Boarding Gate (2008)
Boarding Gate is an Olivier Assayas picture; which probably means that it’s some sort of experimentation of genre and pretty girl. Watching the picture, I wondered what Assayas would have done with that icon of all icons: Marilyn Monroe. Assayas has a view, and curiosity of, the opposite sex that’s part school-boy-giddy-titter and part legitimate, searching, empathy. Assayas, at his best (Clean, Late August, Early September), pares away the layers of preoccupation that tend to greet both his beautiful women and his genres to reveal something spare and honest. If you want your hand held, re-watch The Visitor.
Boarding Gate is, like demonlover, an Assayas cover of the erotic thriller. demonlover was a failure that mistook elusion and redundancy for mystery. Boarding Gate has a similar frustrating reluctance to capitalize on the dirty pleasures of the genre; working for and against itself in alternating shifts. Assayas apparently doesn’t quite grasp that a little conventionality, particularly in the third act-would actually heighten the exhilaratingly free form passages that have preceded it. Boarding Gate is a more successful picture than demonlover, but it still feels like an intelligent filmmaker’s over-considered parlor game. Self-shame can mar any picture, but it’s least welcome in something that should be quick, juicy, lurid-bad for you.
Assayas is actually looking to mate the erotic thriller with a more grounded portrait of an attractive, adventurous-at-her-own-peril woman who seeks to define herself apart from the men in her life, bosses and lovers, who have a habit of being one and the same. If we wish to be cute, the picture could be said to be Clean crossed with demonlover, and, for about an hour, Assayas succeeds. The first half of the picture is a chamber play, a two character one-act where a woman confronts one of her simultaneous boss/ex-lovers over past hurts that clearly still pack quite a bit of heat for both of them. The casting intentionally sounds more Showtime than Assayas: Asia Argento, that snarling, self-consciously weird object of male lust turned on its head, and Michael Madsen, the shoulda had a stronger career phantom of Robert Mitchum.
Both actors bring a B-movie survivor baggage to their roles that’s surprising and a little poignant. Assayas coaxes out the vulnerability that lurks behind tough guy and femme fatale archetypes; recognizing that, nowadays at least, every tough guy began as a kid watching other tough guys on TV. Madsen’s familiar rasp sounds nearly undead here, and it signals a lost inner pain that the actor manages, miraculously, to steer away from pretension. Madsen’s Miles is a vague businessman, a drinker of bourbon, and a wearer of stylishly disheveled shirts that represent a reformed badass’s impression of “respectability”. He lets Sandra (Argento) cuff him up as he laughs uncontrollably, tickled by his continued failure to be surprised.
Argento, full bosomed, lithe, with the familiar tattoos (that have always too consciously announced her bad girl credentials), is an ideal woman for Assayas interpretation. Hitchcock once said (something along the lines of) that Monroe was too obvious, too eager to please, to be a sex symbol of interest to him. There was no contradiction between appearance and desire, no subtext. That’s a problem for many of our sirens these days, including Scarlett Johansson (oh, how one wishes Kate Winslet had taken Match Point) and especially Angelina Jolie and Argento. These women have no inner, no private elusive thing that baits the audience. Self-consciousness and self-congratulation are a no-no for the true movie Goddesses. Assayas, that constant tinkerer of surfaces, recognizes this in Argento and acknowledges that fun-drug-killer-girl thing as facade. This is the most interesting Asia Argento performance that I’ve seen (slim competition) because there’s more to Argento here than that confident body-the confidence is turned in on itself and redefined as vulnerable mystery. Asia plays with that vicious-kitty voice of hers, slipping in shades of doubt and contempt, and she’s fascinating (or closer than usual to it), particularly when sparring with the increasingly self-cocooned Miles.
The first hour between Miles and Sandra is slow, druggy, and hypnotic. Sandra gets herself in trouble near the half-way mark, and one expects and hopes that the forebode of the first half will slide into something unhinged and violent, something that purges Sandra of her doubt and pain while seamlessly giving us our genre jollies. That never happens, but it’s not for lack of trying. Assayas isn’t elitist exactly; it’s that he just doesn’t appear to have the authentic instinct to go for the throat. His best pictures show a cleansing compassion, and that has a habit of being in direct conflict with the sort of thriller he’s attempting here. He likes Sandra too much. I liked Sandra too, to an extent, which is why some real danger would’ve actually felt dangerous, a rarity these days. Assayas fails to dramatize a second half that, on paper, sounds promising. Sandra gets herself into yet another love triangle (including a vivid Kelly Lin) but Boarding Gate never drives it through with any force. The kidnappings and shootings lack bite, revealing Assayas to be in territory every bit as alien as his heroes.
Boarding Gate still has an imperfect pull, and it rouses itself to a wonderful open ending that alludes to possible hope (again recalling Clean). I love the globe-trotting, multiple language inclusiveness of Assayas’ pictures; they point, effortlessly, toward an in-it-together, all-fucked-on-the-same-page humanity that a Haggis or a Visitor seems unable to comprehend. Boarding Gate is a character study disguised as an erotic thriller that should’ve been a real McCoy on both counts; it’s a picture as confused as its protagonists, but you gravitate toward it-and wonder what this not quite successful experiment might yield next time.
★★★
June 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I liked this one a little better than you I think. I went in not knowing what to expect at all, thought I’d figure out how it was all going to play out (or at least what it was I was looking at) in the first hour and then Assayas yanked the rug out from under me. I was so entertained by this, maybe I gave the last bit more of a free pass than you’re giving it. I aim to catch it again, but my first response was a good one.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:47 am
I want to be clear, I DID like this movie, and I really admire Assayas in general, but I’ve had a bad habit lately of writing of films that have engaged me (Speed Racer) that sound like half-pans. I think the reason is that when a picture engages me it usually raises my estimation which causes me to expect more. Like a neglectful father.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I absolutely see where you’re coming from and I didn’t take it as a pan at all. I just looked at some of your criticisms which I didn’t share, though they’re completely justified.
I have that feeling sometimes where a movie’s goodness only makes me want it to be better and it’s not. I end up judging it against itself, or of my estimation of it, which maybe isn’t fair, but what can you do?
There’s nothing wrong with setting and keeping the bar high, though it would be unfortunate if you can’t relax and enjoy yourself sometimes too.
I’m probably going to have to rewatch this one though. I spent so much of the second half trying to reconcile what I thought the movie was going to be, I think I missed things.