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Gwyneth Paltrow is a living onomatopoeia. The very name, itself a gawky imbroglio of letters, exhales an air of stately, almost homely, grace. It evokes images of clumsy, new foals experimenting with impossibly long limbs, on the cusp of transformation into creatures of casual yet stunning elegance. Like the similarly onomatopoeic Uma Thurman, Paltrow seems to have backed into her beauty like a student driver lurching a Jaguar out of a long, privileged driveway. But Paltrow holds the title to that allusive "it" quality, while Thurman is driving a rental. In the grisly thriller Seven, starring Morgan Freeman and ex-boyfriend Brad Pitt, Paltrow--despite a script that brutally boxed her in--emerged as a lovely "next big thing" with a real head on her shoulders. Then, in her first starring role, Paltrow set the world astir as Emma, making it look easy to be an American passing as England's most beloved heroine. After an over-publicized break-up with an actor more beautiful than 99 percent of the female population, instead of seeking oblivion, Paltrow is dominating magazine covers and marquees across the nation. She's an elegant rag doll kneeling before an adoring publicity machine intent on crowning her the next Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly. The first film to arrive at theaters buoyed by this surge of media attention is Great Expectations, an updating of Dickens' classic that's as loose as Monica Lewinsky. Directed by Alfonso Cuaron (A Little Princess), the film announces its intentions and heightened, stylistic method with the voiceover: "I'm not going to tell you the story as it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember." It's the latest MTV overhaul of a classic work, but beneath the new names (Miss Havisham is now Miss Dinsmoor; Pip is Americanized into Finn), the shift of location (England to Florida and New York), and the costumes (Estella is draped in Donna Karan), the Dickens themes remain. Living a ramshackle existence on the Gulf Coast, 10-year-old Finnegan Bell (Jeremy James Kissner) is forever altered by a "brush with the world so large that you seldom, if ever, saw it again." While wading in the surf, Finn is seized by an escaped convict (Robert DeNiro, reprising his Cape Fear role) who threatens to "pull out his insides" and make the young boy eat them if he doesn't help save the man's life. The two forge a mysterious, enduring bond. With similar fairy-tale logic, Finn is summoned to the overgrown, Gothic mansion of nutty Nora Dinsmoor (a scenery-chewing Anne Bancroft) to entertain the Baby Jane-style kook (who has never quite recovered from being left at the altar) and her icy blonde niece, Estella (Raquel Beaudene). Finn amuses his hosts with his knack for drawing, melting Estella's frosty haughtiness--somewhat--with his beautiful portrait of her. With wicked glee, Dinsmoor warns Finn, "She'll only break your heart...it's a fact.... Even though I guarantee you that the girl will only hurt you terribly, you'll still pursue her." She punctuates her premonition with a cackled "Ain't love grand!" Like clockwork, as Estella grows up into Gwyneth Paltrow, so grows Finn's intense, though seemingly futile, ardor. Paltrow's Estella is like a long, cool peppermint soda for the eyes. She's a blonde who, in the words of Raymond Chandler, could "make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." Though flawless and frigid, she is still somehow anti-Deneuvian. There's a sloppy fire inside this ice queen. The question is: Will this iceberg thaw, or is Finn as doomed as the Titanic? Eventually, Estella must go off to Europe. Meanwhile, the adult Finn (Ethan Hawke) gives up painting--a passion doused by the absence of another--and resigns himself to a life of commercial fishing with his Uncle Joe (Chris Cooper). Then one day a lawyer shows up at Finn's door, promising the former painter a major exhibit and a one-way ticket to New York City, where, it just so happens, Estella currently resides with her rich fiancé. The engaging paintings by Francesco Clemente used throughout Great Expectations demonstrate that Finn is exceptionally talented, which makes his portrait-painting session with Estella all the more intense. She goes from ice to embers in nothing flat, strutting into Finn's dismal studio apartment like a supermodel taxiing off a Milan runway and into a young man's masturbatory fantasy. "Do you want me sitting or standing?" she asks him sleepily, like a marionette barely able to pull her own strings. "Both," Finn replies with unintended innuendo, flailing for a pad of paper as if for a life preserver. Feverishly, he digests her body with his eyes. She becomes stronger with each doffed garment, basking in the power her sun-streaked flesh exerts upon him. Stuttered images of limbs and hair are alloyed with his longing into hot, artistic alchemy. Soon he is surrounded by a scattered heap of sketches that are scarcely able to sop up the gush of his desire. In typical fashion, she makes a speedy exit, leaving him flustered, frustrated and stewing in his own juices. The scene is an electric illustration of sexual control and the feeding frenzy of jumbled lust, and nothing else in the film quite matches the rawness of that moment. The significantly weaker second half of the film is a bizarre blend of overwrought high-school angst and voluptuous, Gothic visuals--a Pretty in Chartreuse or Some Kind of Nickleby. Through the waving of his mysterious benefactor's moneyed wand, Finn is transformed into the buttered toast of SoHo, shedding his endearing, bumpkin ways to become a pretty, dapper, self-absorbed young man thrust into an adoring limelight with minimal effort. In short, he becomes Ethan Hawke. The last echo of genuine emotion rings during Finn's big gallery show. In walks Uncle Joe, a fish out of water stinking up this high-society event with his rented tux and briny manner. Joe accidentally upturns a tray of fluted champagne glasses and damns the flow of complimentary chatter. Cooper's characterization is both pitiable and dignified, and when he leaves the party, he takes what little soul the film had with him. The remainder of the film is Romeo + Juliet - The Thrill, with Finn racing through New York streets slick with faux rain bellowing lines like "Everything I do, I do for you!" (Bryan Adams is, suspiciously, not acknowledged with a screenwriting credit.) The camera flutters nimbly about as if endowed with wings. In one shot, we're sulking with an earth-bound Finn, miserable from bitter revelation, then we're swooped up through gloomy nimbus clouds to view Estella looking dolefully out an airplane window, before we're again yanked jarringly away. There are many such displays of visual sleight of hand, yet they amaze in a hollow, David Copperfield kind of way. Their intent is to distract rather than to truly dazzle. Hawke spreads his charming plumage to its full extent, but as far as acting range goes, he is flightless waterfowl. He seldom registers anything more interesting than astonishment at his character's good fortune, and the boundless romantic ache exhibited in the film's sweet outset turns out to be nothing more serious than gas. But all this is exacerbated by the verisimilitude that the title brings with it. If Cuaron had divorced himself completely from his source material, our expectations would be far less great. All the ingredients for a pleasant teen romance are at hand: a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, a ravishing object of desire, hearts cleaved in two, rock-filled moments of pseudo-liberation and valuable lessons painfully learned. Unfortunately, the film gets tangled up in its aspiration to be a piece of "art," instead of reveling in the possibilities of being a fun, sentimental Dickens Bites. As a serious literary adaptation, Great Expectations is a gorgeous, heaving bust, despite Paltrow's sophisticated allure. And all the slick, "must buy soundtrack" rock in the world can't quite mask the unmistakable whine of Dickens spinning in his grave. |
