Cinema
Bob Roberts
('15', selected cinemas) Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (`18', Lumiere)
Too bad
Vanessa Letts
Afilm with low aims which achieves them can be described as a good bad film. At the opposite and possibly more depress- ing end of the scale there is the highbrow failure: the bad good film. Bob Roberts and Les Amants du Pont Neuf exemplify the lat- ter category. Bob Roberts has a go at satirising Ameri- can election campaigns. The film has been put together in the form of a spoof docu- mentary, though if it documents anything at all it is the difficulty of pulling off a ven- ture of this kind. Its writer-director and star, Tim Robbins, claims to have been inspired by the earlier cult film This is Spinal Tap. But one of the perverse joys of Spinal Tap, which portrayed a fake English heavy metal band on tour around America, Was the way that the actors captured the foibles, speech mannerisms, pretensions and weaknesses that we associate with real people. In Bob Roberts the characters are so caricatured that human weakness is either eliminated or exaggerated beyond belief, and the element of documentary pastiche in the film ends up being no more than an occasional gimmick. The picture shakes, and an English presenter occasion- ally narrates little explanations to camera, but it is impossible to take seriously a fig- ure who is so abysmally slow on the uptake. Bob Roberts is a right-wing candidate in the Philadelphia senatorial elections of 1990. As a singer-entertainer and ex-CIA operative he seems to be a thumbnail amal- gam of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Bob goes around being a 'people person' and singing things like 'drugs stink, they make me sick'. His opposite number, Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal) appeals to the general public with the words, 'Let's be real together'. The film would have been con- siderably more subtle if the two halves of the political argument on show were even vaguely seductive. If Tim Robbins had taken the risk of playing around with our knee-jerk affiliations a little more, he could have made his point quite forcefully. Unfortunately Bob Roberts is only really funny when mocking non-political subjects, such as the wanky symbolism used in pop videos and the nauseatingly chummy behaviour of news presenters on American TV. But with the character of Bob Roberts Tim Robbins has gone to gross and una- musing extremes, apparently to prevent his audience getting the wrong end of the stick and actually liking the man.
Why the syringe and the tramp remain chic in French movies like Subway, Nikita, Diva and now Les Amants du Pont-Neuf is a mystery. In any other country the down- and-out designer concept would seem a mite tasteless. Apparently in France this is not an issue. The glamour of beautiful girls with scabs, bruises and broken heels goes without question, and inevitably these win- some hobos have their moments of crazed violence as well. Halfway through Les Amants du Pont-Neuf the heroine (Juliette Binoche) gets a lecture from a fellow tramp to the effect that life on the streets is bad news for a woman — your periods stop, you age 20 years in one, and you're liable to be raped. This voice of reason makes so minuscule an impact on her that one won- ders how the film-makers dared to point out the truth while making such effort to promote a fantasy. It's no surprise when Binoche's limping boyfriend, the even fur- ther down and more way-out Denis Lavant, suddenly reveals himself to be a fire-eater and acrobat who can run up the walls of the Metro in the style of Gene Kelly.
One of the most annoying things about this film is the sound quality. The pictures are shot in a mixture of styles, both impres- sionistic and documentary. In weird con- trast the drab dialogue booms out with all the glossy immediacy of an advertisement voice-over for chocolate bars or extra insurance cover. There is also a deliberate- ly haphazard use of background music on the sound-track. At its very worst we are forced to listen to hysterical mélanges of pop songs while the two stars indulge in ineffectual, drunken dance sequences out
'I find the defendant. . . rather attractive.'
on the Pont-Neuf itself. The film ends with the subtitle, 'God Rot Paris'. If this is how the French still insist on celebrating their city, amen to that.
Previous page
