Ed Koch is back, and he brought HS with him. Hilarity ensues. And this time by "hilarity," I mean he describes a hand job as "wanking." You have been warned.
Irina Palm
This offbeat film covers a lewd subject but is never salacious. It opens in a Liverpool, England,
hospital room where a young boy, Olly (Corey Burke), lies dying of an unnamed
disease. With him are his mother,
Sarah (Siobhan Hewlett), his father, Tom (Kevin Bishop), and his grandmother,
Maggie (Marianne Faithfull).
The family is told that an experimental treatment for Olly is available
in Australia. The care itself would
be free, but all other expenses, including travel, hotels, meals, etc., would
have to be paid by the family. Their bank accounts and credit are exhausted, and they are unable to pay
the expected cost of 6,000 pounds.
Maggie, who will do anything to help her grandson, decides to look for a
job. She is ultimately hired by a
London sex establishment operated by Miki (Miki Manojlovic) where she services
men by wanking them. Known as Irina
Palm with the soft hands, she becomes an expert and men line up to be serviced
by her.
Maggie is ultimately found out by her son and friends, and their reactions
to her situation heighten your interest in the film. The final resolution regarding her son's
acceptance or rejection of the money she earned in the sex trade is not revealed
until near the end of the movie. Along the way, Grandma Maggie finds romance.
Irina Palm is a fairytale, but it could happen. It's playing at The Quad Cinema on West
13th Street in Manhattan, which has a penchant for good, offbeat
movies not found elsewhere.
Next up, Manohla leads Ed astray, and HS rattles on a la Abe Simpson while demonstrating an unnerving familiarity with SM, roofies, and... sweatshops?
Boarding Gate
I decided to see this film directed by Olivier Assayas after reading
Manohla Dargis's interesting review in the New York Times and also because it
was playing at one of my favorite theaters –the Cinema Village on East
12th Street off Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Dargis wrote that in the movie the
director "racks up one eye-catching incident after another (involving
sadomasochistic sex, pooling blood and smuggled drugs) that swirl on screen with
little apparent connection."
I saw the show with two friends, and when it ended, none of us could come
up with a coherent description of the story, nor did we understand much of what
took place in the individual scenes. To be fair, there are riveting moments, one involving an escape scene in
Hong Kong and another the sadomasochistic scene. Overall, however, the picture is so
disjointed that it failed for me.
Let me try to put together some of the pieces. The movie opens in what appears to be
Paris with what I believe to be a drug partnership involving an international
businessman, Miles (Michael Madsen), who is getting out of the racket. His former lover, Sandra (Asia Argento),
the central character, shows up and the two engage in an S&M tryst, which ends
in handcuffs and near asphyxiation when a belt is used to heighten the sexual
moment.
Ultimately Sandra is off to Hong Kong at the direction of Lester (Carl
Ng) and his wife, Sue (Kelly Lin), her bosses in a factory where she is
employed. Sandra later arrives in
Hong Kong, as does Lester, where chase scenes take place and murders occur. By
this time I gave up looking for a linear story. To me it turned into a Hong Kong flick
without the Kung Fu.
Directors used to call on Abe Burrows to doctor a play with a failing
storyline before it opened on Broadway. I'm thinking of offering my services to Hollywood to improve movie
scripts before their films opens. Until they hire me, take my advice on what to see and what to avoid. Boarding Gate is one to avoid.
HS said: "This was one of
the most incomprehensible films I have seen. Some films are difficult because they
are works of art making an obscure point. This was a crime film, but you couldn't tell who was good and who was
evil. It had a car chase, a
robbery, murders both planned and casual, roofies (date-rape drugs), and
bondage, but not much actual coupling. The only good part was the urban Chinese scenery, which included a
sweatshop. The movie would have
been a better travelogue without its lame plot. Weighing the reaction to the film, it
could have been called 'Boring Gate.' The title 'Waterboarding Gate' exaggerates the film's impact on the
audience." [ed. Ewww...]
Nothing profound to share. Just noticed that while the kids are busy 
