Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

In A Nutshell:

Directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg follow her for some 14 months in the year of her 75th birthday (2008). This movie, a docu-biography, is funny, poignant, and sad. Born of Jewish parents in New York, Joan started to perform stand-up comedy in the 1970s. By the 1980s, she had become the permanent guest host for Johnny Carson. After her husband committed suicide in 1987, her career went into decline. She has had her ups and downs, but strives to continue to perform--even today. She paved the way for such comediennes as Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin. Well, this is the official story.

Funny--you see her perform in various venues around the country--and I think her humor is still as sharp as ever. What seemed shocking some 30 years ago is taken for granted today. She laughs at others as well as herself.

Poignant--here is this woman, rolling in money, who says I need the money, I need to work, why don't I have more engagements. Yet she lives in a large apartment in New York, tries her hand at many things (including designing jewelry for QVC and appearing on the Celebrity Apprentice show with Donald Trump), and having numerous face lifts and other work done on her appearance.

Sad--you get the sense that she is very much alone. Her daughter plays an important role in her life, but the relationship is questionable. She fires her manager after a number of years. She is almost--but not quite--a has-been. She doesn't need the money--she needs the adulation.

So many have said that the only time comedians are happy is when they are performing. I suspect that is true for her as well. This very revealing and intimate look at her life is a reminder to all of us that maybe we need to learn when to "give it up".

"I Am Love" Review

In a nutshell. Tilda Swinton, the beautiful Russian wife of a wealthy Milanese family, falls passionately for a lowly chef, a newfound friend of her son Edo. Risking everything, Emma pursues Antonio and engages in several lustful encounters with him. Edo learns of the affair and confronts his mother. They argue and he accidentally falls into the swimming pool at the home, hitting his head on the corner of the pool wall. Tragically he dies. Not knowing of the affair, the husband Tancredi tries to pull the family together after Edo’s death. But Emma is enraptured by Antonio and says to her husband—Yo amo Antonio. Abandoned by all except her daughter, she returns to Antonio. The film ends in a dreamlike sequence when Emma and Antonio are in a cave-like place. Even with wealth, status, and honor, a woman sacrifices everything for her lust and passion. The family is destroyed.

I really expected to love this movie. On a hot summer day and the theater bulging with people, the audience anticipated something wonderful. As did I. My friend said that she really wanted to see this—and I did not object. After all, there was a lot of buzz about it.

The mood is set with the opening. The camera swoops down over a wintry scene of a large mansion in Milan. Snow is falling. Everything looks a dismal grayish white, not the beautiful white of a first snow. Quickly we are taken into the interior of the home. Immediately it is obvious that a family of some stature lives here and they are readying themselves for an event. A Christmas tree can be seen in one of the rooms, but it is not that they are celebrating. Rather the birthday of the patriarch of the family—one Edoardo Recchi. Much is made of readying the home and the food for the dinner that is to come.

Emma Recchi, the mistress of the house, bustles around the kitchen area. She readies the placement of guests for the dinner. A slight move of one or two people because someone’s girlfriend is also coming to the dinner. For some time you are in a mystery about who the people are, how they are connected, and why they are there.

The enormous wealth of the owners is obvious. Many staff members, some wearing white gloves, are busying themselves with preparations for this dinner. Is everything ready? Will the service be done properly?

Shot in Italian with English subtitles, I Am Love operates on many layers. It is a story about several generations of an Italian family. You learn that they run a large plant of some type, perhaps making clothing or possibly cloth. Several scenes are interspersed showing the cold mechanical nature of the company. How long it has been in the family is unclear, but the patriarch announces at the dinner (in honor of his birthday) that he is turning the company over to Tancredi (his son) and Edoardo (his older grandson). Frankly I did not realize until somewhat later in the film that there was another son—I don’t even know his name.

Against all these trappings of the rich, the primary plot emerges. Edoardo arrives late at the dinner because he has been in a race (I am not really sure what kind—my friend says it must be autos, but I wonder why they are racing cars in the dead of winter and a snowstorm). The family’s honor is at stake because he apparently has lost the race. But as in so many scenes in this movie, you don’t know the real story—you learn that the race ended in a tie (perhaps). The adversary is Antonio, a chef, who just happens to appear at the mansion late in the day of the dinner with a kind of peace offering—a beautiful cake he has made. You never actually see the cake, but Edo and his mother and the faithful housekeeper Ida ooh and aah over it. Interestingly, it does not come out at the dinner. Rather the old man is toasted with a smallish cake with a single candle on top. No one eats the cake. Now I wonder if the cake that is brought out is the one made by the chef. I think I will need to see the movie again to check the sequence of events. Looks are exchanged between the mother and the chef. Or are they? All very subtle.

After the elaborate dinner sequence, you learn that the elder Recchi has died and the heirs are to take over. They fly to London to negotiate a sale to an Indian American. Meanwhile, Emma, left to her own devices, wanders through her day. She stops at the cleaners to pick up some clothes and the helpful clerk gives her a cd that was left in her daughter’s jacket. (A minor plot surfaces in which Emma learns that her daughter is a lesbian). She visits Mrs. Recchi senior and they exchange chitchat and tea. Both seem very bored.

Now although the men run the family, in many ways so do the women. The elder Recchi’s wife (Marisa Berenson—looking as though she has had too much work done on her face) and Tancredi’s wife (Tilda Swinton—especially gorgeous, blonde, and aloof) are in the shadows. They visit with each other, shop, and make sure the houses run smoothly. A younger daughter plays a somewhat minor role in the film.

Food plays a critical role in the movie. Emma reminisces about a kind of fish soup she learned as a child—a completely clear broth is used. In a final dinner, the soup is served by Antonio and Edo finally confirms that his mother and his friend are having an affair. A number of scenes are set at the dinner table either in the family home or at Antonio’s restaurant in town. Emma’s sensuality is revealed with somewhat obvious camera work as she eats a luscious shrimp—her hair of gold and her dress in red mimic the shrimp’s coloration. Antonio comes to the home with his cake after the race.

But in the end I was disappointed. Why did the director (Luca Guadagnino) feel that he had to use bees and flowers as metaphors for the lovemaking between Emma and Antonio? After all, it is 2010. And Adams’ music punctuated the mood in this scene. What happened to subtlety? Did I miss some elusive reference to movies past (I think of the music when Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift are making love on the shore in A Place in the Sun (based on Dreiser’s An American Tragedy). This felt way too obvious to me. Was Guadagnino trying to imitate the old Hollywood? Was Emma so bereft of pleasure that she grabbed at someone so obviously wrong for her? Was it love or just plain lust? Don’t get me wrong. I am not opposed to lust. But Emma certainly would know that this affair was only fleeting. After all, Antonio was not Jeremy Irons in Harold Pinter’s 1983 “Betrayal” even though his lover’s name was Emma. Or perhaps Guadagnino was thinking of Connie (Lady Chaterley) in Lawrence’s 1928 Lady Chatterley’s Lover (originally printed in Italy and then in the UK in 1960). Connie ran off with Oliver, the gamekeeper on her husband’s estate.