Slow. Lifeless. Joyless. Passionless. Boring. Am I leaving anything out?
Oh, where to start the post-mortem on this one? Well, one could begin with Sir Ben Kingsley. If ever there was a less-interesting, passionless performer, I've never heard of him. Good actor? Absolutely. But not for this part -- he never should have been cast. Obsessed by his young student? I don't see it. He waxes poetic about her body, then never even touches her breasts. He claims to love her... yet he seems half-asleep. Maybe it had something to do with that transorbital lobotomy a while back -- that might explain the baldness. Does he ever even SMILE at her? Does he even seem to CARE?? If you turned the sound off, and couldn't hear the lame dialogue, you might think he detested her instead. I think the only look of happiness on his face was a stupid, s**t-eating grin, when he inexplicably shows up at a dance club to observe her. And from that point on he seems so pussy-whipped that we lose all respect for him anyway.
It's almost as if Kingsley was emulating Brando in "Last Tango in Paris." But that was a different movie, about a much different relationship. For an audience to care about a movie like this, the characters have to care about each other. They at least have to appear alive. In this case, they aren't, and we don't. Where are William Holden and Kay Lenz when we need them?
And what possible reason would a beautiful creature like Penelope Cruz have for falling prey to a bald, geriatric college professor? Because he's a wise old man? Because he's on TV? Because she needs a father figure? We're never given a clue into what makes her tick -- that's the problem. It's a superficial relationship at best. One actually longs for the Jeremy Irons remake of "Lolita." And at least Clint Eastwood's "Breezy" had moments of lightness. And it had Bill Holden. This doesn't.
There's a reason we've never heard of the director: she's of the glacially paced, cinema verite, documentary/neo-realist European variety -- probably lesbian -- who considers emotion as dirty a word as characterization. Dennis Hopper almost saves the day -- he's the only alive thing in this dud -- and then he dies! What a treat for the audience. And what an ill-advised, pointless and unnecessary plot point. Who green-lighted this script? And don't try to tell me the great Nicholas Meyer actually wrote it. Meyer, of the classic "Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan" and "Time After Time"??? He must be on massive doses of Prozac these days. Or maybe he's the one who underwent the lobotomy.
And don't try to convince me this lackluster snorefest was once a Philip Roth novel. The great and hilarious Philip Roth, of "Portnoy's Complaint" and "Goodbye Columbus"????? "Dying Animal" is right. The book must have been written in his "Human Stain" period, after he lost his sense of humor. Well, at least this dead-on-arrival adaptation doesn't break the streak: a good movie has never been made from a Roth novel. And probably never will.
I'm giving two stars here, strictly in honor of Penelope Cruz's tits, which we see several times, thankfully -- though they're obviously not photographed by anyone who seems to care. And if we saw her ass just ONCE -- which we don't -- I might have given it a 3. And I'm not even going to get into the melodramatic plot twist at the end. If the director finally decided to go for some kind of drama, it was too little, too late. Nobody really cares about a tacked-on movie tragedy after two hours of monotony. All the characters could have been killed in a terrorist bombing and the audience probably wouldn't have really minded. Actually, that might have made a decent ending -- at least it would have woken people up. Or better still, kill them off in the first act, and put them out of their misery. Either way, senseless violence would have been preferable to another brain-dead, heartless, monotonous line reading (Dennis Hopper, as I say, is the one exception: he gives a funny, passionate, inspired performance).
On a technical level, there are also an incredible number of annoying, shaky, hand-held shots that serve absolutely no purpose, other than to distract. Couldn't the producer afford a tripod that day? Wait, don't tell me -- the director thought it was "art."
Welcome to European, no-talent, amateur-hour hell. Close the door on the way in. And watch the flames.
