Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/09/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, December 9, 2024

The Linguini Incident (Richard Shepard, 1991)

Rosanna Arquette and David Bowie in The Linguini Incident

Cast: Rosanna Arquette, David Bowie, Eszter Balint, Andre Gregory, Buck Henry, Viveca Lindfors, Marlee Matlin. Screenplay: Richard Shepard. Cinematography: Robert D. Yeoman. Production design: Marcia Hinds. Film editing: Sonya Polonsky, David Dean. Music: Thomas Newman.

Richard Shepard's The Linguini Incident is frequently called "off-beat," but to me it just seems off. Its gags never quite land, its narrative is scattered, its design is drab, and its lead characters, played by Rosanna Arquette and David Bowie, have very little chemistry. Still, it has a cult following that rescued it from obscurity after initial box office and critical failure and inspired a "director's cut" that added ten minutes to its run time. I admit that I laughed a few times, as when Arquette, playing a would-be escape artist who idolizes Houdini, tries to make her way out of a bag in which she's been locked, but even that bit goes on just a few seconds beyond the point at which it's funniest.