For gore-flick fanatics the Cineplex has two new slice-and-dice movies that look to fulfill your demented Halloween sweet tooth—My Soul to Take and Saw 3D. Not having seen these two pictures ( neither was screened for critics ) I can only presume they'll do the trick or treat if these are your particular bent. But for those with a different cinematic palate, I can recommend two alternatives hitting theaters this week. The first is Hideaway ( Le Refuge ) from openly gay French auteur François Ozon and the second is The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, director Daniel Alfredson's final film adaptation from the international best-selling Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book series.
Hideaway ( Le Refuge ) , though not nearly as enthralling as previous Ozon efforts ( Swimming Pool, Under the Sand, Time to Leave ) is nevertheless a bit of a return to form. Ozon and co-writer Mathieu Hippeau have crafted an elliptical relationship drama that works largely due to the nuanced acting; the nuanced, sumptuous camera work; and the nuanced, gorgeous people on screen.
Mousse ( Isabelle Carré ) and Louis ( Time to Leave's Melvil Poupaud ) , who we meet at the outset shooting up in an apartment in Paris, are perhaps the prettiest pair of junkies since Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch in Drugstore Cowboy. But their high is short-lived: Louis dies from an overdose and Mousse finds she's pregnant with his chil. Louis' family, who distance themselves from her, advise Mousse to have an abortion. Several months later, Louis' handsome brother, Paul ( Louis-Ronan Choisy ) , pays an unexpected visit to Mousse at the country getaway where she's living far from Paris, and discovers she's decided to go through with the pregnancy. Prickly and defensive at the outset, Mousse is quickly charmed by Paul's easygoing ways and isn't put off that he's gay ( though she gets a bit taken aback when he picks up the grocery delivery man, Serge ) .
Slowly, we come to realize that both Mousse and Paul are social outcasts and that their oasis offers them a chance at renewal. In their sun-drenched paradise, each finds time for reflection on the past and what lies ahead. The leisurely pace of Ozon's movie and its French cinematic accoutrements will send dedicated Francophiles into blissful orbit. Hideaway ( Le Refuge ) isn't the dramatic head turner that other Ozon movies have been but it is charming, moody, delicate, somber and erotic as hell—more than enough positive "adjectifs" to recommend it to discerning audiences. It plays exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State; see www.siskelfilmcenter.org .
When we last saw our heroine, the Swedish goth computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, she was en route to the hospital after being shot in the head during the slam-bang finish to The Girl Who Played with Fire, our previous installment. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest picks up just moments later, when Lisbeth is in recovery from her near-fatal wounds—just like Laurie in Halloween II.
But unlike Laurie, who had to fight off psycho Michael Myers garbed in a hospital gown throughout most of the picture, Lisbeth is pretty much sidelined until nearly the last sequence—the movie's biggest frustration. She's either in recovery mode or sitting, defiant in her punk regalia in court snarling and silent facing an attempted murder charge, when we want her kicking butt, hacking into computers and carrying out one of those thrilling revenge scenarios which show her cool intelligence and fearlessness.
The story revolves around a secret organization that is framing Lisbeth for the attempted murder and is trying to have her permanently committed. It's up to her friend and sometime lover, the sloe-eyed investigative journalist Mikael ( Michael Nyqvist ) , to prove her innocence once and for all. Then, finally, near the end, Lisbeth goes into high gear and enacts—what else—revenge on a character who was dumb enough to try and stop her, and the movie really moves.
Lisbeth and Mikael don't have nearly enough interaction ( and I miss Lisbeth's girlfriend, too ) but the movie ends with a nice, unsentimental wrap up for them. The Swedish "dragon tattoo" trilogy has indeed set a high mark for the Hollywood remake thanks to Noomi Rapace's thrilling performances as Lisbeth in each of the films ( matching up nicely with Nyqvist's understated ones ) .
Film note:
—One-time Chicagoan Hugh Hefner, the legendary founder of the men's magazine Playboy, is the subject of a new documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. The title is the first clue that the movie, from filmmaker Brigitte Berman, is going to focus on Hefner's oftentimes laudatory achievements via the magazine in social advancement. But access to Hefner's personal archives which help back up the assertion that Hef was a fighter for racial and sexual parity is obscured by an approach that edges the movie close to hagiography ( Hef is the on camera narrator of his own achievements ) .
The lone dissenting voice—feminist Susan Brownmiller—is dispatched without much of a look back and there are few women among the coterie of on-camera Hef devotees to make a case for his greatness. Still, the contrast of Playboy's hedonistic philosophy against the rigid conservation of the '50s and early '60s, during which it rose to stratospheric heights, will be a fascinating object lesson for the queer community still struggling for both equality with and simultaneous rejection of mainstream culture. The film plays a week long engagement exclusively at the Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, and Hefner himself will appear at the Friday, Oct. 29, screening ( already sold out ) . See www.siskelfilmcenter.org .
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.
