Simply Perfect

Nice effects though.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Five years after making his delightful first feature film, THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH (1989), Hal Hartley wrote and directed this rather inferior film, his fifth feature. This film certainly has excellent acting by Martin Donovan, Elina Löwensohn, and Isabelle Huppert. (Donovan is still working with Hartley, and has just appeared in Hartley's latest film NED RIFLE (2014).) But Hartley does not pull off the extremely unpleasant story about some pretty unpleasant people. He goes for comedic effects including holding shots for long enough for us to laugh (hopefully), but he overdoes it and the whole thing does not work. Nor would one necessarily want to know what happens to those people anyway. And I for one certainly did not want to laugh about it, because they are all so disgusting that it simply is not funny. The film starts off with Martin Donovan lying in an alley in New York City, apparently dead. Elina Löwensohn is scampering around his body anxiously and then runs off in fear. Donovan then wakes up and can remember nothing, not even who he is. So far, so good, a promising start to an amnesia story. But then Hartley has ludicrously created a character played by Huppert who is an ex-nun who has left her convent and engages in sex fantasies, claiming to Donovan (whom she befriends) that she is a nymphomaniac who is also a virgin. So far not so good. It is too silly, and Huppert's gloomy expressions and attempts to make her character convincing by means of enigmatic frowns are not successful. Then we discover that the unknown persona of Donovan is not Mr. Nice Guy suffering from memory loss, as we have been led to believe, but instead a Mr. Extremely Nasty who murders and maims people and is involved in prostitution rackets. Charming! So we have a violent nutter who is mixed up with a pious nutter and also with a pornography star who is also a nutter, played by the always-intriguing and alluring Löwensohn whose talents are utterly wasted here. And it is all such a waste of time. Hartley should have torn up the hopeless script and written something worthwhile, but instead he went ahead and shot the damned thing. If we are meant to see anything profound in the resulting mess, I have yet to detect it. Time to move on.

Hal Hartley's "Amateur" is an engagingly offbeat take on the "crime thriller" genre. It is also perhaps the most quietly thoughtful handling of amnesia (not as a plot trick, but as a subject) you're ever likely to see. But be warned: Hartley's refreshingly non-mainstream, detached, minimalist style takes quite some getting used to, and the ending is needlessly downbeat. (**1/2)

This is a mystery that seems to want to satirize mysteries in general and while I had a little trouble with the script its the presence of Isabelle Huppert that adds the interest to the film. Story is about a former nun named Isabelle (Huppert) who meets a man (Martin Donovan) with amnesia and helps him out. There is also a French porno actress named Sofia (Elina Lowensohn) who was the one that pushed the man out the window and gave him amnesia. She meets Edward (Damian Young) who is hiding out from corporate gangsters and they seek some floppy discs with pertinent information on them. Sofia steals the discs and tries to get money from the gangsters but they doublecross her and grab Edward whom they recognize. Meanwhile Isabelle and the man try and figure out who he is and they find a connection to Sofia and find her in trouble with gangsters chasing her. Film is directed by independent veteran Hal Hartley and he adds some very unusual touches to the script and the characters. The gangsters chasing everyone were former accountants and they talk like accountants even when they are about to torture someone. But the heart of the film is Huppert and I have always found her fascinating to watch. In this film she appears to be very docile and timid but at the same time we can see that she craves excitement and love. In some of the scenes Huppert has nothing to say and she just allows her gaze to wander off and I found these moments very effective as she seems to be thinking of something relevant in her life. Even when she does nothing she's interesting to watch and its one of the reasons why she is considered on of the best actress's in the world. Also, Parker Posey appears as a punk girl and Tim Blake Nelson pops up as a detective. Offbeat film mat be to different for the casual viewer but fans of Huppert should take a look.

I kept waiting for this movie to make sense at some point, and it never happened. I looked at the IMDB rating hoping to get some kind of an idea how many people saw the film and how many people gave it a rating higher than 7. Boy was I disapointed. What a waste of celluloid!