion, and murder, a story that plays like Italian opera, equal parts tragedy and farce. Ridley Scott directs, and the lush production stars Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Jared Leto.

Filled with gorgeous period clothes and cars, lovely sets and locations, mostly in Milan, and fine photography, HOUSE OF GUCCI delivers visual delights and jet-set style in this story that runs from the ’70s to the ’90s. The raw story material of a grand operatic epic is there too, but somehow HOUSE OF GUCCI never achieves epic levels, although it does make for a pretty good true crime thriller, set in a posh world of wealth and Italian fashion, with a satiric bent. HOUSE OF GUCCI was adapted from Sara Gay Forden’s non-fiction bestseller by writers Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna. It is one of those story that would leave audiences skeptical if it weren’t true.

Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), the pretty young daughter of the owner of small trucking company, meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) at a party, when she mistakes him for the bartender. As soon as she hears his name, she is taken with the shy scion of the famous fashion house. Maurizio is similarly dazzled, calling her Elizabeth Taylor rather than her name. Although he is too shy to ask her out, the resourceful Patrizia finds a way through Maurizio’s armor. Although Patrizia is definitely working-class, little educated and working as a secretary for her father, while Maurizio is a scholarly law student who is not much interested in his family’s fashion business, she adds a spark of fun his life lacks. It’s love, and soon he is willing to defy his coldly aristocratic father Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), who thinks Patricia is both low-class and a gold-digger. Dad’s not entirely wrong but his son marries her anyway, despite threats of being cut off.

Patrizia’s father (Vincent Riotta) gives the now-homeless student a job, and the pair find happiness in a little apartment. For a while the film unfolds along this path, a sexy romantic comedy, with the couple enjoying an idyll in a small apartment, Maurizio ironing his own shirts and horse-playing with co-workers.

Patrizia does her best to charm her way into the Gucci family, by building bridges. Making little headway with her chilly father-in-law, she finds a pathway with Maurizio’s uncle Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino), who shares running the family firm with his brother Rodolfo. While Rodolfo is aristocratically aloof, Aldo is warm and charming, inviting the couple to visit him in New York, and treating Patrizia to a shopping spree in the family store. He seems as much to want to befriend his niece-in-law as much she wants to be accepted as part of the Gucci family, although Aldo has his reasons for that.

Aldo invites the couple to family gathering where Patrizia meets the extended Gucci family, a sequence that is a delight of over-the-top characters and comic misadventures. Chief among those characters is Uncle Aldo’s son Paolo Gucci (an unrecognizable Jared Leto with facial prosthetics), a chubby, balding, loudly-dressed klutz who fancies himself a fashion designer. As his father puts it, more than once, “Paolo’s an idiot but he’s my idiot.”

Then this fun, romantic comedy romp gives way to something darker, a twisty crime thriller with family intrigue, drama, back-stabbing and finally murder. When Patrizia marries in, the Gucci business is very much a family business handed down through generations, a well-oiled machine with its own internal rules. Patrizia becomes the wrench in those works, sparking events that never would have happened otherwise, with consequences no one could foresee.

HOUSE OF GUCCI is certainly an entertaining film, particularly fun in the more comic earlier part. But as the film becomes darker, it stumbles a bit with that turn, with the various parts sometimes failing to mesh. At a running time of over two hours, all those moving parts need to work together for it to step up from good film to the great film it could have been.

Ridley Scott gives us actors speaking English with Italian-ish accents, set in a glorious Milan straight out of old movies. This rather tongue-in-cheek approach will amuse some audiences and irritate (or maybe even offend) others. There is a strong farcical element to the first portion, so the shift to crime thriller and tragedy almost feels like you are watching a different movie, although the satiric undercurrent is still there. Audiences might also be divided on Lady Gaga’s performance, feeling she is the best thing in the film, or the weakest link in the more problematic second part, although she is perfect in the first.

The cast is stellar, if the casting is a bit puzzling at times. Adam Driver nicely plays the awkward, shy Maurizio with a firm reserve. By contrast, Lady Gaga is splendid to start as Patrizia, a broadly-drawn character more out of “Good Fellas” than anything else, whose grammar is not great and whose cultural knowledge is seriously lacking. But she is certainly fun, as she tells Maurizio when they first meet. Plus, Gaga and Driver have an unexpected mismatch chemistry together.

Jeremy Irons is at his chilly best as Rodolfo Gucci, a cold fish who can barely manage any affection for the son he claims to adore, while living in the past with memories of his late wife and long-ago movie career. In contrast, Al Pacino as his brother is the complete opposite personality, all affection and family warmth, using charm to get what he wants. The brothers are on opposite ends of the business spectrum as well, with the New York-based Aldo eager to embrace branding and coffee mugs with the logo, while Rodolfo is about tradition and dignity for the Gucci brand.

Rodolfo relies on lawyer and advisor Domencio De Sole (Jack Huston, who has his own interesting pedigree with grandfather John Huston), who is almost family although not a Gucci. At some point, Patrizia picks up her own trusted advisor, a fortune teller, Pina Auriemma, played by Salma Hayek, although the advice is mostly ego-stroking, a fateful choice.

Where the trouble for the movie, as well as for the Gucci family, comes in is when the film takes it’s darker turn, from fun and farce to thriller and tragedy. What happens blends ambition, greed and murder, in a stranger-than-fiction true story. If you don’t know the history, it is better to just wait and watch it unfold on screen. However, whether the script that is at fault or something else, Patricia’s character seems to undergo changes that do not fit well with what went before, which seems to muddy the film as it makes this shift.

All the over-the-top events of this story, both tragic and absurd, are matched with some over-the-top performances, particularly Jared Leto. All that suggests Ridley Scott intended this film as satire. It partly succeeds as in that, as a grand, operatic one at that, although the second, tragic part feels less focused.

HOUSE OF GUCCI is an entertaining, engrossing film that mixes crime thriller with farce. While it is a good film, an enjoyable film, one can’t help but feel it could have been more. All the elements were there for a great film, starting with the true story. It just didn’t get there, although it is still worth the ticket price. HOUSE OF GUCCI opens Wednesday, Nov. 24, in theaters.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

THE LOST LEONARDO – Review

Dianne Modestini and Ashok Roy inspecting the Naples copy of the Salvator Mundi (2019).
Copyright THE LOST LEONARDO – Photo by ADAM JANDRUP. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

“This is the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art world,” is how the subject of the documentary THE LOST LEONARDO is described by one of its expert interviewees. Few artworks as valuable as those by Leonardo DaVinci, so the possibility that a known but long lost painting by the great master has been found generates headlines far beyond the art world. But an interest in art is not needed to be fascinated by the twisty, shocking tale told by THE LOST LEONARDO, a tale more about money and power than art. This top-notch documentary documentary takes us deep into the murky, hidden world of Old Masters art, a story involving extreme wealth, shady financial dealing, greedy institutions, ambition academics, clever auction houses, and basic human foibles, all sparked when a painting that might or might not be DaVinci’s long-lost Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) surfaces.

It is a wild tale but director Andreas Koefoed’s well-structured documentary keeps everything clear, while giving us the depth needed to understand the background and the various worlds involved. Those worlds are the art world, academics, museums and galleries, auction houses, art dealers and the wealthy clients who buy this most expensive art.

The photography is outstanding and, along with a bouncy score, lends a caper-film vibe to this fascinating, often jaw-dropping true story. Koefoed brings in many of the principle figures in this story, along with experts on art and the art world, one of the most opaque in existence, to help us keep track. The documentary offers an array of opinions on what this art work really is and the events swirling around it. It features some real characters on screen including the outspoken art critic Jerry Saltz, and insightful art collector Kenny Schachter, whose incisive comments often cut straight to the heart of the matter. Investigative journalists also weigh in, and even an ex-CIA agent.

Evan Beard, global art services executive at Bank of America, a major financer of high-value art purchases, serves as a kind of narrator of THE LOST LEONARDO’s crazy tale, which keeps everything clear and ordered. Beard, who supplied the quote at the start of this article, is a good choice as a narrator, with one foot each in the art world and financial one.

The painting at the center of this crazy story surfaced in an unlikely place, in New Orleans, at an art auction where “sleeper hunter” Alexander Parish spots it. A “sleeper,” as Parish tells us, is a painting that is clearly by a much better artist than the auction house thinks it is. There are many known copies of DaVinci’s Salvator Mundi but the original has not been seen for about 400 years. The painting in New Orleans is labeled as “after DaVinci” but it catches Parish’s eye, and after consulting with Old Masters art dealer Robert Simon, the pair buy the painting for less than $2000 and have it shipped to New York. They immediately see that the work has been extensively repainted, so they send it to perhaps the world’s top art restorer, Dianne Modestini, who cleans the painting of its coats of vanish and poor re-touching. Modestini’s work reveal a heavily-damaged painting with the most of the paint loss in the area of the face. But the less-damaged lower part of the painting is intriguingly like DaVinci. As she restores the painting, this renowned expert becomes convinced it is a genuine Leonardo.

“Everyone wanted it to be a Leonardo,” says Alison Cole, editor of an art periodical, near the film’s start. Her remark helps explain some of the frenzy and madness that ensues, not just among art experts but with wealthy buyers of art. Some of these billionaire see art more as an investment and a way to convert assets into a portable form and are motivated more by that than any real interest in art. But the extensive damage makes it impossible to say with certainty if this painting is an actual Leonardo.

An attempt to establish its provenance, to trace it back to the last known owner, proves incomplete. What really starts the ball rolling is when the painting is sent to a prestigious gallery in London, where top Leonardo experts are supposed to view it. Their opinions are unclear but the curator decides to put the painting in the gallery’s upcoming DaVinci exhibit, and labels it as by Leonardo anyway. The exhibit draws record crowds.

Finding a lost DaVinci would be a coup for any art academic and exhibiting newly-discovered one is a lucrative event for any museum and gallery, so greed and ambition emerge as drivers of events early on. It is easy to imagine this will be a story about greedy owners over-selling the authenticity of a dodgy painting to making a financial killing but, in fact, that is not the case here The real wheeler-dealers and shady dealings are far further up the ladder, and the original owners are small potatoes, as well as the most honest, in this murky high-stakes finance tale. The real sketchy dealings are at the wealthy top, with a Russian oligarch, an unscrupulous Swiss art dealer who also owns Geneva storage facilities the rich use to store valuables to evade taxes, an opportunistic auction house and a Saudi Prince linked to international scandal.

This is hot stuff indeed, filled with twisty, complicated dealings worthy of a thriller and characters who seem like something out of fiction too. There are several very sketchy characters but appealing ones too. Among the most charming and sympathetic figures in the film are the art restorer Dianne Modestini, who becomes overwhelmed by the media frenzy that ensues, peaking when the painting is re-sold at auction for a record breaking 450 million.

It is a wild ride stranger-than-fiction tale, like something out of James Bond but true, and director Koefoed takes us on a outstanding, insightful tour of it. THE LOST LEONARDO opens Friday, Sept. 3, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 4 stars

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