Boxoffice-June.1997

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1 007 rP-S^^ Al
FESTIVAL REVIEWS
••••• OUTSTANDING
•••• VERY GOOD
••* GOOD
•• FAIR
* POOR
(no stars) BOMB
REVIEWS
Anaconda R-90
B.A.P.S R-92
Breathing Room R-91
Cadillac Ranch R-90
Cats Don't Dance R-92
Double Team R-92
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag R-90
Inventing the Abbotts R-91
McHale's Navy R-89
H^urder at 1600 R-89
The Saint R-91
The 6th Man R-92
Sprung R-88
That Old Feeling R-91
Touch R-92
Turtjo: A Power Ranger Movie . .
R-92
Volcano R-88
DAY AND DATE: B/20
Dream With the Fishes R-88
FLASHBACK: 1959
Hercules R-90
SPECIAL FORMATS
Whales R-84
REVIEWS IN BRIEF
Kids of Survival R-93
Licensed to Kill R-93
Tango Feroz R-93
A True American R-93
BERLIN FEST REVIEWS
Conversation With the Beast .... R-83
Four Days in September R-84
Genealogies d'un Crime R-86
The Kitchen R-84
Le Jour Et La Nuit R-87
Lucie Aubrac R-83
The River R-85
The Soong Sisters R-86
The Stunt Woman R-86
Territorio Comanche R-87
Viva Erotica R-87
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BERLIN
EXPRESS
Long-lead review^s from the
Cjerman film festival
LUCIE AUBRAC iririr
Starring Carole Bouquet and Daniel
Auteuil. Directed and written by Claude
Berri. Produced by Pierre Grunstein. A
Renn S.A. production; no stateside distributor
set. Drama/romance. French-language;
English subtitles. Not yet rated.
Running time: 106 min.
This taut, finely hued story is about the
Aubracs, husband-and-wife members of the
French Resistance—and that's about all it
is. Writer/director Claude Berri ("Germinal")
doesn't have much to add to the already
full-to-bursting oeuvre of WWII
Resistance films. The Aubracs were brave,
the Nazis were cruel; that about sums it up.
As a love story, the film has more heft.
While Raymond Aubrac ("The Eighth
Day ' s" Daniel Auteuil) works to undermine
the German occupation of France in the
traditional ways, such as blowing up trains
(a spectacular opening sequence) and attencling
secret meetings, his wife Lucie
("Grosse Fatigue's" Carole Bouquet) isn't
content to just tend the hearth. She's up for
spiking a traitor's jam with cyanide, if necessary.
But what really rousts her formidable
will is not love for France but love for
Raymond. When his arrest by Vichy police
threatens to conflict with the anniversary of
their first lovemaking, Lucie storms into the
state prosecutor's house and threatens him.
The sheer intensity of her glare does the
trick. The latter half of the film concerns a
pregnant Lucie's machinations to rescue
Raymond from a Nazi death sentence.
Auteuil, of the squashed nose and searching
eyes, is the more emotionally grabbing
of the pair. Bouquet's stem beauty makes
her determination convincing, less so her
passion. Her expressionless face saps several
scenes of their power. Plotwise, a hint
at what "Lucie Aubrac" could have been
comes when Raymond comments on his
life with Lucie amid the Nazi terror: "It's a
terrible thing to say, but I can't help being
happy." A film that explores the ambivalence
of living in heaven at home and hell
beyond the front door—now that would
have been truly interesting.
(Note: October Films had made an at least
oral agreement to acquire North American
rights for $1 million but has since said it was
nixing the pact. Paris-based Renn has filed a
$10 miUion breach of contract suit.)
by Melissa Morrison
CONVERSATION WITH
THE BEAST ••••
Starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, Robert
Balaban and Katharina Bohm. Directed
and written by Armin Mueller-Stahl. Produced
by Rudolf Steiner. A Rudolf Steiner
TV-Film production; no stateside distributor
set. Comedy/drama. English- and
German-language; English subtitles. Not
yet rated. Running time: 96 min.
In his directorial debut, German actor
Armin Mueller-Stahl (who played a Nazi in
"The Music Box") takes on Hitler and
comes up with this black comedy that manages
to maintain its precarious balance between
the bizarre and the morbid.
Mueller-Stahl plays the man himself, a 1 03-
year-old wacko who's trying to convince
the world via a fumbling American historian.
Dr. Webster ("The Last Good Time's"
Robert Balaban), that a double took the
bullet in that bunker with Eva Braun. This
Hitler lives in a dungeon-like Berlin apartment
with a perpetually young Teutonic
wife, Hortense (Katharina Bohm), and a
yappy dog named Jimmy. The dubious historian
interviews Mr. Hitler about his entourage
of doubles (one for each day of the
week), his hatred of women (he says his
weakness for them is why he lost the war),
and the "magic" that keeps him alive, despite
numerous suicide attempts.
One of the delicious ironies developed is
that Hitler's special hell is not death but an
eternal life in which he is a nobody. As star,
writer and director, Mueller-Stahl pulls off
this hat trick with aplomb. His aged Der
Fuehrer torments Dr. Webster with slingshot
pranks and then bursts into rages at
being kept, literally, in the dark. The actor
conveys the charisma that the real man had;
the writer doesn't overreach for big statements;
and the director keeps an odd commentary
on one of history's most analyzed
evildoers from dissipating into nonsense.
Among the highlights: a flashback in
which a Hitler double, a frustrated actor,
entertains the newlyweds with Hamlet's
soliloquy, showing his frustration with his
single successful role; and a scene in which
Hitler auditions incognito for a Hollywood
film about his life and is deemed too unnatural.
It seems Charlie Chaplin got the glory
Hitler thought he himself deserved.