Fay Grim (2006)

This was my final selection from the just-ended London Film Festival and I'm afraid I found it something of a parson's egg.  I used to be very keen on the films of indie director Hal Hartley with their smart deadpan dialogue and off-beat characters, but he has done very little of late and the last movie of his that I watched (at a previous LFF) "The Girl from Monday" was absolute twaddle.  I must admit here that I have not seen "No Such Thing" from 2001 which has joined those missing pictures under the floorboards.

Anyhow his last remarkable movie was "Henry Fool" back in 1997 and when I heard that he had re-united the main cast for a sequel, I was ready to welcome this with open arms.  Back are Thomas Jay Ryan as the enigmatic Henry Fool -- who may or may not be dead since he disappeared at the end of the earlier movie, Indie-Queen Parker Posey in the title role as his estranged wife, and James Urbaniak as her garbageman-cum-avant garde poet from Queens brother, Simon.  Joining the mix is CIA spook Jeff Goldblum.  For the first hour or so my reaction was "Hartley's back" as the sharp scripting, spot-on acting, and growingly absurd situations caught my fancy; however increasingly I felt that he had lost  both the plot and his way by a trying to be ever-so-clever and switching the storyline to one about terrorists.  It seems that Henry may have been a double or triple agent back in his earlier years and everyone is dead keen to get their hands on his notebooks which previously had been dismissed as hopeless literary drivel.

To make matters worse the characters were no longer consistent with their previous incarnations, and when Hartley set up the action for a possible third installment (in another nine years?) my reaction was 'God help us'.  However to give credit where credit is due, Posey was magnificent in the lead role and one can only hope that Hartley can tame his dubious instincts to give the viewer a contemporary political story and stick to the off-beat approach which has served him well in the past.  I can't even excuse this lapse by arguing that he was really presenting a tongue-in-cheek satire -- I just don't buy that.

P.S. (as 6 Nov): This post has disappeared from technorati -- UPDATE please!!!
Tags: Fay Grim, Hal Hartley, Parker Posey, technical problem