Dir:
Abel Ferrara
With: Gerard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset, Paul Calderon
Runtime: 125 minutes
MUCH speculation surrounded the non-appearance of Gerard Depardieu, the star of Welcome To New York, when this drama had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June. Had he been eaten by Nessie? Had he eaten Nessie and was suffering a bad case of indigestion? Or were the attractions of Skye, where he was making a food and drink documentary, just too much to tear himself away?
Perhaps there was another reason: Monsieur Depardieu, having already endured Abel Ferrara's picture once, did not fancy sitting through it again. You may sympathise should you dare to experience Welcome To New York when it opens tomorrow. Welcome to 125 minutes in which Russia's newest citizen spends an uncomfortably long period of time strutting and rutting his naked form across the screen in the name of cinema. Talk about suffering for one's art.
As for the story behind Ferrera's picture, stop me if you have heard something similar before. A rich financial type from Paris, in this case a Monsieur Devereaux (Depardieu), goes to Gotham on business. Between marathon bedroom sessions with an assortment of preternaturally cheerful ladies of the night he has a few business meetings. On the day he is about to leave, a chambermaid enters his hotel room and an alleged sexual assault occurs. Heading home, Devereaux is hauled off the plane and treated to a Bronx cheer from the American justice system before finally being allowed back to France.
There is an indignant, muscular film to be made from such a story about the abuse of power, addiction, the corruption of justice, and the obscene disconnect between the rich and poor in New York and other cities. Instead, Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, King of New York) delivers an 18 rated TV movie that struggles to say anything other than what a rum bunch the very rich can be. They are not like us, apparently.
During the film's first half, especially, it is difficult to see what the point of this picture is other than newsworthiness and titillation. One can think of no other reason to spend so long on the scenes where Devereaux is having intense discussions on the Ugandan banking system with a procession of young women in complicated lingerie.
We get a measure of the character in the first scene, a meeting in his office where he offers the men present everything bar tea and coffee. All the rest is just padding and bras. As for the physical appearance of the star of Cyrano de Bergerac and Green Card, it would be fair to file his willingness to perform in the altogether under B for brave.
Even when these early scenes are over, Ferrara is not done missing the point in spectacular fashion. The film briefly rallies after the alleged assault occurs and the justice system grinds into action.
At last, mercifully, we are out of the bedroom. But after the briefest of glances at the alleged victim the focus returns to the me-me-me story of Devereaux, who is now joined in America by his rich wife, Simone (Jacqueline Bisset). After renting a fabulous home and moving in for the trial, the Devereauxs proceed to shout tin-eared dialogue at each other, with lines such as "You would have taken France in a different direction!" filling the air. Rather than convincing as a long-married couple, it is as if they met five minutes ago.
Ferrera and Depardieu then go on to add boredom to visual insult and aural injury by having Devereaux turn philosophical on us, musing about his chances of redemption, the nature of sin, and all that jazz. This is even more limb-gnawingly tiresome than the bedroom scenes.
Werner Herzog revived interest in Ferrara's work when he riffed on Bad Lieutenant in 2009's brilliantly deranged Port Of Call - New Orleans, starring Nicolas Cage as the cop heading over the edge of sanity. One can only dream of what Herzog would have done with this story had he got his hands and imagination on it first.
Glasgow Film Theatre, tomorrow-August 14
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