Capone's Art-House Round-Up with Woody Allen's CAFE SOCIETY and Drake Doremus's EQUALS!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


CAFE SOCIETY
On its glossy, nostalgia-skimming surface, Woody Allen’s latest, CAFE SOCIETY is about 1930s show business types—from top Hollywood agents to New York City nightclub owners—going through the high-end motions, while the rest of the world is still digging out of the Great Depression. But if you look a little deeper, there’s a something underneath, a darker, more intimate story about the one great love that got away and how people manage to live their lives while still carrying a torch for someone who isn’t their spouse.

The story is told through the eyes (although Allen provides the narration) of Bronx kid Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) who moves to Hollywood, hoping to get a job at his uncle Phil’s agency, where Hollywood deals are made and broken on a whim. Phil (Steve Carell) is married but is having an affair with his assistant Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), whom he has been stringing along for months with promises of leaving his wife. Without realizing this connection, Bobby also begins seeing Vonnie, and the two seem to fall for each other. Vonnie is the only one who knows the whole truth, and while she talks about an affair she’s having with a married man to Bobby in vague terms, it isn’t until Phil starts actually preparing to leave his wife that Bobby figures out the truth.

But the love triangle aspect of CAFE SOCIETY is really only half the story, and Allen peppers anecdotes and observations about old Hollywood that are screamingly funny. Combined with the elegant costuming and overall glossy look of each scene, this film would make a fantastic companion piece to the Coen Brothers HAIL, CAESAR!, with its whimsy and biting commentary about the rich and brainless.

But CAFE SOCIETY is also very much a film about family. Jeannie Berlin and Ken Stott play Bobby’s overly protective parents, while Corey Stoll is largely wasted as his gangster brother Ben, and Sari Lennick plays domesticated sister Evelyn. Allen always comes back to this core group because they give Bobby motivation in both good and bad ways. He wants to get away from them, but he also gets some of his work ethic and values from these folks. In Hollywood, Bobby is drawn to another older couple, played by Parker Posey and Paul Schneider, who take him under their wing and teach him the ins and out of the L.A. party scene, of which Bobby is fast becoming a member.

Bobby’s heartbreak over Vonnie choosing Phil over him sends him back to New York to work, and eventually, run one of his brother’s night club properties, and before long, the place become the happening joint in Manhattan. Bobby meets and soon marries the stunning Veronica (Blake Lively), and before long, they have a baby. But some part of Bobby is unsatisfied, as if Vonnie was the last person he was going to trust his entire heart to. And while it’s clear he loves Veronica, she and the baby are simply part of a bigger picture and direction toward independent wealth. When Vonnie and Phil return to New York for a quick trip, she and Bobby are able to talk about the past, but it’s clear the damage has been done and the past is likely not to repeat itself. Depending on how invested in these characters you are, the moment is actually quite heartbreaking.

Like many of Allen’s works, there’s a great deal on the periphery, but the emotional heart of CAFE SOCIETY is this wonderful couple (an Adventureland reunion of for Eisenberg and Stewart) who never quite connect they way they clearly should have. Call it a case of wish unfulfillment, something most American movies wouldn’t dream of giving us. But Allen knows that we’re all familiar with “happily ever after”; he wants us to see another side of that. Not so much “unhappily ever after”—this is more about being content, with that pesky, overwhelming love getting in the way. It’s a bold statement and a fun and daring film that still comes across as lightweight if you’re not paying attention.


EQUALS
I have a soft spot for films that blend science fiction and a serious love story, but the new film from Drake Doremus (LIKE CRAZY) takes these ideas a step further by setting his tale in a world where love and most other strong emotions don’t exist as part of day-to-day living. EQUALS posits, what would happen if love sprung up between two people who had no idea what such feelings are or what do with them?

Make no mistake, this version of an emotionless future is actually a rather nice one. Everyone gets along, works efficiently, and leads boring but satisfying lives. Far from a Big Brother-like police state, this place has no security camera or noticeable police force. Silas (Nicholas Hoult) works creating virtual history books (this society puts a great emphasis on what came before, even though we’re not told exactly what catastrophic event led to this lifestyle). He works alongside a team of writers, editors, and artists, including Nia (Kristen Stewart), who is clearly looking at him a bit too long sometimes, and soon her behavior begins to impact him.

Another element to this world is that you can contract a “bug” that gives you emotions, and it consumes you after a time, progressing from stage 1 to stage 5 gradually. It becomes clear, however, that this self-diagnosed illness is really just the result of a human becoming more human and allowing him/her to feel something. When you get close to stage 5, you are taken to a containment facility with others who are infected, where you are encouraged to kill yourself. If you can’t do that, those in charge help you figure out another type of death option. It sounds sinister, but strangely, it both is and isn’t.

Hell, there are even support groups for people with the bug, and when Silas starts to feel, he meets a rather pleasant fellow named Jonas (Guy Pearce), who opens his eyes to an underground society of people living secretly undetected with the bug, of which Nia is clearly one. The “love scenes” (if that’s what you call them) initially consist of Silas and Nia simply taking stock in each other’s forms. The human form of the opposite sex is utterly unknown to them, and their sensual response to another person under their fingertips is quite well represented.

Working from a screenplay by Nathan Parker (Moon), Doremus has built a world that is both futuristic and weirdly lo-fi. No one in EQUALS has a hand-held device of any kind to communicate; all conversations must take place in person. There are no cameras anywhere that we’re aware of; society is strangely self-policed. There’s an honor system that is adhered to, to the point where to lie is to cause feelings of guilt that often drive citizens to kill themselves.

There is a supporting cast of actors like Bel Powley (THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL), Kate Lyn Sheil (“House of Cards”) and Jacki Weaver (ANIMAL KINGDOM), all of whom are proven to be powerhouse emotional performers and are required to suppress their tools as an actor to blend into this way of life. A big part of keeping this world in check is the promise of a “cure” for the bug, which we’re told is right around the corner. We’re asked to consider at one point, what would happen to these hidden carriers if a permanent cure were developed? The consequences would be devastating.

Stewart is especially strong here, as we see the quiet torment in her eyes as she struggles not to react when faced with circumstances that would overwhelm any of us. Hoult (best known for the current crop of X-MEN movies, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and WARM BODIES) has just the right amount of emptiness in his eyes to project ourselves into his situation and wonder what it would be like to have new emotions flooding into our bodies all at once and how tough it would be to hide them.

EQUALS may leave some a little cold in its execution and in its production design (a great deal of the outdoor architecture was shot in Japan), but I liked the chances being taken by Doremus and his team of actors. Good science fiction makes you think more about the here and now than the future world being presented, and that certain happened for me watching this.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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