Tag: Lars Eidinger

White Noise Review

Noah Baumbach’s White Noise begins with a professorial dissertation on the American public’s fascination with car crashes in the movies. In the course of the next two hours plus, this adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel careens wildly from genre to genre with divergent tones scraping against one another. That’s not an accident. I think Baumbach made the picture he set out to make.

I can’t speak to the source material though a common thread is that it’s unfilmable. Here we are though I suspect many will concur. Set in the time period when the book was penned, Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) teaches Hitler Studies at a liberal arts college. It’s the kind of higher ed institution where the faculty deem themselves brilliant and every utterance carries the weight of gospel. No matter that Professor Gladney is secretly learning German despite his self professed expertise on their history. The comedic highlight of his work comes in a “lecture off” with a colleague (Don Cheadle) who teaches Elvis Studies to his non-suspicious minded pupils.

Jack is married to Babette (Greta Gerwig). They are each on their fourth marriage with a blended brood of as many kids. Denise (Raffey Cassidy), spawned from a previous Babette nuptial, is worried about strange pills that Mom is taking called Dylar. Her stepdad is mostly oblivious and not just about that. When a train accident spills chemicals near their home, Jack seems more concerned with dinner than evacuation routes. A black cloud from the “Airborne Toxic Event” does set them off on the road where adventures in comedy, noir, relationship dramas, and Spielbergian sci-burbia await.

The real black cloud involves the fear of death. Jack and Babette are practically in a competition about who it frightens most. The screenplay has some dark and demented fun exploring the distractions to not think about The End. I must confess there were times, especially in the first act, where I wondered if the means to this movie’s eventual end was worth it. White Noise is a lot – lots of mood swings, lots of story crammed in. It falters sometimes like its college faculty in thinking it’s sharper than it is. Still those big swings are admirable and the cast is devoted to the many frames of mind. I’m not sure I always bought Driver as the aloof middle aged dad, but he’s terrific at times and so is Gerwig.

This is exhilarating and maddening and both words apply frequently. I rarely wanted to look away – sorta like a car crash though it’s tougher to categorize the sadistic allure.

*** (out of four)

Personal Shopper Movie Review

A mashup of ghost story, exploration of grief, and psychological thriller, Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper ultimately achieves the word that doubles as its overall theme. It’s haunting and features a showcase performance for Kristen Stewart, who inhabits every nearly every frame of this experience.

She plays Maureen, who spends her hours picking up designer clothing and jewelry in Paris and other locales for her famous boss Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten), a royal pain in the rear who seems to be famous for just being famous. Maureen doesn’t like her occupation, but she’s also occupied by another storyline that makes her stay. Her twin brother Lewis has recently died from a heart defect that she shares. Brother Lewis was a medium and she fancies herself as somewhat of one too. Maureen stays in his expansive old house as she waits for a sign from him that he promised would materialize.

There is supernatural activity, but it’s not exactly what Maureen anticipates. And just when you think Shopper might go full ghost tale, it switches into something else. Our central character begins receiving mysterious texts from an unknown caller that are flirty, threatening, and exhilarating to her. It provides Maureen with a bizarrely exciting way to think of something other than her miserable job and grief over Lewis.

An entire middle section of Personal Shopper is solely focused on these texts. I didn’t know until now that such activity could be as thrilling as it is here. Those three little dots cause Maureen and the audience to go through a range of emotions as we await this person’s (or is it a ghost?) next move.

Shopper is mostly unpredictable as it shifts genres with little warning. The thriller aspect contains some elements you may see coming as far as certain character’s motivations, but it’s always followed by the unexpected. The ending leaves room for interpretation and I found myself happily going through its possibilities in my head.

The picture wouldn’t succeed without Stewart’s fine performance. She has to carry it considering her constant screentime. If an actor can convincingly convey an array of feelings in a brief period of time when her primary acting partner is an iPhone, that’s good work. And Personal Shopper is stylish, spooky, and sexy.

***1/2 (out of four)