Customer Reviews

Women & Men - Stories of Seduction

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These 3 short pieces were unexpectedly excellent. The actors involved are - of course - stars, but the title suggests sexy late-night viewing. They are about seduction, but they are also about how to realize a short story on the screen and how bring a character fully to life in a few minutes. The first two pieces have stuck in my mind ever since I first saw them, especially the second.

In the first piece, Beau Bridges is a smooth, sleazy traveling salesman on the make. If he didn't make the character so damned likeable, the piece wouldn't work. Elizabeth McGovern does her innocent, unsophisticated girl perfectly, and the piece becomes a dance with a predictable result. It is so well done, and so quickly paced, that it is fun to watch, despite that predictability.

The "Hills Like White Elephants," an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway, starring Melanie Griffith & James Woods, took my breath away. Melanie Griffith has done her share of cute, lisping roles, but her work in this piece, especially given Hemingway's general lack of interest in his female characters, is just amazing. James Woods is always intense, but he was matched, almost blown off the screen, by Griffith. It was a revelation.

As an actor, I have recommended this film to those who want to see some outstanding acting in an intense and rarely seen short form. For those that have said that Melanie Griffith is just "cute" and not that much of an actress, I prescribe the second story.

The second of these three films in this anthology is a clever adaptation of Hemingway's famous short story. The screenwriters (Didion and Dunne)turn Hemingway's own short story against him. Their ploy is to present the film as an accurate representation of a brief moment in time and to intimate that Hemingway's short story is, to some extent, an unfaithful--or, at least, incomplete--account of the actual event. It does this marvelous inversion by hinting that the male lead is Hemingway and then having the Melanie Griffith character say, in effect, that "you are going to make a story about this, aren't you, and you're going to change everything around." Touche! Literature, in this act of gamesmanship, becomes an inaccurate representation of "reality" (i.e., the film itself) and Hemingway is the victim of this comic-satiric thrust.

The other two short films are fine, but "Hills" prevails as a cinematic coup.