Movie Review: Greta

Greta *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Neil Jordan.

Written by: Ray Wright and Neil Jordan.

Starring: Isabelle Huppert (Greta Hideg), Chloë Grace Moretz (Frances McCullen), Maika Monroe (Erica Penn),

Colm Feore (Chris McCullen), Zawe Ashton (Alexa Hammond), Stephen Rea (Brian Cody).

 

I’m not sure if Neil Jordan’s Greta is actually a good version of the creepy stalker film that was so popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, or if it has just been so long since I’ve seen one of them that I couldn’t help but enjoy every delicious, over-the-top moment of this film. It certainly doesn’t hurt matters that Isabelle Huppert plays the title character, or that she does so with such demented glee it’s impossible not to have a blast as you watch her perform. Or that even in the scenes with Huppert, the film focuses on the beautiful faces, clothes and apartment of her prey – Frances (Chloe Grace Mortez) and her best friend Erica (Maika Monroe), not to mention the gorgeous home of Greta herself. The movie takes place in Manhattan, and I shudder to think how much any of the places or clothes we see in this film would actually cost – certainly more than a waitress like Frances could afford, or for that, recently widowed, piano playing psychos like Greta. But all of that is part of the charm here – the film is completely, utterly ridiculous, knows it, and completely embraces it. Nothing is more deadly in these types of films than when the filmmakers and cast take it far too seriously.

 

So in the film, Mortez’s Frances is grieving the recent death of her mother, while living with her rich friend Erica in a “Tribeca loft” and waitressing for money. She finds a designer handbag on the subway, and decides to return it to the woman herself – walking up and ringing the doorbell of Greta – who welcomes her inside. She’s a recent widow, and her only daughter is off studying in Paris. She rattles around her beautiful old house, playing classical music and being lonely. The pair settle into a pseudo mother/daughter relationship. That is, of course, until Frances figures out that Greta is insane – and tries to cut her out of her life. But in the tradition of these movies, Greta will not be ignored. She does a lot of really creepy, but perfectly legal things that freak out Frances more and more. But what will her end game be?

 

The film was directed by Neil Jordan – whose career was at its peak when films like this were popular. His best known film is probably 1992’s The Crying Game – but he had a string of wonderful films in the 1980s and 1990s, including Mona Lisa (1986), Interview with the Vampire (1994), The Butcher Boy (1997), The End of the Affair (1999) and The Good Thief (2002). He’s slowed down a little bit in recent years, but judging on Greta, he hasn’t lost his sense of style. If it’s possible for any director to be having more fun behind the camera than Huppert is having in front of it, than that is what Jordan is doing here. He pulls out all the stops and then some – all the tricks he has learned over his career, and puts them to good use. The film also has narrative surprises up its sleeve – one character who in the old days would have never made it very far who just won’t go away, and then there is Stephen Rea’s characters who shows up late in the game as the detective. Rea’s appearance in a Neil Jordan film isn’t surprising – there’s hardly a Jordan film he isn’t in – but the way things play out with him are surprising.

 

But the reason to see the film is Huppert. Both Mortez and Monroe are incredibly talented young actresses, which is good because in the first act in particular, they have to make a lot of awkward dialogue work – and come about as close you could expect them to come in doing so. But it’s the great Huppert who quite literally dances away with the film. She is so good that the film would worth seeing just for her even if nothing else worked – and much of the rest of it works. The film doesn’t reinvent the genre – but it’s been so long since we’ve seen a film like this, it almost feels like it does.

Movie Review: Byzantium

Byzantium
Directed by: Neil Jordan.
Written by: Moira Buffini based on her play.
Starring: Saoirse Ronan (Eleanor), Gemma Arterton (Clara), Caleb Landry Jones (Frank), Jonny Lee Miller (Ruthven), Sam Riley (Darvell), Daniel Mays (Noel), Uri Gavriel (Savella), Caroline Johns (Young Clara), Maria Doyle Kennedy (Morag), Tom Hollander (Teacher).

 “Hey! Vampires are cool outsiders who love girls who hate cheerleaders!" So says Simpsons guest star Sarah Silverman, playing a 10 year old girl, when Bart mocks her for reading “Red Moon” saying vampires should be all about “biting neck”. Sadly, Silverman’s line pretty much sums up what has happened to the vampire genre in the past few years – due mainly to Twilight – but a few TV shows as well (and sadly, this looks to continue – I cannot be the only one who cringed all through the preview for the upcoming movie The Vampire Academy, right?). So it’s with some relief that Neil Jordan’s Byzantium turns vampires into blood thirsty monsters once again – at least somewhat. There are healthy doses of sexuality running through Byzantium – all thanks to the scantily clad Gemma Arterton – but she simply uses her sexuality to get what she wants. Sadly, however, it must be said that while I appreciate what the film tries to do – it still isn’t very good.

The centuries spanning film opens in modern day England – a small, rundown coastal town to be precise. This is where Clara (Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) have had to flee, because once again, Clara has screwed up their living situation – killing someone she shouldn’t have. They are mother and daughter vampires (the lack of much of an age difference is explained – eventually), although they are very different. Clara finds work in the sex trade – stripping, or as she does in this new town, starting a brothel with bored prostitutes (a comic highlight has one of them checking their phone while “with” a client). Despite her age, Eleanor is still basically a teenager – she attends school, and seems almost naïve about everything. While Clara has no qualms about wetting her appetite with whoever is around, Eleanor sees herself as an angel of mercy – only killing people who are going to die anyway – mostly slow, painful deaths.

The movie flashes back and forth in time to show how Clara and Eleanor ended up being turned into vampires in the first place, and their lives back in the present – with Eleanor’s strange courtship with Frank (Caleb Landry Jones, doing the same kind of monotone brooding that ruined Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral), the constant threat of being exposed for what they are – that Eleanor seems to crave. The men in Byzantium either seem to be sad sack losers – like Frank, or the pathetic Noel (Daniel Mays), owner of the rundown hotel Clara turns into a whorehouse, or else cruel, like Jonny Lee Miller’s Ruthven, who sets both mother and daughter down their eventual paths in the flashbacks.

The movie tries to bring complexity to the movie – drawing lines between prostitutes and vampires – but in actuality, the film is too often morose and overly brooding. Jordan directed Interview with the Vampire way back in 1994, and this film recalls that one in several ways – mostly in Ronan’s brooding performance. However that film was at least smart enough to know that a vampire who has been alive for years, even if trapped in the body of a prepubescent Kristen Dunst, would not be naïve. Ronan has the right look to play a vampire – and she gamely tries – but I never quite understood why someone who has been alive for two centuries could still be as naïve as her character is.

 

Arterton, however, adds much needed life to the movie. Her kills, in contrast to Ronan’s, are bloody and inventively staged by Jordan. She uses her sexual wiles to get whatever she wants. It is a full blooded performance by an actress I didn’t think was very good until I saw the movie.

It is somewhat refreshing to see women cast in the lead roles here – and not have them be passive observers in their own story, unlike in Twilight. Yet the movie is still too serious – too broody, without the story to really back all that up. There are moments where it comes alive, but overall, Byzantium is a drab vampire movie that goes nowhere.