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CRIME
+ PUNISHMENT IN SUBURBIA
7/10
US
2000
dir
Rob Schmidt
scr Larry Gross
cin Bobby Bukowski
stars Vincent Kartheiser, Monica Keena, James DeBello, Ellen Barkin, Michael
Ironside
100 mins
Though
it starts off alarmingly reminiscent of American
Beauty by way of Pecker, Crime + Punishment soon
asserts its individuality and ends up a surprisingly successful, if small-scale,
variation on familiar themes.
Despite
the title, and an opening quotation from Dostoyevsky, this Crime +
Punishment bears only vague similarities to the classic novel. Instead
of the book’s Raskolnikoff, we have Simone Skolnik (Mena Suvari lookalike
Keena), a popular, successful high school student dating star footballer
Jimmy (DeBello). Some of Raskolnikoff’s characteristics are transferred
to the other principal character, geeky outsider Vincent (Kartheiser),
who not-so-secretly lusts after Simone, spying on her house and taking
endless photographs from the bushes.
Vincent
suspects that Simone’s perfect public image hides a tormented, rebellious
personality, and he’s soon proven dead right. While her boorish stepfather
(Ironside) boozes in front of the TV, her mother (Barkin) grows increasingly
dissatisfied, eventually finding solace in the arms of bartender Chris
(Wright). When stepdad finds out about the affair, his violent reaction
sets in motion a chain of events that soon erupts into bloody murder…
Crime
+ Punishment has been criticised for its flashy visual style, but
this misses the point. The movie reflects the psyche of its principal
character, perpetual observer Vincent, and it’s just the kind of
film his type of moody, gothy, MTV-influenced outsider would come up with.
His view of the other characters is slightly distorted, and he’s always
freezing time with his camera lens. Director Schmidt does exactly the
same thing, his music-video flourishes thus falling just the right side
of excess. He pulls off some notably strong effects by manipulating film
speeds – fast during the murder, slow during a cheerleaders’ “pep” rally
that ends up like out-takes from Triumph of the Will.
Bukowski’s
luminous cinematography makes the most mundane suburban settings seem
mysterious and full of untapped potential, and he also deftly modulates
focus - there’s usually some area of the frame that’s just a little fuzzier
than the rest, as if what we’re seeing wasn’t mean to be taken 100% literally.
It’s possible that the film isn’t just a reflection of Vincent’s personal
aesthetic, but also a representation of his fantasies – it starts
with what is presumably a dream of Vincent and Simone sweatily getting
it on, or perhaps it’s a flashback as, by the end, everything has worked
out exactly as Vincent would have wanted it.
The
cast is uniformly strong, but it’s relative newcomer DeBello who surprisingly
takes the acting honours. His Jimmy is perhaps the dumbest dumb jock in
cinema history, brow almost permanently furrowed as he realises he’s no
match – in every sense – for his force-of-nature girlfriend. DeBello
somehow manages to transform this thankless secondary role into the most
watchable thing in the movie – it’s an expert comic turn, making most
impact when he’s saying and doing least, just silently struggling to keep
up as conversations and events spin bafflingly out of his control.
2nd
February 2001
by Neil
Young
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