The Château (2002)

**/****
starring Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Didier Flamand, Sylvie Testud
written and directed by Jesse Peretz

by Walter Chaw A comedy of manners and the almighty malapropism, Jesse Peretz's grainy DV picture The Château could almost be a dogme95 flick. The picture relies on acres of improvisation and that slapdash feeling of the seat-of-the-pants production hanging from a Jonathan Edwards-ian string over the abyss of self-indulgence and clattering dreariness--and succeeds, when it succeeds, based entirely on the timing and brilliance of its cast and the extent to which we remain disarmed by the incongruity of the setting with the subject. When that feeling of surprise and delight fades (and it fades midway), The Château's rough edges begin to show.

Graham (Paul Rudd) and Allen (Romany Malco) are brothers--one white, one black--who suddenly inherit the titular Château that rots in the middle of a dreary French countryside. Graham, a granola kind of snag who actually recommends The Celestine Prophecy to people with a straight face, wishes to keep the toppling heap or, at the least, sell the place with all of its servants--butler Jean (Didier Flamand), French maid Isabelle (Sylvie Testud), terrifying groundskeeper Pierre (Philippe Nahon), and portly cook Sabine (Maria Verdi)--intact while Allen, calling himself "Rex" and affecting a hip-hop mien to reclaim his urban heritage, wishes to unload the estate with or without its peculiar coterie. Crushes develop and resentments arise as the remarkable Testud (so recently a maid of a different manner in Murderous Maids) neatly walks away with the piece with her marvellously transparent face.

The primary problem with The Château is too long a leash afforded Rudd during an awkward drunk-scene, and too long spent in an unsatisfying subplot starring the once-ascendant Donal Logue. Chemistry between Rudd, Malco, and Testud is fantastically taut, yet the slapstick gyrations of the picture's working-class serfs play as part of a different film (and a different genre). The amount of enjoyment derived from The Château's oil-and-water scenario proves limited, in other words, and given too much time to consider the looseness of the piece, the picture begins to resemble the shapeless, grasping actors' workshop that it is. Originally published: September 20, 2002.