feeling listless

Film [spoilers ahead everyone] It isn’t clear initially who the intended audience for new film Rendezvous actually is. Calvin and Francesca (the kind of actors who don’t need surnames) play respectively an up and coming actor and the entertainment journalist who is shadowing him for the article. The only plot in evidence is their gradual romance played out in multiple places (aeroplanes, the back of limousines. movie sets, hotels) over the space of a day. But although it’s obviously been made for a mainstream sensibility, its principles are solidly independent. The pacing is quote languorous. It’s what the characters say that’s important. The approach will be familiar to anyone who has seen Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise’, but whereas in that film it was about a couple whose only similarity is their age, here it’s about the business, so themes are stronger. Ironically during the piece actor talks about how impossible it is to make a film in Hollywood about men of colour falling love, which is exactly what the film we are watching is about.

If there is a problem, it’s that there simply isn’t enough dramatic tension to sustain the material. The only excitement occurs when the actor finds a love poem which may or may not be from the journalist. We are fairly sure it is, so it’s more about whether he will realize by the end of the film. But it feels randomly introduced. There are also celebrity a plethora of surprising celebrity cameos which feel like trash can counterparts to something like Altman’s ‘The Player’. The newly spiritual Brad Pitt plays himself in a scene which is supposed to highlight the black actor’s place in Hollywood (side kick, see ‘48 hours’ and ‘Rush Hour’). Harvey Weinstein takes a pitch at a Miramax office (the real place, not the fictional backlot of ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’) which is pure mugging.

But ironically, it’s still a joy. The supposedly autobiographical script by two unknowns sparkles in places; it’s funny and oddly comforting. Sometimes it’s nice for a film to take a fairly conventional approach to unconventional material; that’s a very seventies view and brings to mind the De Niro / Streep romance ‘Falling in Love’. So not going to change cinema, but should break the monotony of a tepid Tuesday night.