Leningrad Cowboys Go America; Life and Nothing But; Love Without Pity; Open Doors

Another multi-video package, this time a four-pack, is available from Orion Home Video for $279.72 retail (a $40 savings). Unfortunately, the four films don't equally measure up. Leningrad Cowboys Go America, the quirky Finnish road movie from Aki Kaurimaki, gets off to a winning start as a polka-playing band who all wear sunglasses, pointy shoes, and pointy hairdos (the hair extends about a foot in front of their faces) decide to leave the tundra in search of the American dream. Once in New York, they're offered a job playing for a wedding in Mexico, and the film chronicles their trip. The sight gags mainly revolve around the hairdos, and grow tired quickly. And the plot is driven by the Cowboys playing one small burg after another along the way. The film is only 80 minutes long, but it seems longer, and the surest sign of the weakness of the script is the fact that the songs the band plays are played in their entirety. Kaurimaki's filmmaking style is clearly inspired by the minimalist approach of Jim Jarmusch (who has a bit role in the film), but after the first few laughs the movie shoots itself in its own pointy foot by replaying the same jokes over and over. Not recommended. Life and Nothing But, the latest outing from director Bertrand Tavernier (‘Round Midnight, Coup de Torchon) is a powerful indictment of the folly of war set just after the close of World War I. The irrepressible Philippe Noiret (who picked up a Cesar award for his performance) plays the crusty Major Dellaplane, who heads up the War Casualties Identification Department. Dellaplane drives himself at the thankless job of reducing the statistics of unknown dead and wounded, amassing voluminous archives of records and artifacts for family members to identify. When Irene (Sabine Azema), an aristocratic Parisian, doggedly pursues information about her missing husband, Dellaplane blows his top, telling her that he is deluged by letters from her father-in-law, a senator, and that he will devote the same amount of personal time to Irene's husband as he does to the others: 1/350,000th. Inwardly, however, Dellaplane comes to admire Irene's determination and grit, and gradually he begins to fall in love. A darkly comic subplot running throughout the film concerns the military's search for the 'Unknown Soldier' to lie in a monument beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Dellaplane loathes this symbolic gesture, which he feels reduces all men who died to one man--thereby lessening the huge impact of the war. My only quibble with Life and Nothing But is that it should have been letterboxed. Occasionally, one gets the ludicrous scene of a nose on one side of the screen talking to a nose on the other. Aside from this, Tavernier's epic antiwar romance is highly recommended. Love Without Pity, a maiden effort from writer/director Eric Rochant, is an irritating little modern French romance that's almost enough to put you off Paris for life. Hippolyte Girardot, who looks like a young Michael Douglas with baby fat, plays Hippo, a jobless jerk who lives off his younger brother's drug dealing. Hippo's the kind of guy we used to call a cad or a bounder--except that these epithets assume a personality, which Hippo doesn't really have. For reasons that God and the screenwriter only know, a successful career woman named Nathalie (Mireille Perrier) falls for Hippo. Only there's one small problem: the woman has a job and a life and she won't commit 100% of her time to the totally self-centered Hippo. Obviously, for a guy whose worldview doesn't extend beyond his own navel, Nathalie's decision not to wholeheartedly embrace Hippo worship, rubs our boy the wrong way. When Hippo waxes melancholy and more than a little frustrated (pushing some people on the sidewalk, kicking a dog), we're supposed to empathize with this tormented soul. Eventually, of course, Hippo does realize that there's more to life than his utterly shallow existence, but by then I was frankly hoping that Hippo would French kiss a Mack truck. Not recommended. Open Doors, a complex psychological thriller from Italian director Gianni Amelio, is clearly the best of the Orion Home Video quartet. A winner of numerous European awards, the film is set in Fascist Italy during the 1930s. In the opening, Tommaso Scalia (Ennio Fantastichini) goes on a one-day rampage, killing his former boss, the man who took over his job after Scalia was fired, and his own wife. Offering no resistance and pleading guilty, Scalia looks like a sure bet for the death penalty (a sentence he seems happy to accept), but one of the judges at the trial, Vito Di Francesco (Gian Maria Volonte), believes that Scalia's barbarous actions resulted from either insanity or jealous rage. As he delves deeper into Scalia's story, Vito invites the wrath of Scalia, the bloodthirsty public, and even his fellow magistrates. Part mystery, part courtroom drama, and part philosophical debate on the issue of capital punishment, Open Doors is a superb film that keeps the viewer guessing right up until the shocking twist near the end. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman) [DVD Review--November 16, 2004--Kino, 135 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, $29.95--Making its debut on DVD, 1989's Life and Nothing But is presented in a solid widescreen transfer and a fine stereo soundtrack with one notable extra: an engaging half-hour interview with Tavernier and Noiret. Bottom line: one of Tavernier's best, this is highly recommended.]