Amazon.com
The director Michael Lindsay-Hogg has a name that sounds British despite the fact that he is a New Yorker by birth. Maybe that association derives from the fact that he's primarily helmed television films--segments of
Brideshead Revisited, for example, as well as a pile of music videos for English bands like the Who and the Rolling Stones. One of his few ventures into feature filmmaking (another was the little-seen
Frankie Starlight) is the 1990 film
The Object of Beauty, which also looks, sounds, and feels British in sensibility. The film is set in a tony London hotel, the weather is England-dreary, and the clothes (when the actors are wearing them) are tweedish and woolly in appearance. And the story is essentially repressed and internal save for the brash American performances of John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell, who play a couple living way above their limited financial means. When Jake (Malkovich) bottoms out in a business deal, he urges Tina (MacDowell) to sell her little Henry Moore sculpture, an object of great beauty. Such beauty, in fact, that a young mute hotel maid decides to steal it for her own. The actress Rudi Davies, who plays the maid, steals more than the Moore, however. She sneaks the film out from under Malkovich and MacDowell, who was just coming off of her
sex, lies, and videotape acclaim, and who is quite good here as well.
The Object of Beauty is too subtle in its message--Jake and Tina lose their last monetary chance and in penury begin to discover who they are as people--to let us care about such a pouty pair, and the "hilarious mix-ups and mayhem" that the film promises are, in actuality, tame and trite.
--Paula Nechak
Jake (John Malkovich) and Tina (Andie MacDowell) are a glamorous American couple camping out in a suite in a swank London hotel. They're unable to settle their account, which when the movie begins stands at about six thousand pounds, because Jake, a speculator, has blown all his money on a bad investment. Jake and Tina are unmarried and have no permanent address; they're charming, attractive drifters, getting by on style. In a sense, they're throwbacks to the sophisticated and slightly disreputable couples who floated airily through thirties romantic comedies: no-strings types who stick together for the best shallow reasons-for sex and laughs and the shared kick of living the high life without having to work too hard. The picture, written and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, is conceived as high-style fluff, but it never delivers quite as much irresponsible fun as it promises. It's like a Lubitsch movie without the speed and the grace and the blissful inconsequentiality. Malkovich, however, is as unaccountably magnetic here as he was in "Dangerous Liaisons." His performance is a postmodern mutation of thirties style, an ungodly hybrid of William Powell and Boris Karloff, and it's sensationally funny. This is as original a piece of acting as you'll ever see in a romantic comedy. The supporting players are an unusually lively group: Lolita Davidovich, Peter Riegert, Joss Ackland, and Bill Paterson. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
