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Tempo
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Tempo is a strange little thriller that, if mentioned at all, is typically bundled
into the decade of Melanie Griffith’s decline as an actor, appearing in a
string of B grade productions (but also – let’s not forget – Larry Clark’s
great Another
Day in Paradise, 1998). It deserves a bit more attention than that.
The beginning is not terribly promising. In one of
those flash-forwards that looks awkwardly like an extended ‘coming attractions’
trailer, we are hurled into the daring dash through Paris streets of Jack (Hugh
Dancy) and his two passengers, Sarah (Griffith) and Jenny (Rachael Leigh Cook).
Another car gives chase (I guess this is where the meaningless ‘tempo’ of the
title comes from), bullets shatter the back window, the women scream and the
guy looks nervous, too. All this is blended with streaky, slo-mo shots of neon
street lights – a transition device that (like some poor premonition of the
snow in Resnais’ sublime Coeurs,
2006) is, alas, to return again and again over the next 85 minutes.
Everything packaged around this movie suggests a Double Indemnity-template noir-style
sex-triangle – older woman established in the rich-criminal world of Paris,
young American tourist, vacillating ‘rent boy’ in the middle, the possibility
of an easy jewellery heist – which would, logically, power along on the usual ronde of bluff, deceit, hidden plots,
perversion, and the like. Certainly, Sarah’s nasty ex – not to mention Malcolm
McDowell’s presence as a sauve Mr Big with a silent Asian partner – would seem
to set that up. But almost none of these typical complications happen – and
this is what makes Tempo somewhat
captivating, rather than just another bad, cheap thriller that might as well be
Australian in origin (like Bill Bennett’s worst, or Craig Lahiff’s Swerve [2012]).
Tempo is almost completely focused on the love problems of those three people in the
car at the start. Sarah hides her criminal courier work from Jack; Jack hides
his affair with Jenny from Sarah. He is genuinely drawn to both women. There
are many teary scenes of all three players alone, in romantic agony; and just
as many confrontations – even right at the end of that prolonged chase scene! – where Jack is begged to make his final choice: will it
be double or nothing for this hyper-sentimental guy?
At every point that a genre-coached viewer expects a
betrayal switch-up or clever revelation of behind-the-scenes scheming, it never
comes – only the tears and the relationship conversations (and the occasional
sex scene). I confess that I found this anti-genre structure of events quite
compelling. And the credits contain a clue as to how the project got to be this
way: two of the three credited writers are L.M. Kit Carson (of David Holzman's Diary/Jim McBride and Paris, Texas fame) and Jennifer Salt, whose fascinating
career has taken her from the lead role as persecuted feminist in De Palma’s Sisters (1973) to the script adaptation of Eat Pray Love (2010).
Director Eric Styles is an intriguing figure whose
low-profile (for standard-issue auteurists) career has spanned BBC documentary
and drama, thrillers (True True Lie,
2006), fantasy (Tomb of the Dragon,
2013), a Noel Coward adaptation (Relative
Values, 2000) and relationship comedy (Miss
Conception, 2008). Tempo reminds
us that, as in his curious but flawed debut feature Dreaming of Joseph Lees (1999), he is also drawn to melodrama as a form. And maybe there
is just too little genuine romantic melodrama, these days, in the patented
hardboiled manoeuvres of the crime-thriller genre. Tempo causes me to ponder this, and that’s not nothing.
MORE modern love: Three of Hearts, Reality Bites, Bodies, Rest and Motion © Adrian Martin January 2013 |
