Weekly round-up

Glamorous killers and amorous swimmers

ROMANCE AND RANK RACISM: À vos marques... party! 2

by MARK SLUTSKY and
CHRISTOPHER SYKES

Surveillance

Remember the whole Boxing Helena fiasco? It’s been 16 years since Jennifer Lynch’s directorial debut, which spawned a lengthy lawsuit (after Kim Basinger pulled out of the lead), countless scathing reviews and a long silence on the part of the director, daughter of the more famous David. Surveillance, her first feature since 1993, isn’t going to cause the stir Boxing Helena did—for better or worse.

The funny thing is that Surveillance belongs squarely in the ’90s. It’s a multiple-perspective serial killer movie, the kind that popped up in that decade like mushrooms after a rainstorm (the storm being Quentin Tarantino) and it shares many of the obsessions of that strange era in indie film: violence and middle America, glamorous homicidal murderers, drugs, wisecracking amoral cops. The use of a Violent Femmes song at a significant moment makes it feel even more like a trip into the recent past.

In the film, Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond play a pair of FBI agents who descend on a small-town police station to investigate a spate of freakish murders. The film interweaves their interviews with three eyewitnesses—a young girl (Ryan Simpkins), a meth head (Pell James) and a freaked-out cop (Kent Harper)—as they put together the grisly story. Only, the stories aren’t that compelling, especially as you have only a vague idea of where they’re going, and the dialogue, which is supposed to be the meat of it, feels, well, like very ’90s post-Tarantino rambling. With a surprise twist you can see coming a mile away, this feels like a very standard straight-to-video thriller. (MS)

À vos marques... party! 2

Director Frédéric d’Amours returns poolside three years after the success of À vos marques... Party! to further engage Quebec teens in the trials and tribulations of young love and competitive sports.

Times are a changing for lovebirds Gaby (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Fred (Jason Roy-Léveillée). While the couple are still committed to swimming and their relationship, big decisions have to be made as the youngsters have graduated from CÉGEP and are wary of their future.

Initially the decision is clear for Roy-Léveillée: he identifies himself completely as an athlete. So much so that when he fails to qualify for the finals, he questions his entire being. If he, Team Canada’s captain, can’t medal at the swimming championships, what’s left to live for?

Désormeaux-Poulin, on the other hand, senses she’s making a mistake focusing on swimming. Instead, she wonders if she should follow her childhood dream: becoming an astronaut. Would her family and boyfriend support her decision? Or should she be with her boyfriend at all as she enters this new stage in life?

Sounds like Fred and Gaby’s plates are full with sappy rhetorical questions to be answered over 100 minutes or so, right? That’s all fine and true, but what really grinded my gears wasn’t the cheese factor associated with teen love or the swim meet. It was the racist depiction of the Chinese delegate who happens to be Gaby’s roommate. Voiced as a high-pitched infant, the clueless young girl is used to tie in a product placement for a skin product. “Put tomorrow, no pimpy!” she shrieks. Was this really necessary? (CS)