| Repeat offender >> Amos Kollek treads old ground with Bridget by MARK SLUTSKY
The persistent interest in the movies of Amos Kollek is a bit of a riddle. The Israeli-born director of Sue, Fast Food, Fast Women and Queenie in Love has quite a following in France, where his low-budget, semi-comic tales of New York love and loneliness apparently hit some sort of chord. None of his movies are really that great, though some—like Sue—are better than others. But they all share a very consistent tone, a specific Amos Kollek vibe that it seems you either dig or are indifferent to. His latest, Bridget, offers few surprises, other than a slightly larger budget that thankfully allows for a few more locations, which breaks up the monotonous consistency of the New York streets Kollek tends to film on. Kollek regular Anna Thomson stars again, after taking Queenie in Love off, and as usual her strong screen presence carries the movie. Thomson plays a messed-up, un-self-conscious and desperate denizen of New York, which should come as no surprise if you’ve seen Sue, or Fast Food, Fast Women. She’s a mom who lost her son, Clarence, about a decade before, when some snarling bad guys shot her husband and child-welfare authorities deemed her unfit to care for him. When the movie opens we find Thomson drifting around the city, occasionally meeting up with her son for a little illicit parenting, finding and losing jobs, and falling into some perverse, low-rent Eyes Wide Shut scenes (don’t ask). Eventually finding a job at a supermarket, Thomson meets a slightly retarded young man (David Wike), and later his father (Arthur Storch), a dying rich guy who secretly offers her money to marry his son. Lots of crazy stuff then follows. Thomson gets a night gig at a peep show; parties in Miami with a retired gangster; smuggles drugs out of Lebanon; sees a shrink; and moves in with a depressed ex-Marine. It’s kind of hard to keep track of how much time is passing, or how Thomson’s various relationships and misadventures relate, or even fit together as a movie. Thing is, even with the benefit of a slightly more global setting, Kollek’s shtick is starting to fray. His movies still have that boring mid-’90s New York indie flick look, and his semi-quirky approach to sex, violence and loneliness just never seems to change; it’s like he keeps making the same movie, altering the tragic/comic pitch slightly for every one. Some really super filmmakers can get away with that, if what they have to offer is sufficiently compelling, but Kollek’s repeated use of the same actors and the same story elements is getting to be a snooze. While it was easy enough to acknowledge his very particular strengths (like creating an interesting scene or situation here and there) a couple of movies ago, Kollek’s really got to try something new. : Bridget opens Friday, Aug. 9 >> Movie Listings |
