Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mainly For Hartley Fans, June 9, 2007
I'm one of those people who'd crawl a mile through broken glass to see a Hal Hartley film. From TRUST and IRIS to Henry Fool and (my Hartley favorite) No Such Thing, Hal's unique brand of movies are an acquired taste. Infusing equal parts mystery/espionage with wispy comedy seems to be his forte. The comedy isn't in your face necessarily, and often runs throughout an entire scene before coming to fruition. And that's the case with FAY GRIM, the sequel to Henry Fool.
Parker Posey stars as Fay Grim, abandoned wife of Henry Fool and mother to Henry's only son Ned. Fay lives a quiet life until she comes home one day to find a CIA agent in her kitchen. His name is Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum, Man of the Year) and he wants Henry's notebooks. There are many Henry Fool notebooks and they were all previously believed to contain nothing but mad wanderings. Apparently there's much more to them. Secrets weapons research or paths to terrorists? Who knows but Henry. Agent Fulbright tells Fay that her husband is dead but this is quickly surmised as a ruse to get Fay out of her home and searching for Henry (and it works ...but not the way they think).
Fay battles multiple spy rings to gather Henry's notebooks and to seek him out. She also makes a deal with the CIA to get her brother Simon (James Urbaniak) out of prison (he'd helped Henry escape the country in the original Henry Fool film.)
Multiple overlapping events occur in rapid succession: spy rings shoot each other to death, Henry is discovered being held in "safety" by a jihadist, Fay frees her brother but unknowingly risks her son's life, and the CIA gets its comeuppance for putting Fay in danger.
Hal Hartley obviously loves to play with themes. And he does so to the extreme here. Even character names (Grim, Fool, Fulbright, Fogg) have implicit meanings of their own that are quite funny. The over-the-top espionage films of ol' are given plenty of screen time, too, as guns blaze in stop-motion sequences, never striking our heroine even though she's right in the line of fire.
Now that I've heaped praise on this creation, I will say that Parker Posey's excessive portrayal of Fay Grim isn't the best part of the film, which is a shame considering how much time she's on-screen. I realize this was probably what Mr. Hartley wanted: an uncurbed woman with hand gestures to the Italian extreme. But it was still painful to watch at times.
Even so, fans will probably devour Fay Grim and beg for more. Though this wasn't my favorite Hal Hartley film, I know I'm ready.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Unexpected Sequel, January 1, 2008
As Henry Fool is among my top 10 favorite films, I was shocked, surprised, baffled I'd never before heard of a "sequel" until told by my brother a few months ago. I wrestled with watching, not wanting to spoil a nearly perfect film memory with a substandard follow-up. I needn't have waited, as Fay Grim finds Hartley and Co. in as fine a form as ever, the characters we fell in love with in "Henry" now older, wiser and a little world weary. Parker Posey is a force of nature as Fay. We watch her still somewhat unraveling life as a single mom in Queens, worrying about her brother, Simon still serving a long prison sentence for his role in Henry's escape - an episode that confounded viwers at the end of the first film. Additionally she's fearful of the legacy Henry left for their child (the marvelous Liam Aiken) now a teenager ever in trouble at school, and who's escapade at film's start (involving an ancient type of ViewMaster with pornographic images, suggesting the long missing Henry has somehow made contact with his son), and some guilt over her affair with Simon's publisher.
A film fleshing out these characters is precisely what most directors would've made, but oh, not Hal. From the first minutes, things spin out of control when CIA Agent Fulbright shows up in her kitchen, proposing to her that those journals of confession . . . . "the masterpiece" Henry lugged throughout the first film are a sort of key to understanding multi-national terroristic occurrences that peppered the last part of the 20th century. A complex plan is set in motion for Fay to retrieve Henry's diaries in France, and single mom Fay, begins a worldwide tour that pushes the story into one of international intrigue, espionage, the power of love and longed for redemption.
All of the classic Hartley "ticks" are present: odd camera angles, rapid fire, clearly annunciated yet near impossible to comprehend dialogue delivered both rapidly and in a long forgotten deadpan style best described as "theatrical" - and other devices that alienate some audiences, while invigorating others. It is not without flaws, but this is true of all masterpieces, and Fay Grim is a masterpiece. Hartley takes these now well known characters (at least to "Fool" fans) and obliterates any preconceived notions we may have held about their fates. While there are plenty of darkly comic moments to cause outright laughter, there are, too, scenes of enormous emotional weight that are no less than Shakespearean in their delivery. It is this combination of comic and gut busting intensity that Hartley has always excelled at, and which make his work so genre-bending.
The performances from every single cast member are uniformly excellent. This is true right down to the smallest roles which in most films might be perceived as "extras" such as a hotel clerk, or a security guard, a casual observer in the street - all of them are people who are burned into your memory and essential to the telling of the tale at hand: there seems to be no such thing as an "extra" in this film. Particular kudos go to Ms. Posey takes Fay on a truly life transforming journey. One need only look at the image of her from the film's beginning and the very final image of her to understand the heart of Fay and of this film.
I've avoided reading reviews of "Fay Grim" before watching it tonight, but the fact that a year after its release I hadn't even heard of it, tells me this didn't do as well as anyone may have hoped. While I'm disappointed that this film (or Henry) take back seats in audience popularity to the mass produced dreck from big budget Hollywood system, it is encouraging to see that Hartley is still at it, still relevant, still making movies that can sweep one with the force of a hurricane into a world of wonder - a world where everything disparate and foreign and everyone "good" or "bad" is forever connected, still part of the same amazing universe.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice rebound from Hartley, May 23, 2007
Hal Hartley has in my opinion made several great films: AMATEUR, BOOK OF LIFE, SURVIVING DESIRE and HENRY FOOL are the best, unique deadpan comedies and dramas in love with language and human weakness, with moments of inspired poetry, verbal and visual. He is also an "art" filmmaker, making films that have never crossed over to a larger audience; his one "big budgeted" film, NO SUCH THING, is easily his worst, and in fact, since BOOK OF LIFE in 98, his work has been largely interesting without being wholly successful, as he has become more concerned with political and social issues than interpersonal ones; he has a tendency to be a little too on-the-nose on these topics, with both THING and GIRL FROM MONDAY tending towards self-righteous polemics that rail against too-obvious topics without much effect. MONDAY is much better than THING, but neither work as well as any of his earlier work.
FAY GRIM, a sequel to HENRY FOOL, is a large step back in the right direction; while more political than ever, he integrates it into his unique deadpan storytelling style much better than he has previously this decade, and offers moments of inspired lunacy and heart that haven't been seen since BOOK OF LIFE. GRIM is a bit overstuffed, and likely won't win many converts, but fans of Hartley's work in the 90s who have not forgotten his inimitable style and point of view will welcome this film, warts and all, which plays like a kind of very dry international thriller (don't go looking for any action scenes, as much of the violence that does occur plays out in freeze-frame sequences) mixed with the family/love story comedy found in FOOL.
It's nice to see Jeff Goldblum and Saffron Burrows smoothly join the mix of usual Hartley regulars, though it'd be nice if Hartley and Martin Donovan could team up again. The DVD is widescreen anamorphic (shot on high definition video), with some reasonable extras.
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