Filling in for the vastly overrated but magnetic Audrey Hepburn, Thandie Newton, for whom The Truth About Charlie was designed as a star vehicle, eyes Wahlberg's Joshua Peters moonily in mid-meet-cute, but it's swooning surrounded by quotation marks, a script direction that frog-grinned Newton obeys with indifference. Newton hasn't the screen presence to maximize an underwritten role like that of Regina "Reggie" Lampert, widowed a few minutes into the film after her shady husband Charlie (Stephen Dillane, in a funny, wordless performance) turns up dead on a train. Intercepted upon arrival in Paris by Commandant Dominique (Christine Boisson), Regina discovers that the body she identifies as Charlie's lived under several aliases, and that she is the unwitting heir to an illegal fortune worth six-million dollars. Various colourful villains of ever-shifting loyalties demand she surrender the cash--idle threats at best, as neither she nor they know where Charlie hid it. (Hint: check the movie poster.)

Demme's first 'scope production (and only cinematographer Tak Fujimoto's second), The Truth About Charlie achieves authenticity where it seemingly shouldn't and fails to when it is called for. Fujimoto, a brilliant 'indoorsman,' has rarely come across as much more than a tourist with compositional facilities during exterior shots; such is the kiss of death for The Truth About Charlie, as on celluloid, Paris sans filters and bounce cards and magic-hour trickery--a pastoral eye--couldn't suggest a less romantic place to be; the grimy, overcast backdrop to Josh and Regina's love underscores the vacuum of chemistry between Newton and Wahlberg. Though one feels compelled to respond that it was Demme's intention to dispense with Hollywood artifice in reimagining something that all but embodied it (if for no other reason besides his documentary impulses), what to make of the moment in which Joshua enters Regina's apartment carrying that most clichéd of props, the grocery bag with a baguette jutting out at the top?

Every scene of the movie bears Demme's loopy John Hancock, special mentions going to the eclectic soundtrack, an epilogue that explicitly sends up The Silence of the Lambs, a character's love of a piece of music manifesting itself in a theatrical way (right out of Philadelphia, though the moment in question also pays hommage to Marshall McLuhan's Annie Hall cameo), and an early psych-out involving Regina falling that brings to mind the introduction of Roy Scheider in Last Embrace or Alec Baldwin in Married to the Mob. And yet the soupy end result has the odd distinction of being playful without being fun, too.

CHARADE (1963) *** (out of four) Image B+ Sound B+

April 15, 2003|Stanley Donen's Charade has come out on DVD a few times already, but Universal's The Truth About Charlie/Charade twofer marks the debut of the film in a 16x9-enhanced transfer, and it's a beaut: video quality is stellar and the source print was in terrific shape. Technical points aside, Charade has numerous advantages over its remake, not only the presence of Cary Grant, who goes a long way towards legitimizing Donen's Hitchcockian pretensions with the kind of performance he gave in Hitch's Notorious, but also Walter Matthau, labouring infinitely less to mix charm and intimidation than the analogous Tim Robbins. And for all of Demme's fearless invention (Charles Aznavour's fourth-wall violating cameos in The Truth About Charlie, for example), he quite often simply threw water on Charade, as when he changed an enthralling nightclub act in which men and women fish oranges out from under each other's chins without the use of their hands to a boring dosey-do set inside a salsa club.-Bill Chambers Running Time 113 minutes Aspect Ratio(s) 1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced; Languages English Mono; CC Yes; Subtitles French, Spanish

In a move bound to make everyone but the filmmakers happy, Universal releases The Truth About Charlie on a flipper DVD with Charade--now you don't have to go far to find out that Charlie pales in comparison to its source. (See sidebar.) Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, The Truth About Charlie has the burden of watching it eased by the disc's exemplary transfer and an impactive DTS track. A Dolby Digital 5.1 track is also included but handles the music-heavy mix with less aplomb. Jonathan Demme's feature-length commentary is definitely serviceable and avoids sycophantism (except when it comes to citing such inspirations as Francois Truffaut), but after listening to it, I fear that I was neither more knowledgeable nor more appreciative of The Truth About Charlie. I also remained unconvinced by his championing of digital video, for the film's DV passages are aesthetically outmatched at best.