Hot Picks
|
|
|
El Sueño del Mono Loco
The Mad Monkey
Le Rêve du Singe Fou / Twisted Obsessions
Spain/France 1989
produced by Andrés Vicenta Gómez, Emmanuel Schlumberger for Iberoamericana Film Producción, International Production, French Productions, Sofica Valor
directed by Fernando Trueba
starring Jeff Goldblum, Miranda Richardson, Liza Walker, Dexter Fletcher, Anémone, Daniel Ceccaldi, Jerome Natali, Asunción Balaguer, Arielle Dombasle, Micky Sébastian, Laurent Moussard, Raúl López Cabello, Xavier Maly, Yan Roussell, Daniel Brimm, Catherine Hamilton, Eric Picou, Josephine, Jaime Alberto, Nadine Sabena, Jean Borrodine, Carmen Soriano, Dominique Chevalier, Daniel Léger, Pascal Laurent, Pascal Feier, Agnès Roberfroid, Angelina Llongueras
screenplay by Manolo Matji, Menno Meyes, Fernando Trueba, based on the novel The Dream of the Mad Monkey by Christopher Frank, music by Antoine Duhamel
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
|
|
Against the advice of his agent (Miranda Richardson), writer Dan (Jeff
Goldblum) accepts an assignment to write a script with young director
Malcolm Greene (Dexter Fletcher), though at first the two men don't get
along at all with each other ... until Dan meets Greene's 16 year old
sister Jenny (Liza Harper), who seems to be in an incestous relationship
with her brother, and Dan gets so infatuated by Jenny that he will stop at
nothing to have her, even if it means losing custody of his son to his
ex-wife ... but she's also a great inspiration, and the filmscript seems
to write itself. When Jenny disappears though after a night with Dan and
he tries to track her down, he finds himself caught in a net of greed and
intrigue in which nothing is what it seems and where he is nothing but a
pawn. Eventually, Dan finds Jenny again, at the least likely of places,
the set of his and Malcolm's film, doing a nude scene. After the shoot, he
tries to talk to her, but she gets away by motorbike, and when he tries to
catch up with her, the case is cut short by a truck his car crashes into. Eventually,
after much more investigating, he finds her again - in the city morgue,
swimming in a tank of formaldehyde ... A film that tires hard
to be clever and enigmatic - but comes across as being nothing but being erratic
for the sake of being erratic, overconvoluted, and - worst of all -
totally boring. The main problem is that The Mad Monkey features
way too much dialogue and hardly any atmospheric scenes a film like this is
badly in
need of. Even the scene in the morgue, where Dan finds Jenny, which should
have been a climax, is unexpectedly underwhelming, with the rest of the
scenes being covered in impersonal 1980's gloss. And the carchase that
could have made a difference (though I'm not a big fan of carchases) comes
across unexciting as can be. Rather a waste of time.
|