CITIZEN CLONE : Graham Robertson's Able Edwards [8/10]

Able Edwards is the writing/directing debut of 31-year-old Colorado native Graham Robertson, who shot the film for next to nothing by making extensive use of "greenscreen" technology - in which backgrounds and sets are inserted behind the actors during post-production. Told in the flashback-structured style of Citizen Kane - which Robertson, in a stunning example of youthful chutzpah, has partially remade here - the monochrome Able Edwards takes place in the near-future when Earth has been ravaged by a lethal virus.

The survivors have taken refuge in an orbiting "Civilisation Pod" where technological advances have continued apace - the leading provider of the pod's many robots is the Edwards Corporation (EC), originally founded in the mid-20th century by visionary, multi-talented animator Abel "Able" Edwards (Scott Kelly Galbreath). When EC runs into trouble, the board decide on a radical solution: clone the long-dead Edwards. Whereas the first Edwards is clearly modelled on Walt Disney, "Edwards Beta" emerges more like Howard Hughes - although both have aspects of Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane...

While it as much of a construct as its cloned hero - the film is cobbled together from a dozen precursors of which Kane is only the most obvious - Able Edwards does have a distinctive, and unexpectedly tragic, character of its own. This gradually, enthrallingly emerges as the film steadily builds to a final shot which, as well as nimbly referencing Tarkovsky's Solaris, is perhaps the most resonant, complex, moving and beautiful in recent American cinema. Orson would surely have approved.

Neil Young
December 27th, 2004



THE BOUDOIR OF THE GRAPE : Alexander Payne's Sideways [7/10]

Of all the movies released in the US in 2004, Sideways was hands-down the favourite among the nation's film-critics. It's already picked up a stack of awards and, with a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay Alexander Payne's fourth feature (after made-for-TV Citizen Ruth and arthouse hits Election and About Schmidt) has now garnered a number of Oscar nominations. It's heartening that a relatively "small" film should make a big splash - not least because Sideways serves as yet another terrific showcase for one of current cinema's most outstanding actors, Paul Giamatti.

In Sideways he plays Miles, a balding, paunchy, mid-40s man enduring a painful mid-life crisis. He can't interest publishers in the novel he's laboured so long to write, and his personal life is a disaster-zone made all the worse by the fact that his best friend - former soap star Jack (Church) - is a smooth-talking lothario who has no trouble attracting the opposite sex. When Jack gets engaged, Miles treats him to one last "bachelor trip" - a car journey around the vineyards of northern California where wine-connoisseur Miles attempts to educate Jack about the intricacies of his favourite subject. But Jack, true to form, ends up concentrating on what Basil Fawlty termed "the boudoir of the grape", and soon beds shapely waitress Stephanie (Sandra Oh). Not that Miles is entirely left out of the action - Stephanie's "knockout" best friend Maya (Virginia Madsen) turns out to be very much on his wavelength. Complications ensue.

Unashamedly aimed at the more "mature" moviegoer, Sideways provides further evidence that Payne - working with his usual collaborator Jim Taylor (and adapting Rex Pickett's novel) - is an enormously talented writer, crafting four intriguing characters and providing them with wry, moving, believable dialogue. But his film, for all its vivid flavours, leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste: aside from the central quartet, Sideways is populated by caricatures who are presented in an off-puttingly patronising manner. And Payne the director still has much to learn, his uninspired choices in the basic areas of image and music indicating just how far he remains from genuine top vintage.

Neil Young
18th January, 2005

SIDEWAYS : USA 2004 : Alexander PAYNE : 123 mins
Seen at Lux cinema (Turin, Italy) 18th November 2004 at the Torino Film Festival.

Click here for complete list of Jigsaw Lounge's Torino ‘04 reviews.