Desperate Characters

LOST IN DYSTOPIA ( MISERY LOVES COMPANY )
Shirley Maclaine and Kenneth Mars are simply incredible in this film, playing urbanites that seem literally trapped in their own lives. You can almost taste their bitterness, and hopelessness. Neither they nor their friends seem capable of admitting real emotion to show through their sad facades while they are together, and the silences become volcanic, and truly deafening. They don't really seem to care about one another ( Mars, as Otto, is something of a bullying ogre ). Either because they are too socially conscious, or too set in their ways they have apparently not considered divorce. I was unable to take my eyes off from Maclaine. She imbued her character ( Sophie ) with so many complexities that every gesture, or glance said volumes.

This is a very intense, and devastating film, and the Academy was definitely out to lunch in overlooking Maclaine, and Mars at Oscar time. It is also an extremely depressing movie. The plot is secondary to the dialogue, cinematography,...

Waiting for the barbarians
Otto and Sophie Bentwood (Kenneth Mars and Shirley Maclaine) live in a gigantic, messy brownstone in 1970 Brooklyn Heights, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be living in Paris in 1848. Barricaded in from the street and the changing social and political world outside by means of their barred entryway, locks, and intercom system (which are given plenty of attention in this film), the Bentwoods are left to tear each other apart with their mutual dissastisfactions. Then the outdoors slowly comes creeping into their home: first with the bite of a (possibly rabid) cat that Sophie tries to befriend, then with the midnight drunken visit of Otto's former partner in his law firm, then by a young man wanting to use their phone. The Bentwoods begin to discover that there is no safety behind closed doors.

Paula Fox's beautifully claustrophobic and depressing 1970 novel seemed a natural to be filmed because of its compressed time frame over one long unhappy weekend; it...

Low key desperation, one of Shirley's best
DESPERATE CHARACTERS is not a film to watch in a depressed mood, although it could cheer you up since yours isn't likely to be any worse than theirs. Frank D. Gilroy (Tony Gilroy's father) directs efficiently this low key production, a do-any-two-movies-you-like deal between Shirley Maclaine and a Paramount subsidiary (the other one being the great yet also depressing THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY). Anyhow, DESPERATE CHARACTERS contains fine acting by everyone, with a nice change of pace for funnyman Kenneth Mars. But it's really Mrs Maclaine's picture. She turns in a very carefully nuanced interpretation. Fans of the star should definitely see this one.

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