Customer Reviews

The Shape of Things

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The Shape of Things is a four-person play translated to the big screen. Despite long, stretched out scenes and theatrical dialogue, it all works very well thanks to the energetic performances of the entire first-rate cast.

The movie--based on LaBute's play of the same name and starring the same four actors from the play--is a uniquely contemporary story of love, sex, and art set in a college town, which follows the steadily intensifying relationship between Evelyn (the wonderful Rachel Weisz) and Adam (the charming Paul Rudd). As Evelyn strengthens her hold on Adam, his emotional and physical evolution discomforts his friends Jenny (Gretchen Mol back in top form) and Philip (well-acted by Frederick Weller), with unexpected consequences for all. The quartet of college-age characters deal with the conflicting human desires for autonomy and connection, truth and love, and the notion that seduction is an art, making for a clever and mean-spirited satire on life and friendship.

The material is a sort of throwback to LaBute's first two movies, "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends & Neighbors," after the bigger-budgeted, broader-canvassed "Nurse Betty" (in which he directed someone else's screenplay) and "Possession" (in which he adapted A.S. Byatt's novel). Like the first pair of films, LaBute once again homes in on an intimate group of men and women and the razor-edged sexual politics among them.

Some of the behavior in "The Shape of Things" is every bit as nasty as in the other films, once again reaching the point of getting a tad bit 'uncomfortable.'

Adam and Evelyn - the symbolic names are no accident - meet while he's working as a school museum guard and she literally crosses the line to spray-paint a sculpture that has had its genitalia covered. "You're cute. I don't like your hair," she tells him, and a romance is begun. Soon she's suggesting wardrobe and styling fixes and taking him to graphic performance-art happenings. She's of the art-equals-provocation-equals-truth school and butts heads with Philip, who's more of a regular-guy philistine.

LaBute doesn't pretend that his source material is anything other than a play. He keeps the action divided into 10 discrete scenes, with snippets of Elvis Costello's poisoned-romance songs (the musical equivalent of velvet-sheathed knives) serving as the links between them.

You must accept a certain theatricality to the material, as much of the action occurs off screen, and what's there hasn't been "opened up" so that conversations take place over multiple locations. The performances are scaled down from what they must have been in the theater, but LaBute's dialogue has its own particular rhythms that aren't entirely "realistic." And that's fine. The writing is smart, so you stick with the story on its own terms.

The movie ultimately lies on Weisz's shoulders, though, as she has to convince you that Adam would give in to Evelyn's manipulations, her obvious beauty notwithstanding. And she does, her performance balancing seduction and the sense that she's one eye twinkle away from being a whack job. Evelyn is the character who would be most at home in the take-no-prisoners world of LaBute's earlier works, yet you suspect the director's sympathies might lie closest with her, or at least her inclination to shake things up.

Any meaningful dissection of "The Shape of Things" must revolve around the ending, yet revealing it would be a crime against art. Suffice it to say that LaBute is interested in the way that surfaces affect our perceptions of content, and how those perceptions can, in turn, become our reality. It's harsh and mean but LaBute never loses sight of what shape he wishes this crafty story to take. In the end, his aim is true.

A top-notch movie that not only puts the fear in you about the relationship you are in but makes you question your motives in the process. Every thing in this film puts in question the power struggles we face in the relationships we are in and makes us face ourselves as human beings. Neil LaBute not only creates a movie that so exposes the nerves and muscles of relationships, but exposes the hypocrisy of the society they dwell in as well. Rachel Weisz not only floors you with her powerful performance as Evelyn but also makes you question your own morality in the process by her character view of the world. No one is innocent in this movie, and even though Evelyn may seem immoral, she might also be the most moral character of the entire film because she at least does not hide her views of the world. Which makes her sort of a beacon of truth, even though her views are as disturbing as they are immoral.

I dare anyone to not come out of this film a different person that the one who started to watch it. It will not only blow you away but floor you as well with it's ending.

Thank you Neil Labute and Rachel Weisz for such breathtaking and powerful movie.

"The Shape of Things" is a beautifully acted, 4 person cinema-play that is too intimate to be a film and too in-your-face to be very illuminating or fresh.

Adam, a happy, morally-together all-around good guy dork is befriended and ultimately seduced by Evelyn, a gorgeous, slightly-radical thrift-store-shopping art student who walks the fine edge between eccentric and sociopathic.

The Picture of Dorian Grey is a template that LaBute used unabashedly, Evelyn simultaneously taking the roles of Henry Wotton, The Tempter and Corrupter-- and Basil Hallward, The Sensitive Artist Using Life As A Canvas. Adam is quite obviously pre-and-post Dorian Grey, at first youthful innocence, and later a cold, past-salvation work of "Art" with a capital "A". She never cared for Adam, she only saw him as a tool with which to create her Important Statement about how we View Others to the Unenlightened Masses.

Evelyn uses Adam as a canvas to create her masterpiece (Aka her graduate thesis project). In retrospect, it's a madman's bet with his own alter-ego: I bet that I can use all my feminine wiles to take this nice, unique, moral guy and turn him into a mainstream, corrupt toy of my own creation.

Of course, the point is duly made and shoved into audiences faces like one of the experimental performance-art pieces that Evelyn takes Adam to. Adam morphs into a sort of post-modernist Dorian Grey, except it's his face which bears Evelyn's brushstrokes (right down to a nose job), instead of some canvas safely hidden in an old schoolroom.

The 4 (and only 4) actors portray their roles admirably. Especially Rachel Weisz, who is the central force of the entire film and makes you feel uncomfortable, angry, respectful and admiring simultaneously while making her point well enough to make you understand her position, even if you disagree.

Unfortunately, the film suffers from its own pretensions as much as anyone else's, and you start feeling towards the end that the movie itself is playing a trick on you just as Evelyn is-- it has no affection for its audience, and it doesn't really care if it breaks your heart or crushes any ideals. It only cares about being right and being shocking. I'm all for being right, even if it shocks people. But twisting reality to appear truthful just for the pleasure of pushing the limits of Beauty, Art and Truth is never enjoyable. The real bohemians would have disapproved. Oscar Wilde would have been amused.

Neil LaBute's is back in fine form with a story that even rivals his previous classic In the Company of Man. Rachel Weisz is superb as a strange and crazy art student who wants to remake Paul Rudd
Into the image of the perfect man. With all of Neil LaBute's plays, expect the unexpected. Rachel is stunning as Evelyn, and her performance makes this film as special as it is. Paul Rudd is great as well as Adam, plus Gretchen Mol and Fred Weller are great as Jenny and Phillip. Neil LaBute not only out does himself this time, but with Rachel Weisz's help makes a modern classic.

Labute made a good work in the direction of the ascendent Rachel Weisz and the funny and good partner Rudd. All of the characters involve in this film are so regular, like many others moralist in our world. This kind of cruelty is so common in many places with our current modern lives. All the staff understand this and show us regular people in regular situations with regular and raw ends. Noone like the sweettest Weisz to show us the cruelty between loving people that we live every day.
My wife still hate the movie, she can't believed that people like them exist but she know very well where to found them. Good movie to hate and remember in some crucial ocasions.

'The Shape of Things' has gifted acting talents marred by the self-indulgent director. I'm talking about Rachel Weisz and Neil LaBute, and if you love Ms. Weisz, anyway you like the film, no matter what taste it leaves in your mouth. One thing is clear; she can act, but has a straneg penchant for selecting the wrong project.

This film is based on the London stage production (in which Rachel Weisz was in), about four young art college students. Weisz is sexy and independent-thinking Evelyn, who meets an unassuming, slightly geeky boy Adam (Paul Rudd) in a museum. After the surprisingly light, casual conversations exchanged between them, they start to date each other.

Naturally, it is Evelyn who leads the relations between them, and she changes Adam into a more sophisticated, attractive guy. As this metamorphosis is going on, Adam's realtions with other friends (and a couple in love with one another) Jenny and Philip begin to be influenced, not always in a favorable way.

Neil LaBute loves controversial matters and shows it full-scale. I don't discuss the ending, or Evelyn's personality, but the origin of the film is too clear. 'The Shape of Things' is an inverted version of 'My Fair Lady' (to which the film refers briefly), and well, the diretor surely made the point.

But the film cannot hide its too stagy nature, and more damaging thing is, though the film is impressive in revealing the hidden (so he supposes) motives in our relations, more cool, rational thinking would inevitably lead you to the conclusion that the film's characters are just cyphers. If you know, directly or indirectly, someone who acts like Evelyn, please raise your hand. No one?

The good thing, and perhaps the only thing for you to see here, is the acting of Rachel Weisz. Her deft performance makes the character of Evelyn more human than the one found on Mr. LaBute's misguided script, and if you do not believe in the whole 'presentation' (which no college would allow, I am sure), Rachel Weisz barely makes you, giving a realistic touch to the otherwise monsterously incredible character.

Again, I say, Rachel Weisz's great acting is the only reason for you to see the film unless you want to see the 'Truths' about the manipulative relations between humans. No matter how these views in the film are distorted by someone's 'original' visions, her acting talent is a genuine one.

Fantastic satire about the minefield of relationships that really makes you think about the people around you. Rachel Weisz proves once again to be the best versatile actress we have around with a powerful performance that seduces as well as scares the willies out of you. She makes this film hands down with her talent and she will have you talking with your partner well after the film is over. The rest of the cast is just as great with Paul Rudd giving a great transformation on screen from geek to hunk. This was one of the best films that I have seen in a long time, and I hope Rachel Weisz and director Neil LaBute work together again.

Having recently seen both Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd exercise their acting chops in two of their best roles, I thought it would be interesting to revisit them in The Shape of Things, a startlingly well-acted film, which shows up the very worse in human nature. Directed by Neil LaBute, and adapted from his stage play, The Shape of Things is all about the theater of cruelty that relationships between men and women can be.

Set at a picture postcard Californian college, the movie is all about what happens with the naïve clashes with the conniving. Adam (the sensational Paul Rudd) is a dumpy, dorky English student, who becomes an inexplicable object of affection for Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a sophisticated, beautiful and highly opinionated MFA candidate hard at work on her master's thesis.

They first meet at meet in a university museum where she is about to spray paint a Renaissance sculpture of a male nude because of a strategically placed fig leaf. Adam stops her just in time, but it doesn't stop Evelyn from telling Adam that she objects the fig leaf because it robs it of its honesty, she says, "I don't like art that isn't true." Since she can't deface the sculpture, Evelyn decides to remake and perfect Adam, who is slightly overweight, has slightly curly hair, wears glasses and generally lacks loads of self-confidence.

Adam is totally sweet, and lovable, but he's also rather gullible. Without questioning her motivations, Paul allows Evelyn to talk him into shedding a few pounds, dressing better, swapping his glasses for contact lenses, and even getting him to have a nose job. Paul's best friends, college jock Philip (Frederick Weller) and the demure Jenny (Gretchen Mol) are suspicious, but they have no idea of Evelyn's motive, and the beauty of the story is that either do we.

Philip takes an almost instant dislike to Evelyn. She says that she hates "his type," and although Philip doesn't verbalize it, it's clear that Evelyn is the kind of woman who Philip doesn't like. She's too brainy, feminist and outspoken, not the least bit acquiescent and certainly not submissive to men. Meanwhile, the kind-hearted Jenny and Paul seem to be perfectly matched; they harbor a deep affection for one another, and one gets the feeling that they were meant to be together.

It's all very nasty and underhanded, but the script is so intelligently written, the acting so good, and the observations of men and women so laceratingly acute, that LaBute could probably forgiven for his cruel and unkind observations.

The edgy Rachel Weisz proves that she's an immensely talented actress. She attacks her role as a conniving female with a relentlessness abandon and her formidable performance is saturated with absolute acrimony. Is she a man-hater, or purely an artist? LaBute himself refers to the character of Evelyn an "art terrorist."

Having played their roles on the stage for so long and so often, Mol, Rudd, Weller, and Weisz are able to fully inhabit their parts. There's a familiarity with their characters, which lend the proceedings a valuable authenticity; it all feels natural and absolutely real, despite the staginess of its one-on-one series of hyper-articulate conversations. No one really talks this way in life, and yet it all sounds authentic.

The Shape of Things is a punishing film, thanks to Weisz and to the terrific Weller, but it also has the warmth generated by the charming Mol and Rudd. And the film ultimately shows just how far someone is willing to go to justify his or her "art." Mike Leonard September 05.

The Shape of Things is one of those films whose ambition is greater than its achievement. It clearly provokes thought but to what price? The film had the potential to be a brilliant exploration of the morality of art and contemporary culture, but as it stands, LaBute's vision is challening, piquant, overly simplistic, and frequently just tonally off. Still, two days after first seeing this film, I long to revisit what I enjoyed- and like an oddly pleasing pressure point, endure the parts of the film that irked me.

The film, based on LaBute's stage play and featuring all the original actors, depicts a metaphorical and artificial conceit owing to such sources as Pygmalion and Genesis. Without revealing the central conceit, the unraveling of which, may surprise viewers, the plot is as follows: Adam (Paul Rudd) a truly nerdy museum guard meets Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) an "art terrorist" to quote LaBute. As the relationship progresses, Evelyn gradually persuades Adam to change his appearance and lifestyle. After getting a nose job (Rudd sports a hilarious prosthetic in the film's first half), several pounds, and a bad haircut, the handsome Rudd as we have come to know him finally emerges in the latter half of the film: the fruit, if you will, of Evelyn's labors. Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Philip (Fred Weller)- an engaged couple and Adam's friends- seek to intervene, complicating the plot's outcome.

The story is told entirely through these four characters using point-and-shoot setups. In other words, this film is pure dialogue: rhythmic, intelligent, but inherently artificial and contrived. Frequently the characters sputtering out these pungent and quirky lines seem more like marionettes to LaBute's writerly wit than thinking, breathing entities. However, once in a while, LaBute lets the characters overcome the artificiality and emerge as real people. For instance, when Evelyn and Phil get in a fight about controversial art, the passions ignited between the two is palpable- and hilarious. Evelyn and Phil felt real in that scene and the fact that they both present their arguments poorly is refreshingly realistic and ambiguous. Another perfect- and hilarious- moment occurs after Jenny first sees Adam post-rhinoplasty and asks him, concerned and curious, "How much weight *did* you lose?" It's moments like these that present LaBute as a genuinely unique voice with an understanding of everyday human behavior.

However, the overarching themes that the film raises are frequently undermined by the aforementioned artificiality of the characters. For instance, how can we, as an audience, accept a treatise on the callousness of modern art- the way it dehumanizes- when LaBute himself fails to effectively present the realities of the human experience? LaBute has been called "misanthropic" for this failure. I think a more appropriate term would be "lazy." As an artist with a fixed agenda, he should realize that his perception of the world resonates better when it addresses multiple sides of the considered issue. Up until the weirdly melodramatic last scenes and excepting the intermittently brilliant little scenes, the human element- so critical in understanding Evelyn's perception of art- is all but replaced by the stagy artificiality of marionette puppets in the hands of a witty and angry God. (If the Adam and Eve reference holds true, then LaBute is surely the God).

Perhaps the crowning achievement of The Shape of Things is the way that LaBute elicits a tremendous performance from Rachel Weisz. An actress sadly known for her soulless blockbusters like The Mummy movies and Constantines, she shows a range of emotion as Evelyn- a darkly ominous restlessness that I found highly engaging and rare. She's alternately sympathetic and contemptible, sometimes at the same time. Weisz also happens to pull off what seems to be one of the most contrived and ridiculous endings ever- LaBute's weakest moment as a director. Rudd, Weller, and Mol all shine in their roles, but it is Weisz who most transcends her director's artificiality and achieves something that, ironically, her character most dismisses: humanity.

The characters spend a lot of time obsessing and arguing about things that hardly seem worth the trouble, but there's more than enough to keep you interested. First of all, it's nicely unusual in that it's more of a PLAY, which is what it was originally and they didn't tamper with that, yet it works well as a film; you don't find yourself wishing for more. It's basically just four characters, and you don't really need much of anything else -- just put them out there and let them go at it. Plus, as luck would have it, they're charming and attractive, which helps (actually one of the guys isn't necessarily that attractive at first, but he gets better as he goes along), and, in spite of themselves they're somehow interesting.

A major issue of the film is the question of "What is 'art'" (don't worry too much about this until you're done seeing it). To me, the question almost doesn't matter, because whether it's art or not, all I know is that I'm against it. But still, while many people find the portrayal troubling and I did too, I'm sorry but I also found it funny as hell. We don't hear this said very much, but I'm sure I'm not alone in it.

This was my first exposure to Neil LaBute, and I see that regardless of how we might feel about any particular one of his works, he's an original and interesting writer and filmmaker. You never know what you're going to get from him, except that it's going to be different than what you'd get from anybody else.