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Written by Mary F. Pols, McClatchy-Tribune
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Thursday, 19 July 2007 |
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 ___
INTERVIEW
2 ½ stars
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Sienna Miller
Director: Steve Buscemi
Rated: : R for language including sexual references, and some drug use
Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes
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In "Interview," journalist Pierre Peders (Steve Buscemi) gets nearly 83 minutes of unfettered access to his subject, starlet Katya (Sienna Miller), most of it in her home. Upon being handed such a coup, a Vanity Fair writer would think he'd died and joined Louella Parsons in gossip heaven.
But not Pierre. He'd rather be in war-torn Bosnia or camped out in the White House press room. He's a hard-news man, who for reasons we don't entirely fathom at first has been assigned the very insignificant task of profiling a famous young TV actress just now making her breakthrough to the big screen.
In this essentially two-person play, the contrasts are stark — serious vs. frivolous, man vs. woman, the have not vs. the have — presenting plenty of opportunities for button pushing and animosities. Yet the results feel insignificant.
"Interview" is directed by Buscemi, who has stepped behind the camera before, including for the feature "Trees Lounge" and the notorious "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos." Buscemi's film is based on Dutch director Theo van Gogh's film of the same name. The first of three planned English — language adaptations of van Gogh's works, it's meant as a tribute to the filmmaker, who was murdered in November 2004 by a Muslim radical angered by his frequent criticisms of Islamic politics.
Given that van Gogh first gained notoriety as a journalist, writing newspaper columns, what's interesting about "Interview," or this version anyway, is the utter lack of sympathy generated for the character of Pierre. He is unprofessional, having done no research on Katya at all (he hasn't even seen the movie she's promoting, "Killer Body IV"). He's also a creep. When Katya tells him her mother was from Amsterdam, he leers. "Sin City, I've been many times. Nickel prostitution." He handles her celebrity as if it were a crime she should be apologizing for.
Meanwhile, Katya may be demanding and an hour late but she has the grace to treat her own fame as a gift. She signs autographs and jokes with fans. She graciously poses for the paparazzi waiting for her out front. She at least makes a stab at remembering people's names. In terms of celebrities, Katya is a prize.
Sienna Miller ("Factory Girl," "Layer Cake") has plenty of her own experiences to tap into for inspiration; you may remember that she became famous for her fashion sense and the fact that she was engaged to the unfaithful Jude Law, her co-star in "Alfie," before most of us had seen her in any films. But her Katya does not seem like a tossed off imitation of herself, but rather, a creation who is husky-voiced and boldly beautiful, like Lindsay Lohan, but smarter, saner and much more self aware.
Any questions about Miller's abilities as an actress should be set to rest by this performance. (Her immersion into Edie Sedgwick in "Factory Girl" should have done that, but the film around it was so blah it was hard to see the performance as anything other than an extended pose.)
What flickers across her face is always at least as, and usually more, interesting than Katya's dialogue. But other than showcasing Miller's talents, "Interview" doesn't seem to have much of a point.
Superficially, it condemns hypocrisy and the self-important, but we don't get the sense that these two people can really illustrate anything broader about, say, the twin cultures of celebrity and journalism and the ways in which the two are increasingly melding together. As individuals, one of our two players is more cunning that we'd expect, the other weaker than we'd expect. But that's about all there is to take away from this "Interview."
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