"Signs & Wonders" is filled with more treachery, spying and betrayals than a Cold War espionage thriller. Yet the focus is on a philandering husband's desperate attempt to win back the family he has scorned.
Unfortunately, Jonathan Nossiter -- making his second feature after his first, "Sunday", was honored as best film at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival -- has overburdened "Signs & Wonders" with so many leaps in logic, unconvincing behavior and nervous camera trickery that he is likely to lose an audience's confidence in his storytelling. The film, in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, will be a tough sell even in the art house market. Nor will that sell be helped by the unwise decision to inflict every character with aggressive nastiness.
One of the themes Nossiter and his co-writer, James Lasdun, are pursuing is that of dislocation -- of people feeling out of place in a land that is not their own. So Stellan Skarsgard plays Alec, a Scandinavian-born American living with his Greek-American wife (Charlotte Rampling) and their two children in Athens, Greece.
Alec is a poster boy for the new Ugly American. Living in an ancient city overrun by American fast-food joints, he never bothers to learn the language and pursues pleasure at the expense of everyone else. An affair with a colleague Deborah Kara Unger) -- confessed to, dropped, then resumed -- has destroyed the family. After a divorce, he finds himself briefly back in the States.
Then, believing that his lover has deceived him, he abruptly returns to Athens and obsessively pursues his ex-wife and family. Only his ex now has a lover (Dimitris Katalifos), a Greek journalist with strong leftist views, and the children are wary of the emotional roller coaster that is their dad.
But Alec and his daughter (Ashley Remy) can still connect. They share a secret view of the world where they look for signs and coincidences to guide them. A sign causes Alec to abandon his family, and another sign brings him back.
Why a grown man would adopt such a childish belief system is never questioned. Nor does Alec wonder why he continues to trust a system that constantly leads him astray.
Nossiter started his film career as an assistant on "Fatal Attraction", and this film bears more than a little resemblance to that one as Alec stalks his family. Indeed, much of the film is shot through glass windows and wire fences or peaking through foliage as if the viewer has joined Alec in his domestic espionage.
Nossiter has also chosen to make the film on video, which gives the story immediacy. But the film often looks like a home movie by an overambitious amateur, filled with nonsensical angles and fussy hand-held camera movement.
It's hard to care much for the film's characters because Nossiter never convinces us that these are real people. They behave more like characters in a movie whose needs and motives are subordinate to the filmmakers' needs to score thematic points.
In Skarsgard and Rampling, Nossiter has actors who are so good they almost convince us that their characters are simply highly irrational beings. Almost, that is. And Remy possesses an unnerving look that leads us to suspect she's about to become an underage murderess -- which, in a way, she does.
"Signs & Wonders" is, ultimately, a movie more about its technique than its characters. Alec is forever trying to read a Greek translation of "Alice in Wonderland", and Nossiter seems to want his film to have an "Alice in Wonderland" visual strangeness. Thus, his story all too often gets stranded in a cacophony of visual and aural flourishes.
SIGNS & WONDERS
MK2 Prods.
in association with Ideefixe Prods.,
Industry Entertainment, Sunshine
Amalgamedia, Goatworks Films
Producer Marin Karmitz
Director Jonathan Nossiter
Writers James Lasdun, Jonathan Nossiter
Based on a story by James Lasdun
Executive producers Jed Alpert, Nick Wechsler
Director of photography Yorgos Arvantis
Music Adrian Utley
Costume designer Kathryn Nixon
Editor Madeleine Gavin
Color/stereo
Cast:
Alec Stellan Skarsgard
Marjorie Charlotte Rampling
Katherine Deborah Kara Unger
Andreas Dimitris Katalifos
Siri Ashley Remy
Running time -- 108 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Unfortunately, Jonathan Nossiter -- making his second feature after his first, "Sunday", was honored as best film at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival -- has overburdened "Signs & Wonders" with so many leaps in logic, unconvincing behavior and nervous camera trickery that he is likely to lose an audience's confidence in his storytelling. The film, in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, will be a tough sell even in the art house market. Nor will that sell be helped by the unwise decision to inflict every character with aggressive nastiness.
One of the themes Nossiter and his co-writer, James Lasdun, are pursuing is that of dislocation -- of people feeling out of place in a land that is not their own. So Stellan Skarsgard plays Alec, a Scandinavian-born American living with his Greek-American wife (Charlotte Rampling) and their two children in Athens, Greece.
Alec is a poster boy for the new Ugly American. Living in an ancient city overrun by American fast-food joints, he never bothers to learn the language and pursues pleasure at the expense of everyone else. An affair with a colleague Deborah Kara Unger) -- confessed to, dropped, then resumed -- has destroyed the family. After a divorce, he finds himself briefly back in the States.
Then, believing that his lover has deceived him, he abruptly returns to Athens and obsessively pursues his ex-wife and family. Only his ex now has a lover (Dimitris Katalifos), a Greek journalist with strong leftist views, and the children are wary of the emotional roller coaster that is their dad.
But Alec and his daughter (Ashley Remy) can still connect. They share a secret view of the world where they look for signs and coincidences to guide them. A sign causes Alec to abandon his family, and another sign brings him back.
Why a grown man would adopt such a childish belief system is never questioned. Nor does Alec wonder why he continues to trust a system that constantly leads him astray.
Nossiter started his film career as an assistant on "Fatal Attraction", and this film bears more than a little resemblance to that one as Alec stalks his family. Indeed, much of the film is shot through glass windows and wire fences or peaking through foliage as if the viewer has joined Alec in his domestic espionage.
Nossiter has also chosen to make the film on video, which gives the story immediacy. But the film often looks like a home movie by an overambitious amateur, filled with nonsensical angles and fussy hand-held camera movement.
It's hard to care much for the film's characters because Nossiter never convinces us that these are real people. They behave more like characters in a movie whose needs and motives are subordinate to the filmmakers' needs to score thematic points.
In Skarsgard and Rampling, Nossiter has actors who are so good they almost convince us that their characters are simply highly irrational beings. Almost, that is. And Remy possesses an unnerving look that leads us to suspect she's about to become an underage murderess -- which, in a way, she does.
"Signs & Wonders" is, ultimately, a movie more about its technique than its characters. Alec is forever trying to read a Greek translation of "Alice in Wonderland", and Nossiter seems to want his film to have an "Alice in Wonderland" visual strangeness. Thus, his story all too often gets stranded in a cacophony of visual and aural flourishes.
SIGNS & WONDERS
MK2 Prods.
in association with Ideefixe Prods.,
Industry Entertainment, Sunshine
Amalgamedia, Goatworks Films
Producer Marin Karmitz
Director Jonathan Nossiter
Writers James Lasdun, Jonathan Nossiter
Based on a story by James Lasdun
Executive producers Jed Alpert, Nick Wechsler
Director of photography Yorgos Arvantis
Music Adrian Utley
Costume designer Kathryn Nixon
Editor Madeleine Gavin
Color/stereo
Cast:
Alec Stellan Skarsgard
Marjorie Charlotte Rampling
Katherine Deborah Kara Unger
Andreas Dimitris Katalifos
Siri Ashley Remy
Running time -- 108 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/14/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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