The Two
Faces of January (8/10)
by Tony
Medley
Runtime
96 minutes.
OK for
children.
This is
an atmospheric, scintillating tale of intrigue that would have been
right at home in the 1940s when they made movies like this. Adapted from
Patricia Highsmith’s 2 decade old book of the same name, Viggo Mortenson
and Kirsten Dunst are an American couple vacationing in Greece when they
meet Oscar Isaac (fresh off his wonderful performance in the title role
of Inside Llewyn Davis last year), a charming American who preys
on young tourist girls to fleece them out of their money.
But not
is all it seems when the movie starts with beautiful opening scenes
around The Parthenon, where the main characters come together. Hossein
Amini, who wrote the equally intriguing Drive (2011), shows in
his directorial debut that he has an acute feel for Hitchcockian
atmosphere and suspense. Set in 1962, the film travels from Athens to
the Greek Islands to Istanbul with outstanding cinematography (Marcel
Zyskind) and wonderful music (Alberto Iglesias, who also wrote the music
for 2002’s The Dancer Upstairs, which I think is Javier Bardem’s
best film).
Dunst
gives a terrific performance, the best I’ve ever seen out of her, as do
Mortenson and Isaac. The interplay among the three is beautiful to
behold as things get more and more out of hand.
Unfortunately, they are done in by an ending straight out of the
Hollywood archives, which does not live up to the rest of the movie. I
was ready to give this a 10, but the ending spoiled that. Amini saw the
problem in the book, “It
was loosely plotted, inconsistent at times, often illogical, but somehow
the story and its flawed characters got under my skin and never left.”
He has tightened up the plot and the story he comes up with is fairly
consistent and relatively logical, but I walked out with the same
discomfort from which he apparently suffered after reading the book
because the repair work he did to the story didn’t hold through for the
ending.
The
ending might not bother most like it did me. It’s not so bad that it
should dissuade people from attending. It is so well done throughout
that’s it’s well worth seeing.
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