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      ‘The Five Devils’ Review: The Scent of the Past

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      Part queer love story, part supernatural psychodrama, the uncanny second feature by Léa Mysius follows a young girl with a magical sense of smell.Vicky (Sally Dramé), the creepy kid at the center of “The Five Devils,” has a strange power: her sense of smell is so strong, she can track her mother, Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulous), from dozens of yards away with her eyes closed; can detect the scent of chlorinated swimming-pool water and spilled coffee in the pages of an old journal. Smell is perhaps the most opaque of the five human senses; the one that’s hardest to put into words. No wonder it’s key to the uncanny intrigues of the film, part queer love story, part supernatural psychodrama, by the French director Léa Mysius.Vicky literally sniffs out trouble with the arrival of her enigmatic aunt, Julia (Swala Emati) — the sister of her father, Jimmy (Moustapaha Mbengue), and the local pariah. Joanne seems particularly affected; she implores Jimmy to send Julia away. A decade prior, around the time Vicky was born, Julia was exiled after an episode of pyromania. Her actions left Joanne’s friend, Nadine (Daphné Patakia), permanently disfigured.As the sexual tension between Joanne and Julia become increasingly apparent, Vicky’s abilities take on a new dimension. Julia’s scent causes Vicky to experience visions of the past, and in woozy flashbacks, we see the origins of her family history alongside her: the unspoken racism and homophobia that swirls around Julia, a skilled gymnast who seems to be blamed for Joanne’s sexual orientation.At the same time Vicky, who is multiracial, is aggressively bullied by her provincial peers. Like her aunt, she’s a modern-day witch, even spending her free time concocting perfumes out of dead crows.The film cleverly relies on color, physicality and elemental symbolism to express these tensions: the repressed Joanne swims daily in freezing waters; the untouchable Julia lights things aflame. The story’s various interpersonal frictions are rarely detailed in the dialogue — a distance that resonates with Vicky’s peculiar coming-of-age. She doesn’t know what the adults are going through, but she intuits how they feel.The Five DevilsNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      John Wick Sure Has a Lot of Friends for a Lone Assassin

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      How does a taciturn solo killer have so many pals? The films’ creators can’t really explain, but each character has a raison d’être in this world.Over a run of three stunt-laden films, John Wick has dispatched his enemies with rifles, pistols, swords and knives, as well as an assortment of things that just happen to be nearby. On one occasion, he took out several foes by slamming into them with his ’69 Ford Mustang; on another, he beat a man to death with a library book. And then there was that time Wick slaughtered three men in a bar with a pencil, a feat that his fellow killers can’t seem to stop talking about. Wherever Wick goes, folks die.So why does John Wick, that most lethal of assassins, have so many friends?In a clear break from the tradition of cinematic lone-wolf assassins with few if any pals — Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name; Chow Yun-fat in a series of John Woo films — Wick seems to have dozens. Everybody knows him, from beat cops and mechanics to club bouncers and hotel concierges.“Wick has so many friends in this world because, at the end of the day, he’s inherently a good man,” the screenwriter Michael Finch explained. “And he’s Keanu, so it’s very hard to dislike him.”That would be Keanu Reeves, who has played the franchise’s titular hero since the first Wick film in 2014. Now considered one of the greatest action films ever made, “John Wick” started a nearly $600 million franchise that has been praised for its imaginatively over-the-top action sequences. And over the years, Wick’s friend circle has only grown.“John Wick: Chapter 4,” the latest installment of the series directed by Chad Stahelski, premieres Friday, and features even more of Wick’s chums. The franchise has always drawn top talent for its supporting cast, like Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne and Willem Dafoe, and this sequel is no different. Joining this time around are the martial arts film veterans Hiroyuki Sanada (“The Last Samurai,” “Ring”), playing a close friend from Wick’s distant past, and Donnie Yen (“Hero,” the “Ip Man” series), starring as a blind swordsman enlisted to kill Wick.John Wick’s universe includes Donnie Yen, center, as a blind swordsman and Scott Adkins as Killa.Murray Close/Lionsgate“We spent three movies showing how lethal John is,” the producer Basil Iwanyk said. “So we thought to ourselves, we’ve got to give him a nemesis that you believe he can’t beat.”For newcomers to the franchise, the setup is simple: Wick is a former assassin who has managed to get out of the business, only to be drawn back in by the rash actions of one very stupid guy who kills his dog, the last gift from his recently deceased wife, and steals his car. Wick comes out of retirement to murder the man, and thus our story, and the franchise, begins.Before long, we meet an ever-growing series of pals (present and former), acquaintances and longtime associates. In the first minutes of the original film, we meet Marcus, an old friend played by Dafoe. Not long after, a police officer, Jimmy (Thomas Sadoski), stops by because Wick’s neighbors are complaining that he’s been murdering people too loudly. “Evenin,’ John,” Jimmy greets him. Soon after, yet another friend, Charlie (David Patrick Kelly), comes to cart away all the corpses and mop up the blood. “Good to see you, John,” he says, doffing his cap.On a purely practical level, Wick’s many friends exist to infuse some humanity into this otherwise fearsome killer of men. “The action sequences are phenomenal,” said Caitlin G. Watt, the co-editor of “The Worlds of John Wick: The Year’s Work at the Continental Hotel,” an ambitious collection of academic essays. “But if you don’t like John Wick or sympathize with him, the movies don’t work.”The plethora of friends also provides a nod to the long and harrowing career Wick had before we first met him, including the legendary “impossible task” that allowed Wick to retire and burnished his reputation as the fearsome Baba Yaga. “Chad and Keanu created a character whose life you simply drop into,” Finch said. “You don’t know anything about what happened. We still don’t know what the impossible task was.”It’s largely through these friends that we learn about the very complex world Wick inhabits: its communication systems, rules of etiquette, international chain of deluxe hotels (the Continental, preferred lodging for the world’s most discriminating assassins), and currency. You certainly aren’t going to learn much about this through our taciturn hero, whose most impactful lines generally run only a few syllables long: “I’m going to need a gun,” for instance, or “Yeah.”To be fair, nobody wants a chatty Wick. “These action films about mythological, larger-than-life characters die when you ask your lead to be expositional,” Finch said.Watt, who has written about the franchise’s ties to Russian folklore, tales of knights in exile and the idea of the “monstrous hero,” agreed. “You don’t go to John Wick for the dialogue,” she said, adding that no one expects it “to be like a Noël Coward play. But the dialogue does a lot of work in establishing these characters, their relationships and this very strange world where all of this takes place.”As for just how many true friends Wick has: “I think there are Continentals in most major cities, so there are probably roads that lead to John wherever he goes,” the producer Erica Lee said. “I don’t think he’s the guy who has a surprise 60th birthday and there’s a room full of people. But he does have a select handful of trusted people he can call out to.”Halle Berry played — what else? — a former friend in “John Wick 3.”LionsgateBeginning with the first film, the creators pulled from their own circle of friends to cast Wick’s. Stahelski met Kelly when both were working on “The Crow,” the 1994 superhero film. “I was a new stunt guy and he was in the cast, and he took time to talk to me,” Stahelski said. “So when I needed a Charlie, he was in my head.” A similar thing happened with Randall Duk Kim, the doctor who patches up Wick’s wounds — Stahelski had worked with him on “The Matrix Reloaded.”The franchise’s Manhattan setting also played a role in casting. “We were so below the radar, just an independent movie that didn’t even have distribution,” Iwanyk said of the first film. “But we shot in New York City, and there are so many actors there. That’s how we got John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan, Lance Reddick,” who died March 17 at age 60 but played Charon, concierge of the New York Continental, owned by Winston (Ian McShane), in all four chapters.When the characters — and the film — hit, the creators kept many of them on for the sequels. Others soon followed. “When we were talking about ‘2,’ someone said, wouldn’t it be cool if we got Laurence Fishburne, so it would be like Neo and Morpheus?” Lee said of the actor who plays the Bowery King in three of the installments. Berry, who played Sofia Al-Azwar in “3,” asked Stahelski for a part before a script was even written.In this latest installment, friendship again plays a major role. Old friends return to protect Wick, or hunt him.But just how, when and why Wick befriended all of these people is still largely a mystery, even to the creators. For the most part, histories for the characters, even for Wick himself, were created on the fly, if at all. “We never wanted to get into John’s back story,” Iwanyk said. “You know these people have a shared experience with John, and you know it was something intense and often violent, but you don’t know what it is specifically.”Even so, the stories wouldn’t work without these characters. A John Wick movie sans friends? “I wouldn’t know how to tell that story,” Finch said. “There would not be a successful franchise without a Winston, without a Charon, without a Bowery King.”John Wick’s Friend CircleAnjelica Huston as what passes for a maternal presence in John Wick’s world.Niko Tavernise/LionsgateBeing friends with John Wick isn’t easy. Over the years, people who have helped out Wick have been sliced seven times with a sword (Laurence Fishburne); smothered and shot in the head (Clarke Peters); tortured, then killed (Willem Dafoe); and asked to resign from their places of business (Ian McShane). There are friends whom Wick has shot at (Claudia Gerini), and others who have fired on Wick (McShane, Halle Berry). There are still others who want to be pals with Wick (Shamier Anderson, Mark Dacascos), but they’ve been hired to assassinate him, which tends to sour things in Wickworld, but often not for long.With all the bullets flying, who can keep track? Here’s a quick primer to a handful of Wick’s friends.WINSTON (IAN MCSHANE) He is the owner of the New York Continental, a swanky hotel for assassins. The establishment’s primary rule: absolutely no killing on the premises. When Wick does, it puts him at odds with Winston and the High Table, the shadowy crime council that oversees the world’s Continentals. “Winston is empathetic toward John’s quest, but I think he’s always trying to guide him toward his better instincts and away from danger,” the screenwriter Shay Hatten said.CHARON (LANCE REDDICK) The trusty, resourceful concierge of the New York Continental, Charon gets arms and ammo for Wick, fights alongside him and even breaks hotel rules by taking care of his (second) dog when the assassin is away. Even so, Charon doesn’t seem all that broken up when Winston shoots Wick in the chest at the end of the third installment. “Charon is an inherently decent man,” Finch said. “But even the nicest guy in the series has an edge to him.”THE DOCTOR (RANDALL DUK KIM) Called upon to patch up Wick’s wounds, the Doctor takes a bullet for Wick — two, in fact, from Wick’s own gun, to cover up the fact that he is helping Wick against the direct rules of the High Table. “We excuse a lot of what John does because people like the Doctor, who are inherently OK and decent, seem to respond positively to him,” Finch said.THE DIRECTOR (ANJELICA HUSTON) The leader of the Ruska Roma, another crime organization, the Director was a maternal figure to the orphan Wick. For helping him escape punishment in “3,” the Director’s hands are ritually skewered by the High Table. “I wouldn’t call them friends, at this point,” Lee said. “I think she’s probably annoyed at John.”THE BOWERY KING (LAURENCE FISHBURNE) As the self-anointed sovereign over a network of seeming panhandlers and vagrants who act as his eyes and ears, the Bowery King is an invaluable source of intel for Wick, as well as a major supplier for Wick’s other needs. “The Bowery King is an anarchist,” Lee said. “So when John had to go off grid, he was there to help him get guns, supplies and bulletproof suits.” More

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      ‘Camelot,’ Beloved but Befuddling, Gets the Aaron Sorkin Treatment

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      “Camelot” opened on Broadway 63 years ago, an eagerly anticipated new musical from the makers of “My Fair Lady.” But happily-ever-aftering took a while.Out-of-town, while trying to trim the overlong production, one writer was hospitalized with an ulcer, and the director collapsed of a heart attack. In New York, despite starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, “Camelot” took months to find its footing, and only did so following a televised segment on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”Today the musical, written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, is remembered as one of the last of Broadway’s Golden Age shows, but its traditional narrative — Arthurian legend with all of its romance, politics, swordplay and sorcery — has never quite clicked.“Unfortunately, ‘Camelot’ is weighed down by the burden of its book,” the New York Times critic Howard Taubman wrote of the opening. That assessment has persisted. “It has one of the great scores of all time,” said Theodore S. Chapin, the former president of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, “but the plot starts to go haywire.”On April 13, a new version of “Camelot” is scheduled to open on Broadway, with its book rewritten by Aaron Sorkin. The Hollywood screenwriter is familiar to many as the creator of the television series “The West Wing,” and he won an Oscar for writing the movie “The Social Network.” He is also an accomplished playwright, whose first Broadway drama, “A Few Good Men,” became a hit film, and whose most recent Broadway outing, an adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was a critical and commercial success.Clockwise from top left: Aaron Sorkin, Phillipa Soo, Jordan Donica and Andrew Burnap.But musicals have not been part of his repertoire, until now. He earned a B.F.A. in musical theater from Syracuse University, but this, in his slightly overstated words, is “the first time I’m putting it to use.” (He tried writing a musical once before, partnering with Stephen Schwartz on a show about Houdini. It didn’t work out.)This rewritten “Camelot,” starring Phillipa Soo of “Hamilton” fame as Guenevere, alongside Andrew Burnap (“The Inheritance”) as Arthur and Jordan Donica (“My Fair Lady”) as Lancelot, is now in previews at Lincoln Center Theater. By contemporary standards, it’s a large production, with a 27-person cast and a 30-piece orchestra.Sorkin is not the first to revise the musical — even Lerner and Loewe reworked it post-opening, and others have tried, too — but his deft hand with witty, fast-paced dialogue and audience nostalgia for “Camelot,” which is adapted from T.H. White’s fantasy novel, “The Once and Future King,” has made the production one of the most anticipated on Broadway this year, with theater mavens eager to see how Sorkin puts his stamp on it.“People think the show is about a love triangle, which of course it is,” said Alan Paul, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company and director of his own production of “Camelot” a few years back, “but I really think it’s about the birth of democracy, and when you look back at ‘The West Wing,’ which is one of my favorite shows, that is a TV show that believes government can work for the people.”‘You’re supposed to be dead.’Just getting to this point is an unexpected relief for Sorkin.In November, two months before rehearsals were set to begin, he woke in the middle of the night and noticed that, while walking to the kitchen, he was crashing into walls and corners. He thought nothing of it until the next morning, when the orange juice he was carrying to his home office kept spilling.Sorkin called his doctor, who told him to come in immediately; his blood pressure was so high, Sorkin said, “You’re supposed to be dead.” The diagnosis: Sorkin, 61, had had a stroke.For about a month afterward, he was slurring words. He had trouble typing; he was discouraged from flying for a few weeks; and until recently, he couldn’t sign his name (he has just discovered, thanks to “Camelot” autograph seekers, that that’s improving). Those issues are now behind him, and the main lingering effect is that he still can’t really taste food.“Mostly it was a loud wake-up call,” he said during one of several interviews for this article. “I thought I was one of those people who could eat whatever he wanted, smoke as much as he wanted, and it’s not going to affect me. Boy, was I wrong.”Sorkin had been a heavy smoker since high school — two packs a day of Merits — and the habit had long been inextricable from his writing process. “It was just part of it, the way a pen was part of it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it too much, because I’ll start to salivate.”After the stroke, he quit cold turkey, cleaned up his diet and started working out twice a day. And, he said, “I take a lot of medicine. You can hear the pills rattling around in me.”“If you write the book to a musical with a score written by Lerner and Loewe, and they have this cast, and Bart Sher is directing it, and it doesn’t work, it was definitely your fault,” Sorkin said.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesSorkin told me about the stroke almost in passing, when we were having a get-acquainted cup of tea in a hotel lobby (he loves writing in hotels) earlier this year. Trying to understand his creative process, I asked whether he prefers to write longhand or on a device. That’s when he said writing by hand had become difficult.At first he told me about his stroke only off the record; we agreed we’d revisit the subject the next time we met, so he could think through the implications of going public. By then, he had decided he was ready to describe what he had been through, in the hopes that his experience might be a cautionary tale. “If it’ll get one person to stop smoking,” he said, “then it’ll be helpful.”He is aware how lucky he is to have recovered, and to be able to continue to do the work he loves. “There was a minute when I was concerned that I was never going to be able to write again,” he said, “and I was concerned in the short-term that I wasn’t going to be able to continue writing ‘Camelot.’”Now he’s commuting between Los Angeles, where he lives, and New York, where he’s trimming the script, offering pointers to actors, refining word choices that don’t strike him quite right. “Let me make this very, very clear,” he said. “I’m fine. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I can’t work. I’m fine.”‘Now with no magic!’For many people, “Camelot” is more familiar as a metaphor than as a musical — it depicts a noble effort to create a just society, often associated with the Kennedy administration, because Jacqueline Kennedy, in an interview shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, mentioned her husband’s fondness for the show, and quoted a final lyric: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”Four years ago, Lincoln Center Theater, which is a nonprofit, staged a fund-raising concert performance of the show, starring Lin-Manuel Miranda as Arthur. It went so well that the creative team began talking about a full-scale production.“The music is so good, and it’s incredibly fun, and I don’t know of any other pieces set in the Middle Ages with knights,” said Bartlett Sher, a veteran of Golden Age revivals (“South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “My Fair Lady”) who directed the concert and is now directing this revival. “I realized how extraordinary the score was,” he said, “and how complicated the experience of the book was.”Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, center, starred in the 1960 production of “Camelot.”Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock PhotoSher was debriefing with Miranda when Sorkin’s name came up. “I knew Sorkin was a fan of ‘Camelot,’ because he quotes it in ‘The West Wing’,” said Miranda, who grew up hearing songs from the musical, a favorite of his mother’s, and memorized them while a passenger in her car.Sher and Sorkin already knew each other because they had collaborated on “Mockingbird,” and they were eager to work together again.“You would think we would have sat and talked for hours about the problems we had with the existing book, or what we were hoping for, but we didn’t,” Sorkin said. “I just got to work.”He made one key early decision that has guided his approach to the show: no supernatural elements. That means Merlyn, who in the original is a magician who can remember the future and can turn Arthur into a hawk, is now a wise tutor; Morgan Le Fey, who in the original can build invisible walls, is now a scientist; and the nymph Nimue is gone. Even Arthur’s sword-in-the-stone origin story is questioned.“It wasn’t that I don’t like magic — I do,” Sorkin said. “Nor were there commercial reasons — no producer wants to put on a marquee, ‘Now With No Magic!’ It was because I feel that this story, in particular, had a chance of landing more powerfully, more emotionally, if people felt real. If a problem can be solved by waving a magic wand, it doesn’t feel like much of a problem.”‘Musicals can get tangled with.’“Camelot,” like many older musicals, has its complications for a modern audience. “From a contemporary perspective, it’s very problematic,” said Stacy Wolf, director of the music theater program at Princeton University. “The musical is about heterosexual adultery ruining a visionary government, and the woman is ultimately blamed for it.”Nonetheless, Wolf is eager to see the revival. “The music that Lerner and Loewe wrote is just incredible,” she said, “and in the same way that Shakespeare gets tangled with, and operas get tangled with, musicals can get tangled with.”Sorkin quickly realized that two songs, in particular, posed problems: the sexist-sounding “How to Handle a Woman” and the classist-sounding “What Do the Simple Folk Do?”“When I first started writing it, I thought, there’s an easy way to solve this: Don’t sing the songs,” Sorkin said.But Sher asked Sorkin to reconsider, given fan fondness for the score. “There’s a reason we see ‘Camelot’,” Sorkin acknowledged, “and the reason isn’t me.”So he came up with an alternative solution: humor. The songs are back, preceded by dialogue in which Guenevere preemptively defuses their sting with Sorkin-esque wit.“When I joined, ‘How to a Handle a Woman’ wasn’t there in the script, but then one day it was,” Soo said. “But there was also a beautifully written scene — and this is another reason why Aaron Sorkin is brilliant at what he does — that explores the song in a new way.”The revival has been extensively nurtured — there were four developmental workshops along the way, and Sorkin estimates that he has written about 10 drafts of the script. Lancelot “went from being a buffoon, like Gaston in ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ to a three-dimensional person.” Arthur struggles to define his feelings for Guenevere, whom he marries as part of a peace treaty. And Guenevere is now a strategic helpmate, periodically outthinking her husband.“The ideas of democracy that are discussed in this show are the ones that are discussed in this country,” said Donica, left foreground, who plays Lancelot.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“There have been rewrites at each stage of workshop, and there are even more rewrites still going on,” said the actor Dakin Matthews, who is playing Merlyn and another character.A case study: Morgan Le Fey, who in the original is a sorceress with a sweet tooth, and a threat to Arthur’s reign. At first, Sorkin simply cut the character — as Lerner had done for some post-Broadway productions — but, Sorkin said, “she found her way in, and she got better.”In an early workshop, the actress Daphne Rubin-Vega (the original Mimi in “Rent”), read the role, when Le Fey was little more than a spurned ex-girlfriend. “She, in a very nice but direct way, said I could do better,” Sorkin said. “She was right.”He made Le Fey a scientist, an unmarried mother, and, for a time, an opium addict. (Sorkin has been clean for 23 years after battling his own addictions.) Now she makes and sells brandy. “People coming in and auditioning — they were just leaning into being high on opium, and it wasn’t working,” Sorkin said.Marilee Talkington, who plays Le Fey, has embraced the character’s evolution.“The old version of ‘Camelot’ felt distant, but also fun and entertaining,” she said. “This version is inviting the audience to ask themselves who they are, what they want, and where there’s hope.”How much “West Wing” is there in “Camelot”? Sorkin said the screenwriting device for which he is most famous — the so-called walk and talk, in which characters converse while in motion, is a.) “probably exaggerated” and b.) a screen technique that “has no implications for the stage.” Having said that: Arthur has his best ideas while pacing.One trick Sorkin did transfer from filmdom: He intercut three scenes together, as in a movie, held together with scoring, and challenged Sher to figure out the staging. “Give Bart something like that,” Sorkin said, “and he’s a happy guy.”And there are lines that can clearly be heard as allusions to our contemporary challenges.“All of his films are about game-changers, and ‘Camelot’ is no different, because Arthur is a game-changer,” said Donica, the actor playing Lancelot. “And the ideas of democracy that are discussed in this show are the ones that are discussed in this country.”‘I worry that if I stop worrying then I won’t do it.’I sat down with Sorkin the morning after the first preview performance, and he was obviously pleased. It struck me that this was the first time he had seemed happy with his work. “That’s not an illusion,” he said. “It’s the most positive I’ve been during the process. I feel ashamed I didn’t have more confidence in everybody.”There was still work to be done over the five-week preview period — the show was running too long (“I’m sure I’ll be called upon to make some cuts, and I’m not looking forward to that”), and Sorkin was still wrestling with various bits of language (Would it be exciting or distracting if he changed an “or” to a “like,” with the effect of implying that Guenevere might be agnostic?).But until that first performance before an audience, Sorkin had repeatedly fretted about what might go wrong, remembering that at one point he told a group of young librettists, “If you write the book to a musical with a score written by Lerner and Loewe, and they have this cast, and Bart Sher is directing it, and it doesn’t work, it was definitely your fault.”I found it hard to understand how someone as successful as Aaron Sorkin could be so worried, so I asked him about it.“I have had some success, and I’ve also had plenty of experience feeling anxiety about what I’m doing,” he said. “Am I going to have an idea? Am I going to be able to write this?”One startling example: “I wrote 86 episodes of ‘The West Wing,’ and every single time I finished one, I’d be happy for five minutes before it just meant that I haven’t started the next one yet, and I never thought I would be able to write the next one. Ever.”Is that kind of worrying a liability, or a strength, for an artist like Sorkin? “I hope it wasn’t a waste,” he said. “And I do think to myself, as I try to relax myself a little bit, I worry that if I stop worrying then I won’t do it. That it’s the worrying that’s driving me to do it.”Sorkin, who has already begun having meetings about possible next musicals, even while dreaming up a Jan. 6 movie he is contemplating writing and directing, said he has come to see “Camelot” as a narrative about narrative.“Ultimately, the show is a valentine to storytelling,” he said.“I like that Arthur thinks if we can just keep telling these stories, then people will be inspired and they’ll believe that we do have greatness in our grasp, and that you have to keep trying,” he added. “The greatest delivery system for an idea ever invented is a story.” More

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      ‘Kubrick by Kubrick’ Review: Stanley Plays Himself

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      A primer on the filmmaker’s career and interests won’t offer much that will surprise even mild obsessives, but it does pierce some of the mystique.The director Stanley Kubrick gave so few interviews that hearing his voice is always a little jarring. It’s less deep than you might imagine from late-career photographs, which make him look like a woolly elder statesman of the cinema, or from seeing his movies, which raise dark questions about human nature. Kubrick’s accent contains traces of his Bronx upbringing, even though he lived in Britain for more than 30 years. And his conversational manner is much more casual, more affable, than his reputation as a hermetic perfectionist would suggest.What that voice has to say, and how it says it, is the main point of interest in “Kubrick by Kubrick,” a primer on the filmmaker’s career and interests built around interviews that he gave over many years to the critic Michel Ciment, who is credited as an artistic adviser on the documentary. The director, Gregory Monro, interweaves excerpts from the men’s conversations with scenes from Kubrick’s movies and archival commentary from actors and critics.Monro also riffs on Kubrick’s own imagery, making it appear that an old clip of Ciment on a talk show, for instance, is showing on the plugless TV from “The Shining,” and that the TV set is sitting in the bedroom from the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”Most of Kubrick’s 13 features have been analyzed exhaustively already, and “Kubrick by Kubrick” doesn’t offer much that will surprise even mild obsessives. Still, it is interesting to hear Kubrick express ideas that run counter to conventional wisdom. He doesn’t sound all that terrified of a computer like HAL 9000. “I can’t think of any reason why it’s a frightening prospect, because intelligence seems to me to be something which is good,” Kubrick is heard saying in the documentary. “And so I can’t see how your ultra-intelligent machine is going to be any worse than a man.”Other choice tidbits include Kubrick’s comparison of the work of a film director to the precision Napoleon applied to military strategy. (Kubrick had famously labored to make a Napoleon biopic, and elements of his preparation found their way into “Barry Lyndon.”) According to Kubrick, the great cinematographer Russell Metty, with whom he worked on “Spartacus,” could not understand why Kubrick, who started as a photographer for Look magazine, spent so much time composing shots, as opposed to leaving that task to the cameraman.Some of Kubrick’s insights echo differently today, as when he says, apropos of “Full Metal Jacket” and the Vietnam War, “I don’t think you’re going to get Americans to fight a war again unless they think it really means something to them.” (The director died in 1999.) Leonard Rosenman, who conducted the music on “Barry Lyndon,” remembers how demanding Kubrick could be, and wanting “to throw him through the window” for making him do 105 takes at one point even though “take two was perfect.”While no great contribution to the vast library of Kubrickiana, this documentary pierces some of the mystique behind the man. For fans, that will be enough.Kubrick by KubrickNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 13 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      Adam Sandler Is Awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

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      The comedy star was celebrated at the Kennedy Center in Washington for his prolific three-decade career as an actor, writer, producer and stand-up comic.WASHINGTON — Adam Sandler brought his trademark loopy but charming sense of humor to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday night, as he was recognized for three decades of writing, acting and directing with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.“As I look at this goofy award, I can’t help but think that one day it just might be the weapon used to bludgeon me to death,” Mr. Sandler said in his familiar silly cadence during his acceptance speech.He is the 24th comic to be awarded one of the industry’s top honors, which has annually celebrated a heavyweight in American comedy, from film and television’s greatest comedic actors to social critics and playwrights. Each, including last year’s honoree, Jon Stewart, has been recognized for having an impact on American society, according to the Kennedy Center.Mr. Sandler, 56, thanked his friends and family for helping build his confidence throughout his career, which began performing stand-up five nights a week in New York City and led to leading roles in blockbuster comedies like “Grown Ups” and “Big Daddy.” Several of Sunday night’s speakers, including comics and actors such as Judd Apatow, Steve Buscemi and David Spade, poked fun at the parade of Mr. Sandler’s films that were panned by critics in remarks that were as much a roast as they were a celebration of his career.“To hell with ratings, you guys are my new friends now,” Mr. Sandler said to those in the audience.A comic, actor, filmmaker and singer, Mr. Sandler starred in movies that have grossed more than $3 billion worldwide, and he has stacked up dozens of credits as a producer and screenwriter. He became a household name with a leading role in 1995’s “Billy Madison” and later took on sports comedies and popular romantic comedies like 1998’s “The Wedding Singer” with Drew Barrymore and 2011’s “Just Go With It” with Jennifer Aniston, both of whom praised him onstage Sunday night. Idina Menzel, another former co-star, dressed as “Opera Man,” a character from Mr. Sandler’s days as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1990s, to open the show and serenaded Mr. Sandler in much his own fashion.The Mark Twain Prize has sometimes been seen as a cap to a long, successful career in comedy, but Mr. Sandler has won critical acclaim for his recent dramatic work, including 2022’s “Hustle,” a return to the sports genre that won him a Gotham Award last year, and 2019’s dark comedy-drama “Uncut Gems.”Many of the night’s speakers praised Mr. Sandler for his unending work ethic. He is currently on an expanded leg of a sold-out stand-up tour across the country and has a sequel to a Netflix comedy special that is set to be released at the end of the month.“It’s just a part of my life that I never expected to happen, and it’s nice that my family and friends get to say that goofy guy Adam won a Mark Twain award,” Mr. Sandler said before the ceremony, which will be broadcast on CNN on March 26 at 8 p.m. Eastern. More

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      ‘Rye Lane’ Aims to Show You a Real London Love Story

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      Like so many great romantic comedies, “Rye Lane” opens with a meet-cute.In the stalls of a unisex bathroom at an exhibition opening, Dom (David Jonsson) is stalking his ex-girlfriend on his phone and weeping. Yas (Vivian Oparah), in a nearby stall, hears his tears and asks if he’s OK. This brief exchange through the cubicle walls begins an unexpectedly long, and eventful, day for the Londoners.The film’s writers, Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, felt “Rye Lane” needed to somehow open in an art gallery, the pair said in a recent interview. Bryon said that Black people — like Yas and Dom — are rarely shown in the art world on film and TV.Opening the movie “in that space, with this group of cool, beautiful-looking Black people, that to me feels so special,” he said.Dom (Jonsson) and Yas (Oparah), foreground, meet at an art exhibition, a setting in which the writers felt it was important to see the characters.Searchlight PicturesThis opening is one of many ways the creators of “Rye Lane,” which opens in theaters in Britain on Friday and will come to Hulu in the United States on March 31, aim to tell a love story set in South London that feels true to their experiences, and their city.“The story is really simple. It’s two people walking around, talking about their breakups,” said Raine Allen-Miller, the film’s director, in an interview. “They meet at the wrong time, but also the perfect time.”Dom, who is heartbroken after his girlfriend left him for his best friend, is timid and openly emotional, which Jonsson particularly admires. “I love his vulnerability. I think that there’s something quite gorgeous about a young Black man being straight-up heartbroken,” Jonsson said in an interview. “I’ve been heartbroken, but would I have allowed myself to go into a restroom and cry my eyes out? Probably not.”In contrast, Yas — who has also recently come out of a relationship, for reasons that unfold as the film does — is energetic, and prefers to offer a more curated version of herself.The pair spend the day wandering around Peckham and Brixton, two lively and multicultural South London neighborhoods a short bus ride from each other. “Rye Lane” takes its title from a main street in Peckham, and these two neighborhoods become central characters in the film.Dom and Yas stumble across scenarios and tableaus that celebrate the area’s quirkiness: a man dressed in mismatched clothing, including large animal jewelry, hands out social justice fliers; a woman in a bunny costume, reminiscent of Bridget Jones, smokes a cigarette outside a large house; at one point, a person in a cowboy outfit skips past.The film’s director, Raine Allen-Miller, said she was “trying to make a film that is a funny, happy day in South London.”Suzie Howell for The New York TimesBryon and Melia said they initially envisioned the two characters strolling through Camden, a popular part of north London, also known for its exuberance. But when they sent Allen-Miller the script, she said she would only join the team if the film (her directorial debut) was set in South London. She wanted to “almost write a love letter” to the area, she said, having moved there at 12 to live with her father and grandmother. “One of my fondest memories is walking around Brixton Market with my grandma and getting Jamaican spices,” she said.Melia had previously lived in Brixton, and felt the location still “matched what we were going for.” The script’s first draft “was a bit more like ‘Before Sunrise,’ insofar as it could almost be one shot,” he said. “By the time Raine read it, it had developed a bit further away from that anyway.”The finished film is shot in a saturated color palette, and in parts with a fisheye camera lens. The dreamy, joyful atmosphere is in stark contrast with how Peckham and Brixton were once depicted in the mainstream British press. In 2007, The Guardian reported that “for more than a generation,” Peckham had “been linked with drugs, gangs and violent murders.”Recently, these areas in South London have also experienced significant gentrification, with house prices rising and wealthier people moving in, inadvertently hurting longstanding locals. In the upcoming book “All The Houses I’ve Ever Lived In,” the journalist Kieran Yates details how, while living in Peckham in 2017, she witnessed “the sheer speed at which wealthy property developers saw an opportunity to move in.” She later moved to Brixton, where an “influx of restaurants, farmer’s markets, galleries, cafes and bars has led to a spike in rent,” she wrote.The film has a dreamy, joyful atmosphere and is shot in a saturated color palette.Chris Harris/Searchlight PicturesIn making “Rye Lane,” Allen-Miller said she was “trying to make a film that is a funny, happy day in South London,” before the effects of gentrification made the area completely unrecognizable. “I just wanted to put it on a plinth, and capture the bits of it that are beautiful and special,” she added.This celebration is helped by cameos from well-known figures in Britain: the comedians Munya Chawawa and Michael Dapaah, the “It’s a Sin” actor Omari Douglas and the reality TV star Fredrik Ferrier. But one actor will be familiar to all viewers: Serving burritos in a shop named Love Guac’tually is the godfather of rom-coms himself, Colin Firth.Early in production, having a Firth cameo felt like a pipe dream to the writers. But the film’s executive producer, Sophie Meyer, had worked with the actor on the 2007 British comedy “St. Trinian’s,” and sent him a text. “We were like, ‘Yeah, good luck’,” Melia said. But Firth agreed, and was “such a good sport,” Byron said. “It is also such a lovely nod to rom-coms for us.”A small service-industry role like that “would normally maybe be the only person of color in a different film,” Melia said. Here, a white Oscar winner is playing it.Whatever the viewer’s knowledge of London and its various neighborhoods, the creators of “Rye Lane” hope the film will offer a fresh (and fun) perspective on the city.“The more traditional rom-coms show Londoners by the London Eye or Tower Bridge. But, let’s be honest, most Londoners are not having a pint by Tower Bridge because it will cost you 15 pounds,” Bryon said. “We wanted the movie and the location to feel personal to the audience who know it, and also to introduce Rye Lane to those coming to London.” More

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      Meet Radio Man, a ‘Bum’ Who Befriends Movie Stars and Sells Their Autographs

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      On a blustery February evening in Midtown Manhattan, opposite an unmarked side entrance to the Ed Sullivan Theater, a crowd of more than 60 people stood crushed against a row of steel barricades. They all knew that at any moment, Harrison Ford would arrive for an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” They elbowed and cursed one another, jockeying for position, each clutching a sheaf of photographs for Mr. Ford to sign.They weren’t fans — not most of them, anyway. They were “graphers,” who make a living by hounding celebrities for autographs and selling them to the highest bidder. For many of them, graphing is a full-time job. Some have been at it for decades. They can flip a single signature for anywhere from $25 to more than $1,000, depending on a star’s cachet and how frequently they sign. A Harrison Ford autograph, for example, retails for about $750.At 5:30 on the dot, a black Escalade pulled to a stop in front of the theater. The rear door swung open, and the pack of graphers across the street broke into a frenzy. “Harrison!” they hollered. “Harrison, please!”Slumped near a dumpster by the stage door, a disheveled man with a mane of gray hair and a wild beard let out a grunt. He clambered to his feet, reached into a grocery bag and pulled out an overstuffed FedEx mailer, inscribed in large, looping cursive with a note. “Thank you, Harrison,” it read. “Love, Radio Man.” He staggered past the theater’s security team and approached the Escalade.“Harrison!” the man called as Mr. Ford climbed out of the back seat. “How are ya?”Mr. Ford grinned. “Radio,” he said warmly. They shook hands. Fifty feet away, the graphers behind the barricades bellowed in a desperate chorus.Giovanni Arnold, who has been graphing in New York City since 1999, unrolling movie posters outside the Edison Ballroom. He waited outside for over three hours hoping to get Mr. Spielberg’s autograph as he entered the venue for the Writers Guild Awards.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“Listen, I’ve got some photos for you,” the man said, handing Mr. Ford the package.“Sure, sure,” Mr. Ford said, accepting it. They made small talk. Mr. Ford asked after the man’s health, and the man asked after Helen Mirren, Mr. Ford’s co-star on the “Yellowstone” spinoff “1923.”“Good to see you, Radio,” Mr. Ford said. He slipped into the theater without acknowledging the graphers screaming his name. They would have to wait until he had finished his interview.There are at least 150 professional graphers in New York City, according to Justin Steffman, the founder of the autograph authentication company AutographCOA. And right now, they are working at full tilt. All winter long, celebrities have been flocking to New York to campaign for projects up for various film and television awards, culminating in the Oscars. For graphers, collecting signatures during awards season is like fishing at a trout farm.The rest of the year is by no means slow. Stars are always cycling in and out of Broadway theaters, concert venues, luxe hotels, film shoots and, most reliably, morning shows like “The View” and late-night shows like Mr. Colbert’s. Their constant presence has made New York the graphing capital of the United States, topping even Los Angeles, whose sprawl, closed sets and tight security make life more challenging for graphers. “It’s got to be a billion-dollar industry,” Mr. Steffman said. “It’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.”There are at least 500 full-time graphers around the world, Mr. Steffman said, and thousands more who graph on a regular basis.But none of them do it quite like Radio Man.Radio Man — legally known as Craig Castaldo, though no one ever calls him that — has been graphing in New York since the early 1990s. Over the years, he has managed to charm a small army of celebrities into accepting his hefty packages of photographs, which they sign and return to him. Where most graphers would be lucky to get more than one signature from a star at a time, Radio Man regularly nabs dozens, sometimes hundreds. He considers the A-listers who sign for him his personal friends.Craig Castaldo, known to all as Radio Man, outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York during a taping of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesAfter his exchange with Mr. Ford, Radio Man made his way to the Park Hyatt to pick up a package that Sarah Michelle Gellar had left for him at reception. It was adorned with a heart in black Sharpie, along with a handwritten note: “Only for you, Radio.” Inside were 43 signed photographs of Ms. Gellar.“It’s amazing how they take to me, these actors,” Radio Man said. “A bum! I don’t understand it.”Radio Man, 72, lives just above the poverty line, in a basement apartment in Yonkers he rents for $900 a month. He commutes into the city each morning on his bicycle, a 13-mile journey that takes him about two hours. He said he survives exclusively on food he gathers from free pantries and movie sets.Though he could make a small fortune selling his autographs directly to collectors, his grasp of the necessary tools — photo databases, printers, the internet — is tenuous at best. Instead, like most graphers, he peddles his merchandise to a dealer, who in turn hawks it at a significant markup on eBay and other, more obscure autograph marketplaces.Leaning against a wall outside the Park Hyatt, Radio Man pulled out his phone and made a call. A few minutes later, a silver sedan pulled up to the hotel. A tall, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and a manicured beard stepped out of the car and into the frigid night. Radio Man handed him the package of signed photographs from Ms. Gellar, and the man accepted them without a word. He hurried back to the warmth of his car, leaving Radio Man alone next to his bicycle.“Hey,” Radio Man called out to him. “You got six bucks so I could get a tea or something?”“I don’t have any cash on me,” the man said. He ducked into the car and drove away.The man, Radio Man’s de facto handler, supplies him with his FedEx mailers of photographs. Once Radio Man gets them signed, the handler sends them to a dealer based in Florida, who is rumored among graphers to be a millionaire. All told, the autographs Radio Man received from Ms. Gellar are worth approximately $6,000. He was paid about $300 for them.“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”By “friends,” he meant the celebrities who have taken an unlikely shine to him since he stumbled into their world more than 30 years ago.As Radio Man tells it, he made his first famous friend when he was homeless. One winter day in 1990, he was walking through Central Park when he encountered a man dressed in rags, whom he took for “a bum like me,” he said. He offered the man a beer. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.It was Robin Williams. He was shooting “The Fisher King,” Terry Gilliam’s 1991 film in which Mr. Williams plays a vagabond searching for the Holy Grail.The actress Riley Keough signed autographs from her S.U.V. after a taping of “The Late Show.” Graphers chased her car down the street, catching up to her at a red light.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“You’re doing this all wrong,” Radio Man told him. “You’re not acting the way a bum should be.”He introduced the actor to life on the street, showing him “where to go and what to do.” Mr. Williams patterned his performance in “The Fisher King,” which earned him an Oscar nomination, after Radio Man. Or so Radio Man claims.In exchange for his guidance, the movie’s producers gave Radio Man $200 and a case of beer. They also cast him as an extra. From then on, he made a habit of hanging around film sets in New York, where he helped himself to food from craft-services stations and scored low-paying parts as a background actor. Graphing was an easy way to make money.“I’ve been getting movies ever since,” Radio Man said. “Here and there, playing my role: bum, homeless guy, guy on a bicycle with a radio.”But that’s just one version of the story Radio Man tells about his origins.Another version involves running a newspaper stand in the 1970s and being cast as an extra in “The In-Laws,” starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Another involves sharing a beer with Bruce Willis on the set of “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Yet another involves showing up to shoots with a boombox around his neck and playing it at full volume until someone paid him to leave, a racket that supposedly earned him his nickname. (“A cop was there and he said to me: ‘Hey, radio guy! Hey, radio person! Hey, radio man! Can you turn that down, please?’ And that’s how I became Radio Man.”)Whatever he may claim about his past, this much is true: Radio Man is a fixture on film sets in New York. He has appeared as an extra in dozens of movies, including “Ransom,” “Zoolander,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman.” He has a preternatural knowledge of actors’ whereabouts and shooting schedules. And he has forged something like a friendship with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.Radio Man biking through Midtown Manhattan after staking out the stage door to “The Late Show.” He was hoping to see Sarah Jessica Parker at a nearby filming location.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesOn a January night in Chinatown, Radio Man sauntered around the set of “Wolves,” a forthcoming movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as if he were its executive producer. He weaved through packs of stagehands, chatting amiably with anyone who crossed his path. During a break in shooting, he shuffled over to Mr. Clooney, who was sitting in a director’s chair. “Clooney!” he shouted, followed by an expletive-laden insult.“There it is,” Mr. Clooney said.“You know where you’re going tomorrow?”“I don’t know where I’m going tomorrow,” Mr. Clooney said.“Under the Manhattan Bridge.”“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Mr. Clooney said, as the production crew standing around him laughed. “You don’t need a call sheet. Radio Man is the call sheet.”Mr. Clooney first met Radio Man in 1996, on the set of “One Fine Day” in Manhattan. The actor has “never not seen him” during a trip to New York since, he said.“Radio’s everywhere,” Mr. Clooney said. “Every hotel you show up at, Radio will be standing out in front of it going, ‘De Niro’s over at this, and Cate Blanchett’s over here staying at the Carlyle.’ He’s got all the intel.”Radio Man endeared himself to Mr. Clooney, the actor said, after rescuing his wife, Amal Clooney, from a throng of paparazzi that had swarmed her on Fifth Avenue. Radio Man blocked them with his bicycle, hailed a cab and steered Ms. Clooney inside, securing her escape.“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Clooney said. “He’s a lovable mess, which we all are.”About six years ago, Mr. Clooney got together with a few other actors and flew Radio Man out to L.A. They sent him to the Oscars. He wore a tuxedo. He walked the red carpet. He sat in the audience. He brought a date.A grapher outside the Ed Sullivan Theater with the tools of the trade. She was among a small crowd hoping to get signatures from Michelle Yeoh and Riley Keough.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesA few nights after bumping into Radio Man in Chinatown, Mr. Clooney poked his head out of a white trailer parked on East Broadway and peered down the street. “Radio!” he yelled.Radio Man ambled over. Mr. Clooney strode toward him holding a large bag, trailed by a pack of photographers.“Here you go, Radio,” he said, dropping the bag on the sidewalk with a thunk. “This thing weighs a ton, by the way.”Radio Man reached inside and pulled out two bulging FedEx mailers. They contained 185 signed photographs of Mr. Clooney, worth approximately $18,000.Mr. Clooney said that Radio Man is the only grapher he will take a package from. But he signs for all of them.“Every one of these guys who come over for autographs, it’s a business for them,” he said. “You try to help them out when you can.”“My job baffles me,” said Mr. Arnold. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesThere is at least one other grapher in New York capable of exchanging packages with celebrities: Giovanni Arnold, 38, who has been graphing in the city since 1999. He calls himself “Black Radio Man.”“There isn’t really an elite group of graphers who are getting packages,” Mr. Steffman said. “There’s Gio, and there’s Radio Man.”On a Saturday afternoon in January, Mr. Arnold sat in a dark bar in the East Village indexing several large bags of autographed memorabilia he had just received from Daniel Radcliffe, who was starring in a production of “Merrily We Roll Along” at the New York Theater Workshop a few blocks away.He laid out his haul on a grimy, beer-stained table, examining each item — cheaply printed photos, plastic Harry Potter eyeglasses, Gryffindor neckties — for Mr. Radcliffe’s signature. He counted 95 autographs in all, whose total value he pegged at $10,000. “I’m hype right now,” he said. “He really blessed me.”Mr. Arnold celebrated with a Guinness. He took a sip from his pint glass and shook his head, pondering a question that has long puzzled him: Why would anyone pay for an autograph?“My job baffles me,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Mr. Arnold has taken a different approach to the business of graphing than most of his peers. He sells his own merchandise on eBay, as well as directly to private collectors, which has allowed him to accrue a level of wealth few graphers seem to enjoy.He documents his day-to-day life hunting for autographs on Instagram under the handle @gtvreality, where you might find him giving Lady Gaga a ride on his bicycle, holding hands with Ben Affleck or shouting his catchphrase — “Stay Black!” — at Bob Dylan. He hopes to turn GTV Reality into a full-fledged brand and to monetize his content, though at 5,000 followers, he hasn’t quite figured out how to do so.“I’m trying to move in a different direction,” he said. “Everyone and their mama’s an autograph-getter now.”Ultimately, Mr. Arnold wants to find a way out of the memorabilia industry. He doesn’t derive the same kind of joy that Radio Man does from chasing down celebrities, and he isn’t willing to dedicate his life to it.“I’m good at what I do,” Mr. Arnold said. “But he’s another level.”“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said of the autograph middlemen. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesBack on the set of “Wolves,” Radio Man cruised the streets of Chinatown looking for the director, Jon Watts. He was hoping there might be a scene he could sneak into. But the cameras were already rolling, and Mr. Watts was occupied.Radio Man returned to his usual post outside Mr. Clooney’s trailer. It was closing in on midnight. He was standing near his bicycle and sipping a hot tea, killing time until the next break in filming, when he was approached by someone he didn’t recognize.“Radio,” the man said. He held up an 8-by-10-inch photograph, taped to a sheet of hardboard, of Radio Man. “Do you mind signing real quick?”“What do you want me to say?” Radio Man asked. “Just, Radio Man?”“Yeah,” the man said. “Radio Man.”Radio Man signed the photograph in big, sloppy cursive. The man thanked him and walked away. It was hard to say if he was a grapher or just a fan. More

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      ‘Rimini’ Review: Just an Austrian Gigolo

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      The director Ulrich Seidl’s unsettling drama tracks the exploitative behaviors of an aging lounge singer, his fans and family members.With his stringy blond locks, his face puffy from the effects of routine boozing, Richie Bravo (Michael Thomas), the lounge-singer protagonist of Ulrich Seidl’s “Rimini,” recalls Mickey Rourke’s aging brawler in “The Wrestler,” Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 drama. Richie is also miserable, clutching the memory of his past glory as an Austrian celebrity; now, he’s stuck in the gloomy Italian resort town of Rimini, where he performs power ballads for his geriatric fans, all German tourists, in tacky hotel conference rooms. Broke, he sleeps with some of these same adoring fans for extra dough.Seidl doesn’t have much in common with Aronofsky; “Rimini,” especially next to the hokey sentimentality of “The Wrestler,” is as severe as the titular coastal town’s foggy, frostbitten climate. Richie, for all his debonair charms, is not a “good” person, and Seidl isn’t interested in redeeming him, either.“Rimini” was conceived as part of a two-film project with the second installment, “Sparta,” about Richie’s younger brother, a nonpracticing pedophile who opens a summer camp for young boys in rural Romania. Last fall, a Der Spiegel report accused the director of subjecting nonprofessional child actors in “Sparta” to upsetting situations in his quest for authenticity. Seidl has dismissed these allegations, saying that the media manipulated the facts to create a more scandalous story, and adding that the children’s parents’ gave their consent. Upon publication of the Der Spiegel article, the world premiere of “Sparta” at the Toronto International Film Festival was canceled, though it went on to screen throughout Europe, where it will be theatrically released over the coming months.The news, however, may seem predictable given the filmmaker’s artistic preoccupations. His approach hews close to other European provocateurs like Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier — and Seidl’s films, like “Import/Export” (2007) and the “Paradise” trilogy (which concluded in 2013), are tales of cruelty and exploitation, unflinchingly presenting bleak, often perverse scenarios. For Seidl, the modern world is rotten at its core, anchored to a history of violence that perpetuates more violence. When Richie visits his father, who has dementia, the two hum their favorite tunes — the son, his most popular love song; the father, a Nazi jingle.Like Rourke’s Randy, Bravo also reconnects with his estranged daughter, Tessa (Tessa Göttlicher), though she’s not interested in sharing sob stories over dinner. She wants cash, and she doesn’t care about the ethics of swindling her father — just as he doesn’t care about stealing from and blackmailing the elderly women drawn to his heartthrob act, and just as Seidl himself doesn’t care about using others as grist for the mill of his art practice. Relationships are transactional, if not outright phony.“Rimini” is grim, for sure, but there’s also something about its surface pleasures — its chintzy décor — that I find both captivating and disturbing. Seidl punctuates the drama with Richie’s live performances, his hulking body, dressed in dazzling blazers and fur coats, smack in the middle of the screen and framed by rainbow party streamers, pastel walls and fluorescent lights. Richie’s home is essentially a museum stocked with relics from the height of his fame (cardboard cutouts, platinum records, concert ads), a setup that makes for an attractive rental home — yet another way to milk his fans. Seidl’s penchant for flat, symmetrical images makes these settings look like playhouses and Richie look like yesteryear’s novelty figurine.We know there’s great tragedy and ugliness behind the smoke and mirrors, but we watch in amusement nonetheless. Sinisterly, Seidl reminds us how easy it is to turn people into objects for the taking.RiminiNot rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More