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Paradise lost >>Return to Paradise poses profound questions about friendship and loyalty by MATTHEW HAYS
With Return to Paradise, however, my schedule left me in a bit of a bind. The director, Joseph Ruben, was only available for interviews last Friday and, having missed the Thursday screening, I wasn't able to see the film until Monday. Thus I had to interview him "cold," something I'm not wild about, but which I felt was necessary as Ruben's latest was gaining some intriguing press. It's an odd feeling: interviewing a director about his work and then seeing the film later, and finding that much of what he said simply didn't gel with your impressions of that film. The plot of Return to Paradise is predicated on a very clever concept: Three young travellers appear in the opening of the film, having fun and carousing while touring Asia. They part ways after five weeks of hanging out. Cut to two years later, and two of the travellers (Vince Vaughn and David Conrad) are back in New York, where they are approached by a lawyer (Anne Heche) who tells them their companion of two years ago (Joaquin Phoenix) was caught with a large amount of hash, and will soon hang in a Malaysian prison for it. The hash was something all three of them had bought, but unlucky Phoenix had been caught with it. But Phoenix has an out: if Vaughn and Conrad return to Malaysia and agree to serve three-year sentences, the Malaysian authorities will stay the execution, and Phoenix's life will be spared. The choice is nasty: conditions in Malaysian prisons are horrid, but if they don't go their friend (who was someone they met on the road and don't actually know that well) will die. Further complications arise when Vaughn and Heche end up in the sack together. Sympathy can be tricky for characters like this. Western tourists are notorious for running off to Third World countries, banging as many of the locals as they can, doing plenty of cheap drugs and then acting surprised when they find out their behaviour is not entirely cool with the locals (sometimes finding themselves in prison). Make no mistake: Third World prisons are undoubtedly horrid places, and no one should be treated so poorly. But Ruben wanted to avoid this nasty tourist attitude with his trio, something he doesn't really manage to do. "We really made an effort for them not to be ugly Americans. We see them mingling with the native population. We actually filmed where they stayed on this little fishing island, away from tourists, because we wanted to say that these were kids who weren't doing the typical tourist thing. They were where the real people lived." (By the way, the "mingling" in the movie involves the three banging some Asian babes, one of the men even praising the language barrier, as it means he doesn't actually have to talk to the woman he's sleeping with.) I also questioned Ruben about one of his previous films, Sleeping With the Enemy. The 1991 suspense film had Julia Roberts faking her own death in order to escape her abusive husband. Though entirely predictable, the film had the sense of a director who knew how to push audience emotions with the most basic and economic of styles. But Ruben said Return to Paradise is a more complex and intricate film. "When you do a straight thriller, you really want to control the audience's response. This movie is a lot more complex and the characters are very complex. I tried to keep the pace moving, but I wanted to let the thing breathe. This film's much looser than Sleeping With the Enemy. We shot Return to Paradise in a much simpler manner. I didn't want the audience to feel we were manipulating them." This last sentence is perhaps the most baffling thing Ruben said. Return to Paradise is, without question, a wildly manipulative film, working overtime to press every audience-emotion button possible; that isn't to say that parts of it aren't well done, but to say it's not manipulative is ridiculous. There's a really great movie just dying to get out of Return to Paradise. The premise is good and there are some profoundly moving scenes. But the good stuff is bogged down by all the crap: an obtrusive musical score, lame plot twists, silly scapegoating (the media did it!) and the preposterous and obvious gimmick of having Heche and Vaughn getting it on (one can picture the studio execs insisting on that happening; sex sells, right?). But Ruben and I certainly agree on one thing. "This cast is about as strong as any actors I can think of," the director says of his hand-picked thespians. "They are simply amazing." Phoenix, in particular, delivers a stunning performance as a man emotionally ruined by the horrors of prison life. The principals' collective talent almost saves this movie. And I just had to ask that age-old stupid question that everyone will be asking Ruben. I just couldn't resist! Did he have any trepidation whatsoever with casting Heche as a romantic lead in a het romance, despite the fact that she's, like, a lesbian? "I really didn't. I just felt that far and away she was the best in the role. She's just such a damn good actress. And she's sexy." Return to Paradise opens Friday, August 14
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Generally, it's an unwritten rule that a film critic should not mix review and interview; if I conduct an interview for a film, it's usually because I liked the film and want to discuss it with the director. It seems a bit unfair to quote a director and then dis him in the next sentence.