THE MODERNS (1988) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Alan Rudolph
Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino, Genevieve Bujold,
Geraldine Chaplin, John Lone, Wallace Shawn,
Kevin J. O'Connor, Elsa Raven, Isabel Serra, Ali Giron
Alan Rudolph's whimsical reflection on art and deception takes place in Paris in 1926. (Montreal plays Paris.) Keith Carradine plays Nicky Hart, a painter whose copies of Cezanne and Modigliani are so good, you can't tell them from the real thing. He's got an agent, a gallery owner played by Genevieve Bujold, but his work hasn't sold, so he keeps himself in oils and cognac by drawing newspaper cartoons. This is the Lost Generation, so Hemingway's around, played by Kevin J. O'Connor, and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and a few unidentified others. There's a rubber baron (John Lone), a vulgar industrialist who views the world and everything in it through the prism of money, and his wife (Linda Fiorentino), who's secretly still married to Hart. A wealthy collector (Geraldine Chaplin), who tries to entice Hart into doing a little forgery. A newspaper columnist (Wallace Shawn), who can't stop talking about suicide. And that covers most of the key players. It's Rudolph in total command of his craft, working with a cast that's perfectly in tune with what he's up to, and it's a sometimes surreal comedy ending with a series of devious jokes about the pretensions of the art world and the people in it. If that's something that interests you, or you just want to spend a couple of hours hanging out in Hemingway's Paris, check it out.
