Fugitive Pieces

Alfonso Cuarón has quite the task ahead of him in adapting Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love, his potentially more challenging follow-up to Children of Men. The charms of the novel, a structurally inventive tale of a teenage girl and a Holocaust survivor, are exclusively literary, but with the right radical approach, the tale could find a whole new life in cinematic form.

As a warning on what not to do, Cuarón would do well to watch Fugitive Pieces, Jeremy Podeswa’s unimaginative and literal-minded take on Anne Michaels’ bestseller. Like Love, Pieces explores WWII’s effects on the present in ways that have no book-to-cinema analog. Podeswa’s solution isn’t to reimagine the source for a different medium but to simply transcribe the novel to a script and then film it, hoping the novel’s gifts will automatically make the jump.

Hopping between two different time periods, as well as several differently filmed locales, Pieces stars Stephen Dillane as a Polish-born Jew residing in Toronto. As a 7-year-old, Dillane watched the Nazis murder his parents, and escaped thanks only to a kindly Greek geologist (the terrific Serbian character actor Rade Serbedzija).

Though he survived, his experiences have left him emotionally remote and obsessed with the past. This particularly peeves hot but energetic shiksa girlfriend Rosamund Pike (Pride & Prejudice), who can’t break through his shell despite spending much of her limited screentime in a state of tasteful seminudity.

Thankfully the “annoying girlfriend” subplot ends fairly early, leaving Pieces to turn from the melodramatic to the cerebral, with Dillane seeking nothing more than inner peace. Of course few things are harder to depict on-screen than the search for inner peace.

While a writer has any number of ways to convey introspection, film is stuck with either a narration track or certain avant-garde tactics. Though he occasionally resorts to prose read on the soundtrack, Podeswa deserves credit for choosing neither, ambitiously trying to convey the extremely subtle in extremely subtle ways.

Pieces manages many expert moments, and even heroically drains the cliche from the man-moppet relationship between Serbedzija and the younger Dillane. But it ultimately feels as remote and unapproachable as its protagonist, keeping its revelations and mysteries private from even the audience. Pieces may have lovely passages, but its beauty is mostly skin deep.

Not Reviewed

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The sequel to the film that gave us the SNL spoof that launched Andy Samberg’s career features the battle over Narnia. (Opens Fri., May 16.)

Noise
Tim Robbins plays a lawyer who can’t stand how loud Manhattan is. (Opens Fri., May 16.)

Ongoing

Alexandra
Director Alexander Sokurov has stated he steadfastly believes, war or no, Russia should hold onto Chechnya, the subject of his antiwar film Alexandra. This conservative stance—though tempered by a respect for the Chechen culture and its livelihood—sneaks into a couple of dialogue exchanges, but it’s superseded by his belief in the horror and mundanity of all wars. B- (M.P.)

Baby Mama
Amy Poehler is carrying Tina Fey’s child in this Weekend-Update-meets-Odd-Couple-meets-Junior all-star comedy. (Not reviewed.)

Body of War
Ever wonder what happened to Phil Donahue? He and co-director Ellen Spiro have helmed this month’s Iraq War documentary nobody is going to go see. C (Sean Burns)

CJ7
A dad brings home a lovable pet alien in this Gremlins-meets-Flubber-meets-ET family comedy by the director of Shao Lin Soccer. (Not reviewed.)

The First Saturday in May
It all comes down to the Kentucky Derby in this horse-racing doc. (Not reviewed.)

Flight of the Red Balloon
Tawianese director Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon isn’t really a sequel to Albert Lamorisse’s classic 1956 short film The Red Balloon, nor is it technically a remake. As in Lamorisse’s beloved classroom perennial, there’s a lonely little boy (here played by Simon Itneau) and a magical red balloon following him through the Parisian streets with a surprisingly indomitable will of its own. But Hou uses the earlier film as merely a jumping-off point, allowing the balloon to drift in and out of the film as it pleases, while we follow the child home and observe his frenzied family life. B (S.B.)

Forbidden Kingdom
Jackie Chan and Jet Li join forces. ’Nough said. (Not reviewed.)

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay
Like White Castle, Guantánamo Bay doesn’t “smuggle” lefty politics into mainstream cinema; it assumes its audience is already properly evolved and will laugh along at such acidic cracks as an old white lady visibly horrified at brown people on an airplane or Rob Corddry referring to the Korean-descended Harold as “Hello Kitty.” Unlike the lectures of timely films like In the Valley of Elah and Rendition, Guantánamo Bay—pube jokes and all—treats you like an adult. B- (M.P.)

Irina Palm
Marianne Faithfull plays a London granny who gets a job at a sex shop wanking knobs through a glory hole. C- (M.P.)

He is Iron Man: Robert

Iron Man
Best comic book movie of the week, featuring Robert Downey Jr. in the title role. (Not reviewed.)

Leatherheads
George Clooney’s screwball about the early days of professional football. Co-starring Renée Zellweger and The Office’s John Krasinski. (Not reviewed.)

Mister Lonely
Basically a kinder, gentler, less shocking Gummo, Mister Lonely takes on the traits of its subjects: irksome, yes, but ultimately sweet and at times moving. C+ (M.P.)

Paranoid Park
Gabe Nevins stars as Alex, a sad-eyed and troubled young skateboarder who alternates between blocking out and coming to terms with his complicity in the accidental death of a security guard in Gus Van Sant’s fragile, deeply felt film. A- (S.B.)

Priceless
It’s a bold choice for Pierre Salvadori, making such a sunny, feel-good romantic comedy about two characters who are, for all intents and purposes, miserable whores preying upon the loneliness of widows and the elderly. C+ (S.B.)

Redbelt
With his well-meaning if somewhat bonkers Redbelt, macho writer David Mamet takes on the martial arts flick. And he loses. C (S.B.)

Roman de Gare
Roman de Gare opens with novelist Fanny Ardant, seen talking about her latest tome—a rollicking thriller filled with twists and death. Before we have a chance to definitively realize she’s essentially talking about the film we’re watching, director Claude Lelouch drags our attention over to a mysterious loner (rubber-mouthed Jean-Pierre Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon) and a harried woman (Audrey Dana) whose irate fiance has just left her at a petrol station. B- (M.P.)

The Ruins
Writer of 1998’s A Simple Plan, Scott B. Smith adapts his own novel into yet another horror movie offing American tourists in exotic locales. (Not reviewed.)

Run Fatboy Run
In Hot Fuzz it was a treat to watch Simon Pegg break away from his emotionally stunted slacker routine and prove he could play uptight and humorless with equal panache. Fatboy, alas, represents the fabled step back, casting him as a nerdy loser who, in the film’s opening, runs out on his wedding to Thandie Newton. Jump ahead five years and he’s making a belated attempt to win her back from her current beau (Hank Azaria). C (M.P.)

Smart People
A self-obsessed college professor (Dennis Quaid) must reevaluate his life when his free-spirited brother (Thomas Haden Church) pays him an unexpected visit. Also starring Ellen Page and Sarah Jessica Parker. (Not reviewed.)

Snow Angels
Adapted by David Gordon Green from Stewart O’Nan’s novel, the tale is one of your standard Sundance-friendly miserablist multicharacter roundelays, as a fumbling, wide-eyed teen (Michael Angarano) not only copes with the divorce of his own parents but also must witness the horrible fates of his beloved former babysitter (Kate Beckinsale) and her alcoholic born-again husband (Sam Rockwell). The best parts of Snow Angels are the stray details discovered in this working-class community. B- (S.B.)

Son of Rambow
Mostly atoning for their Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy adaptation, director/producer team Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith borrow liberally from the Wes Anderson playbook, but they’re careful to stay rooted in believable emotions. The idea of kids doing the first Rambo picture, blissfully oblivious of its questionable politics, may sound like a job for the Max Fischer Players, but Rambow is more interested in limning the elemental power of children’s imaginations than chucking out arch ideas. B (M.P.)

Speed Racer
The guys who made The Matrix make Cars—minus the heart.(Not reviewed.)

Street Kings
We’re back in James Ellroy country. The notorious crime novelist’s dirty fingerprints are all over David Ayer’s slicked-up, egregiously miscast sophomore directorial effort. Full of angst-ridden alcoholic peace officers (played this time by Keanu Reeves) surrounded by sleaze and systemic corruption, pining for dead lovers and slouching toward redemption, Street Kings will feel familiar to anyone who’s ever stayed up all night tearing through an Ellroy paperback. C- (S.B.)

Superhero Movie
Yet another genre parody from the writer of Scary Movie 3 and 4. (Not reviewed.)

21
The true story of five MIT students who took Vegas for millions gets a slicked up, depressingly Hollywood-ized treatment, chock-full of dopey inventions from a Screenwriting 101 manual. D+ (S.B.)

Under the Same Moon
Ridiculously manipulative but effective all the same, this heart-tugging saga of 9-year-old Carlitos and his wildly improbable journey across the border to find his mom in Los Angeles is half magic-realist fable, half social commentary tract. B- (S.B.)

The Unforeseen
Laura Dunn’s eco-doc literally descends upon the area in and around Austin, Texas, to uncover an elemental tale of man vs. nature—or rather real estate development against the mythical intelligent designer itself. B (S.B.)

The Visitor
Thomas McCarthy’s follow-up to The Station Agent finds him tackling an even more insurmountable subgenre: the classic “minority experience inexplicably told through a white perspective” setup, as seen in Cry Freedom, Mississippi Burning, Blood Diamond and so on. No luck this time: McCarthy and his very talented actors are vanquished by the need to say something capital-I Important in the least subtle way possible. C (M.P.)

What Happens in Vegas
Two attractive strangers (Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kucher) accidently get married. Hilarity ensues. (Not reviewed.)