Review: "My Zoe"

 

I remember screening "Funny People" some years ago and 80 minutes in I was thinking, "This is one of the best movies I've seen this year." And then the film systematically flushed itself down a toilet in a way I'd never seen.

"My Zoe" doesn't start quite that high or end that low. But still, I was so incredibly engaged by this heartrending drama from writer/director/star Julie Delpy, a look at a fractured marriage that reaches crisis when their young daughter is injured. Then it becomes something completely else. Something that, while it has merits on its own, doesn't belong to the first part.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum on how to review "My Zoe," since I think hearing exactly what the second part is might push people away from giving it a chance, people who maybe won't find the disconnect as jarring as I did.

So the best course seems to write two halves of a review, and give you the option of reading just the first, or the second, or both. Ready? Here goes.

A ravishingly poignant family drama

Julie Delpy has been in a lot of movies about relationships, and started making her own some years ago. The French actress is best known in American circles for "Before Sunrise" and its sequels with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke, in which a couple flirt with the beginnings of a relationship.

Now she gives us "My Zoe," a wrenching family drama about a man and wife who are ending their marriage, and their titular daughter becomes another piece of collateral in the acrimonious split.

Isabelle (Delpy) and James (Richard Armitage) are middle-aged and well-to-do, living in Berlin despite coming from France and England, respectively. As the story opens they have recently separated and are working out a joint custody arrangement. 

Zoe, played by Sophia Ally, is a bright bundle of 7-year-old joy. She seems not to notice the way her parents subtlety dig at each other during their hand-offs. They constantly talk about "my time" with Zoe as if it is a fungible commodity to be bickered and bartered over. For example, Isabelle insists on accompanying James and Zoe to her soccer game, even though she must soon leave it for work, just because she doesn't want to surrender an allotted hour.

Armitage and Delpy are fantastic together, even though their scenes are hard to watch. We see the years of faded joy and pain etched in their every word and expression. Everything is an exchange of guilt and blame. We might first look unkindly upon her because Isabelle cheated on James with another man (Saleh Bakri), whom she sneaks into her apartment while Zoe is asleep.

But James has major creeper vibes. He's controlling and manipulative, seems incapable of accepting blame, and there's a hint of physical abuse in the past. At one point he refused intimacy for three years, which would drive any person into another's arms. James has a way of encompassing someone in a warm embrace, but we can't help notice his strong hand wrapping the back of their neck.

Things come to a fore when Zoe comes down with a strange malady. Isabelle thinks it's just a simple cold at first, but in the morning the girl won't wake. At the hospital the diagnosis quickly becomes more severe, and there are haunting questions about injuries and harm.

Sitting in the waiting room, James and Isabelle circle each other like wounded animals. They spit insults and question the foundations of their relationship. It seems James wants her back despite all this, but Isabelle has gained strength with her scars.

As Zoe's life hangs in the balance, can her parents ever put aside their hatred for each other to be a family again?

A disconcerting look at the quandaries of science

What would you do if your child was lying brain dead in a hospital, with no hope of recovery? What if you were a scientist who saw a slim but hopeful chance of bringing them back, even if it meant setting aside every ethical standard you'd ever striven for?

That's the quandary of Isabelle (July Delpy), a French immunologist whose life is upturned when her 7-year-old daughter, Zoe (Sophia Ally), suffers a freak accident that results in a brain hematoma. The doctors operate and are optimistic at first, but it soon becomes clear she will never recover. They bring up the aching question of donating her organs so other children in that same hospital will live. What do you do?

Compounding the situation is that her estranged husband, James (Richard Armitage), wants to let Zoe pass. Despite the poisonous end to their relationship, he insists they should reunite in their daughter's memory. But Isabelle won't let go of her daughter -- ever.

She travels to Moscow to consult with a controversial doctor, Thomas Fischer (Daniel Brüh). He's found a way to impregnate women well past the age previously thought possible, and is catering to an international clientele of well-heeled types. But can he clone Zoe?

He refuses, at first. Fischer has been hounded by the scientific community, setting up in Russia to avoid censure and even prosecution. But he's intrigued by the possibility of Isabelle's case, or should I say Zoe's. They initiate a quiet experiment, knowing the chances are low and the risks are high. As scientists, they develop a shorthand of communicating and something like a friendship begins to develop between them.

Fischer's wife, Laura (Gemma Arterton), is ardently opposed to the move. She knows what their family has to lose. But she meets with Isabelle to convey her concerns, and the women end up bonding over their shared experience as mothers. Laura can't help but notice the way Isabelle speaks about Zoe in the present tense. But can a clone really be the same person who was lost?

Eventually, James turns up again for one more try at a reconciliation. He's horrified when he learns what Isabelle is trying to do, seeing it as a theft of his own parenthood. They seem poised to reignite their long war, with their daughter -- or at least her ghost represented as DNA in test tubes -- treated as a prize to be divided.

.......................................

OK, we're back. Depending on which part(s) you read, those both sound like promising premises. But Delpy turns so sharply from one to the other, we feel whiplashed and discombobulated. 

My take is she really wants the movie to be about the second part, but spends the bulk of the movie setting it up so well that she's made another, better story entirely. Like Isabelle and James, the two pieces each have flaws and attributes -- but are utterly incompatible. 

 

Video review: "Rush"

Put “Rush” in the bin of most criminally ignored films of 2013. This terrific drama/action from director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan may just be the best car racing movie ever made.

American audiences largely ignored it, probably because it’s about European Formula 1 racing. The two main figures, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, are giants in their sport but virtually unknown here in the States. In the 1970s they fought an epic battle of wills for the racing crown, resulting in tragic events but also a strange, powerful bond that forms between rivals.

Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is the prototypical bigger-than-life playboy, who raced for the fame and the thrills. Lauda (Daniel Brühl, who should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination) is the precise technician who approached racing like a business and a science, but had trouble getting along with the people.

The racing scenes are amazing both visually and aurally, as the filmmakers wrap the audience inside the buzzing tornado of a Formula 1 car.

Even better, though, are the exchanges between the rivals, which are sniping and ugly at first, but later take on a comradely, warm aspect that surprises both of them. The secret to this movie is that it’s a character study hiding inside the clothes of a racing flick.

It didn’t win at the box office, but hopefully “Rush” will take the checkered flag in its video release.

Video goodies are quite good indeed, including an expansive making-of documentary, “Race for the Checkered Flag: The Making of Rush,” and “The Real Story of Rush,” which explores the real-world events that inspired the movie. Howard also provides a behind-the-scenes look at his filmmaking process, and there are deleted scenes.

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Review: "Rush"

Really good racing movies are quite rare. They tend to slalom between being too obsessed with the on-track action ("Le Mans") or serving as vehicles for the star persona of the actors appearing in them ("Days of Thunder").

Ron Howard's "Rush" hits the sweet groove down the middle of the lane, coming up with a compelling story based on the real-life rivalry between 1970s Formula 1 superstars James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). It's less a straight racing flick than a character portrait of two very different men who clashed violently in their contrasting approaches to pursuing the same goal. Brühl gives an Oscar-caliber performance as the driven, distant purist who relates better to machines than people.

But Howard and his crew hardly give the racing sequences short shrift. Mixing recreations of existing footage with special effects and camera work in and around the cars, they've created a high-velocity thrill ride that gives the audience a sense of the, well, rush of driving a 500-horsepower metal beast. The sound work is especially good, the engines sounding like the biggest, angriest buzzing bee in the world zooming in and around your head.

Hunt and Lauda were as different as two men can be. Hunt was a British playboy, a natural talent and thrill-seeker whose aggressive moves on the track make him a dangerous but formidable opponent. He beds women prodigiously, boozes and smokes, and is quick as lightning behind the wheel.

Lauda was an Austrian (but dismissed as a "Kraut" by Hunt and his fellows) from a family of businessmen, who approached world-class racing with methodical precision. He knows every piece of his car better than the mechanics who built it, and can tell what's wrong with how it drives just through the vibrations it sends through his body. (My mind is pretty good, he says, but I was born with a great ass -- which is as close to a joke as Lauda gets.)

There's one telling scene where Lauda, stranded with his would-be girlfriend on a lonely road, is picked up by some racing fans who beg him to drive their car for him. This he does, but the women scolds him for driving "like a grandfather." Lauda is genuinely perplexed: Why would he risk an accident when he's not being paid for it? He can handle risk at his job, but if he found something less risky that paid better, he says he'd do that instead -- and we believe him.

The movie quickly -- and wisely -- skips over their rise from the lower tiers of racing to their campaign in the big leagues. Their 1976 contest for the Formula 1 championship is still the stuff of legends, with Lauda driving for the Ferrari team and Hunt his match in a McLaren car. They traded victories and taunts with equal relish.

I'm not giving anything away by revealing that toward the end of the season Lauda had a horrific crash (which has always been suspected to be caused by a failure in his suspension, something Howard explicitly points to as the reason). This was at a time when Formula 1 had a handful of drivers die every year. Lauda spent more than a minute trapped in his car roasting in 800 degree flames, suffering severe burns to his face after his helmet slipped off.

Howard depicts the crash and its aftermath with a stark,  unblinking eye. Perhaps the most teeth-grating thing to watch is Lauda having to repeatedly have his lungs "vacuumed" of debris from the fire. Of course, he watches Hunt racing and winning on an omnipresent television, closing the gap on his points lead while he endures the pain.

The apex of the story would be dismissed as the fantasies of a Hollywood screenwriter if it hadn't actually happened. Just six weeks after his crash, the skin grafts on his face still raw and bloody, Lauda climbed back into a racing car to continue his struggle against Hunt. The eventual winner would take the championship by a single point.

The once-bitter enemies find themselves growing a strange sort of respect for each other, which surprises even them. The dashing Hunt had often mocked the uncomely Lauda for his rat-like appearance, and even jokes that he was the only man who could have his face burnt off and it be an improvement. Yet when a journalist pesters Lauda with invasive questions about how his appearance will affect his marriage, it's Hunt who rallies to his defense.

The film starts with Hunt the clear center of attention, but in the end it becomes Lauda's tale to tell. Here is a man so closed off from others that he complains to his new bride on their honeymoon that having something to lose will weaken him as a driver. Yet in his competition with Hunt he found his own best self, leading him to unexpected but fully satisfying choices.

"Hunt was one of the few I liked, and fewer still that I respected," Lauda narrates. "He remains the only person I ever envied."

I have a feeling anyone with dreams of making a film about racing will say something similar about "Rush."