De-Lovely Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)July 2nd, 2004
De-Lovely
Full Price Feature
As we all trip over ourselves to find just the right hyperbolic adjective that begins with "de-," we may lose sight of what makes this movie such an artistic triumph. My companion, very wise in the ways of all things, noted that this movie could not have been made without the pioneering film language school of Chicago. And indeed, this film is back to cinema's roots of filmed theatricality, but with all the advantages of 100 years of moviemaking technology behind it. The razzle-dazzle in this piece serves to hide the technical mastery, rather than to distract from empty promises.
The film begins with a slightly theatre-like feel, and introduces a fascinating framing device (embodied by Jonathan Pryce) and then takes us through the years that are the most intense in the life of Cole Porter (Kevin Kline). He meets and marries Linda (Ashley Judd) and as they say, away we go. The less said about the events of the movie the better. The preview, artfully edited to make the movie look like a pedestrian biopic with celebrity cameos, gives no sense of the beautiful, self-reflexive show we are about to see. Kline, an incredible singer, is trapped inside a character with a famously reedy voice, and so Kline's incredible animus as a performer must leak out in every way but song. It is ironic, don't you think, to compare: Porter's songs were where he was most restrained. Kline is marvelous, so believable and lovable and despicable, when I saw Diana Krall singing "Just One Of Those Things," I thought, "He must love hearing her voice sing his music." And then I realized Cole was dead; Kline was making him real like (forgive me) Cary Grant never could.
Ashley Judd is every bit as beautiful as the famous Linda, and her love for Cole, for friends, for children, slams out of her like light out of some science fiction creature. I can think of no better analogy than that - every bit of her lifted and exploded by the love she has to give. It is all for Cole, and the compromises she makes cruelly twist us in the audience. The film is not all advertised Armani glamour and sparkly musical numbers, and it always stays aware of itself as a show within a show. Even the props are meticulously used in scenes where they will create the most impact, a 3-dimensional scrapbook of his life in a New York penthouse. It is completely out of my comprehension how something so delicate and powerful and structurally complex could have come out of the word processor of the man who wrote Gangs of New York.
Dancing through Cole's life is a subtle camera magic that you might not notice right away but let me point it out for you. There are many dizzying circular pans which turn and turn and time passes and things change and there are no editing opportunities because people are always present, always moving, and one shot in particular I simply cannot work out how they did, another with a magical mirror, another with - oh my word! I can't even call it editing because the camera never stops, never rests, so much life! Porter's life was unimaginably full and so much time wasted even so - the camera cannot capture it all but it tries with all its might. Celebrating the post-Victorian decadence and the overlapping (but not equal) qualities of love and passion, Porter's music is reborn as new, sacred innovention in De-Lovely. Be the first in your Oscar pool - see this film!
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These reviews (c) 2004 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at:
http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
