Weekly round-up

A frustrated inventor, a goo-goo-eyed look
at the City of Lights and mining misdeeds

by MALCOLM FRASER
and MATTHEW HAYS

Flash of Genius
Greg Kinnear is a fine actor, and here he captures all the strange ticks of Bob Kearns, a frustrated inventor who was ripped off by the big car companies in the ’60s. It was then that Kearns invented a new and improved version of the windshield wiper, a novel idea that the car companies promptly emulated without any credit. Kearns took on the car companies in a long, drawn-out court battle.

Seasoned producer Marc Abraham directs for the first time here— and Flash of Genius is a competently rendered film, from its standard shooting style to its art direction, which shows great attention to detail. But this outsider-emergesas- victorious sub-genre has become so familiar that everything about Flash of Genius is achingly generic and utterly predictable.

I didn’t actually know anything about this story, but that really didn’t matter, as the writing is on the wall so early on—and in fluorescent paint—that everything unfolds precisely as you’d expect it to. There are the sad moments when the protagonist’s wife finds his obsession with the case trying. Then there are the doubting lawyers. Then there’s the tense courtroom climax, where Kinnear waxes philosophic about what the American Dream means, and so on.

I’m a big Kinnear fan. He’s great in this, as always. But the actor deserves better material. Flash of Genius follows the studio template so closely that by the final credits, I felt that I’d seen it about a million times already. (MH)

Paris
Director Cédric Klapisch (L’Auberge espagnole, Les Poupées russes) ratchets up his ambition a notch with this multi-character drama à la Short Cuts. Pierre (Romain Duris) is a young dancer who finds out that he has a serious heart ailment that could kill him. While waiting for a risky transplant, he gazes broodingly off his balcony to the streets below, and we follow the diverse lives of the Parisian cityfolk who pass beneath him. The casting is a bravura feat, featuring Juliette Binoche as Duris’s sister and a host of French actors who, while not household names on this side of the pond, will be very familiar to any fans of recent French cinema.

CITY OF CLICHÉS: Paris

Klapisch’s concept is ballsy, to say the least—the title implies an epic view of one of the world’s great cities, not to mention one already paid a similar homage in last year’s multi-director epic Paris, je t’aime. Personally, I preferred Julie Delpy’s irreverent, critical take on the city and French culture in Two Days in Paris. Both Paris, je t’aime and Paris are too goo-goo-eyed over the city’s already familiar qualities— the fact that Paris’s vibe is genuinely breathtaking doesn’t make the clichés any less grievous.

Paris’s epic scale means that certain threads are left hanging, and good moments pass by too quickly— which is unfortunate, because a number of the stories and characters would have been much more interesting if fleshed out. Ultimately, the film is like a weekend getaway to its titular city—full of nice imagery and beautiful people, but ultimately leaving you wishing for a deeper experience. (MF)

Mirage of El Dorado
One of the hallmarks of Canadian identity is a certain smug superiority towards our friendly neighbours to the south as regards international affairs. But if our government keeps its nose relatively clean, the same can’t be said for our captains of industry. As illustrated in local filmmaker Martin Frigon’s new doc, Canada’s mining industry has a few misdeeds to answer for.

ACTIVISTS VS. INDUSTRY: Mirage of El Dorado

The film takes place in Chile, where several Canadian mining companies have jumped on the chance to literally strike gold in the Andes. The local population, made up largely of indigenous people, is largely opposed. Frigon details the activists’ struggles to stand up against the mining companies and their own passive government.

Unabashedly on the activists’ side, Frigon has a habit of cuing the sentimental strings and slow motion during scenes of protestors being arrested. To his credit, he does give time to the mining companies as well; the film conconcludes with Barrick Gold president Peter Munk at a corporate conference, chillingly reframing the mining project as “a way to alleviate poverty.”

The film is full of beautiful landscape imagery and colourful glimpses into the lives and personalities of the region’s inhabitants. The activists’ story has a few strong moments as well, like Environment Canada spokesperson Jenna MacKay-Alie showing up at a conference, clearly expecting to exchange platitudes, and being confronted by articulate but angry farmers. All in all, though, Frigon’s heavily politicized stance and fascination with the nuts and bolts of activism make this worthwhile mainly for the already converted. (MF)

ALL FILMS OPEN THIS
FRIDAY, OCT. 2

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