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The Dancer Upstairs: ‘Malkovich!’

John Malkovich, that seductively serpentine star of Dangerous Liaisons, Of Mice and Men, The Portrait of a Lady and dozens of other films (including the unforgettable Being John Malkovich) has made a feature directing debut with a cold elegance that mirror many of his performances. While he is an accomplished theater director, Malkovich has stepped into the realm of filmmaking with a solemn, well-intentioned production that is handsomely mounted but dramatically inert.

Adapting Nicholas Shakespeare’s novel of corruption, rebellion, intrigue and romance in an unnamed (but distinctly Peruvian) Latin American country in the ‘not-too-distant past,’ Malkovich combines the political conscience of the films of Costa-Gavras (Z, The Missing) with a Chinatown-style tale of a cop’s doomed affair. Lt. Augustin Rejas (Javier Bardem), a former lawyer, has joined the police force, he says, because he sees it as a more just way to enforce the law.

When death threats, explosions and eventually murders begin piling up in the name of Esequiel, a shadowy Communist resistance leader, Rejas and his partner Sucre (Juan Diego Botto) must find Esequiel and flush out the resistance before anarchy breaks out, even as the government interferes by declaring martial law. Meanwhile, the rebels’ reign of terror virtually puts the capital city under siege, with frequent power outages, pre-school-aged suicide bombers, and, in a jaw-dropping scene, a mass murder perpetrated by machine-gun toting Catholic schoolgirls.

Following a recent screening of the film, Malkovich acknowledged the story’s parallels to the long history of political upheaval in Peru, such as the guerrilla ‘Shining Path’ movement. He downplayed, however, the film’s value as a historical document.

‘I don’t know that that’s necessarily the realm of the cinema,’ said Malkovich, who recommended that the audience instead read a book on the subject. ‘I was always very aware that I was making a romantic thriller.’ Indeed, the political intrigue plot plays out against the parallel story of Rejas’ burgeoning romance with his daughter’s beautiful ballet teacher, Yolanda (Laura Morante).

The Dancer Upstairs is, if nothing else, a film of craftsman-like competence, and it boasts a number of surface pleasures. Shakespeare’s screenplay subtly communicates the corruption of the government as well as the humanity of the terrorist rebels, even while coming down squarely on the side of law and order. Bardem, the soulful-eyed star of Before Night Falls, gives a tersely fascinating performance that conjures the stoic ghosts of Old Hollywood. Malkovich demonstrates a commendable visual acuity in several of the more action-oriented scenes.

Finally, however, despite these attributes, the film is undone by its reliance on a plot twist so obvious and hackneyed that the audience figures it out after maybe half an hour, which makes for awfully slow going while we wait for Rejas to catch up.

Malkovich, undeterred by the film’s leisurely pace, wishes he could have made it longer. Hindered by a contractual obligation to keep the film under two hours, he had to fight to get it released in its current, 124-minute (without credits) form, and had to cut many scenes, he said, ‘not because they weren’t good, but because if I hadn’t, the film wouldn’t have been released.’

But with a story that ultimately turns out to be this slim, 124 minutes feels like quite enough. Malkovich devotes endless minutes to watching several of the principle female characters dance, creating a strange, fetishistic air to the film’s portrayal of femininity. The romantic-tragedy payoff is also undermined by Morante’s sketchy presence throughout the film. The thinness of her character sucks the air of out of the final plot developments and denies them any real weight. This is an uncommonly intelligent romantic thriller, but there’s no denying that it’s also finally a bit of a bore.

Malkovich said he hopes that the film can ‘get people to really examine and reconsider their own dogma,’ and The Dancer Upstairs most assuredly aims to chart the perils of blind fundamentalism. But in splitting the difference between romantic tragedy and political intrigue, the movie allows the two shallowly developed elements to cancel each other out. The Dancer Upstairs waltzes through the shadows of classic forebears the Costa-Gavras films, Chinatown, many of the old Humphrey Bogart noirs that have danced to this tune more gracefully.

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