Hey folks, Harry here with a wonderful review from Josette Du Prie of THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE... a film that was being shot in Prague when I was there last year. I kept missing connections with the shoot, as they asked if while I was in town if I could visit the set, but unfortunately I was never able to make it. Though with a cast like Jonathan Pryce and Christopher Walken... well... I was frothing at the mouth Mr Dark and the man of mans... Walken. From the sound of this review I am so there for THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE... just to see Walken playing Cagliostro... Oh man... PERFECT CASTING! I want to see a whole film set around Walken playing that character! However, then we would miss what sounds like a bone rising nude scene from Hillary Swank that our dear Josette Du Prie noticed caused a male reaction from the peters in the room... So read on... this is one we'll see this year for sure.
Hello Harry:
I guess you can call me “Josette Du Prie” from my favorite show “Dark Shadows.”
This is my first time writing to you after being a long time fan of both yours and AICN. (Personally, I thought Roger Ebert should have chosen you as his regular co-host.) I read your web site every morning before I go to school. I love hearing about "Lord of The Rings" which I can't wait to see.
I’ve never sent in a review before because I live here in Seattle, and this is the first time I’ve ever been to one of these studio previews I've always heard about. I didn’t even know they held them out here. I was surprised to be asked at my school.
I assume the studio had this preview here to maintain some sort of secrecy, I guess, and they wouldn’t tell us what the movie they’d be showing was, although the guy who recruited me asked whether I’d seen the movies “Boys Don’t Cry”, “Elizabeth” and “Dangerous Liaisons”. I said yes to all three, even though I never saw the second one. (Hey, I wanted to score points and get into this thing.)
I couldn’t figure out why he named those films until I started watching the movie tonight.
Anyway, I showed up to my local GCC theater here at the Pacific Place Mall. It has about a dozen screens that aren’t that large in some cases so I wasn’t sure I’d be getting in, especially when I saw the long line – but it didn’t appear that anybody got turned away.
The movie being shown tonight was called “The Affair Of The Necklace”. It had credits and some of the background music was taken from “Gladiator” and other movies that I recognized. (I swore I heard “Braveheart” in there too.)
Even though the film clearly wasn’t finished, it nevertheless had credits at the beginning as well as the Warner Brothers sign up at the front.
I’d seen “Boys Don’t Cry” twice and Hilary Swank is the star of “Affair” and she looks amazing in this. Just gorgeous. She even has a nude love scene that was tastefully shot, mostly in shadows, but I could feel the temperature rise inside the theater from all the dudes. (I had my head turned towards my boyfriend during that part to check out his reaction. He was wearing the same expression he had during Heather Graham’s scenes in “Boogie Nights” so clearly he liked what he saw. Once he caught me watching him, he started to squirm and pretended he wasn’t turned on. Yeah, right.)
“The Affair Of The Necklace” is a historical epic telling what is apparently the true story of a young woman named Jeanne who through some rather calculated social climbing, incredibly brings about the French Revolution!
As a child, her father is arrested and executed and her mother subsequently dies from the grief. The young Jeanne makes her way through Paris as an orphan, eventually falling into the care of an aristocratic couple. Despite their kindness, Jeanne seems more drawn to the comfort their wealth provides than their compassion.
When Hilary Swank assumes the role, her character is an adult intent on removing the shame placed upon her family’s name. She seeks an audience with Marie Antoinette, who is played by the very beautiful Joely Richardson, who immediately rebuffs her. After this, Swank’s character hatches a very complicated ploy to humiliate Antoinette, as well as elevate her own standing in society.
A key player in this chess game that Swank is engineering is a dishonest, lustful Cardinal played by Jonathan Pryce. He’s great, and his counsel is a rather strange fortune-teller portrayed by Christopher Walken, who is magnificent. (Thanks to an epilogue at the end, the character he plays named “Cagliostro” is identified as a real person as well as a great fraud.) Walken is fascinating, bizarre, devilish and what else – he’s Walken.
The director of “Affair Of The Necklace” is Charles Shyer, whose name I recognized from other movies. I was surprised to learn he’d directed films like “Father Of The Bride” and “I Love Trouble” because this film is in the same league as “Sense And Sensibility” and “Shakespeare In Love”, not those automatic Blockbuster rentals he’d done before. This is an elegant, classy production with amazing cinematography.
An actor who played the older brother in “Liberty Heights” plays Swank’s untrustworthy ex-husband who makes an unexpected appearance in the middle of the story. She also takes a lover but I don’t recall that particular actor’s name either. (The film has a large cast.) The two men have a sword fight in Swank’s bedroom that is exciting, with a surprisingly funny conclusion.
I can see where the film still needs work. The story is very, very convoluted and you have to pay attention in spots. Someone identified as Peter Chisolm in the opening credits is the movie’s narrator, and while narration is definitely a must for a literate and complicated film like this, the narration as written is often clunky and too many times tells us the exact same things we’re seeing on the screen. It’s almost like closed captioning. (I wrote as much on my comment card.)
Still, I got the sense that the narration was hurriedly thrown together just for this preview and hopefully more polished words will be added when the original score and other missing elements are put in.
I look forward to seeing the final, finished version of “The Affair Of The Necklace” not only because this is a good movie, but because I want to see if any of the notes I wrote on my comment card were listened to by the filmmakers.
I'll let you know if there are any other studio previews out here in Seattle.
One thing’s for sure, Hilary Swank is DEFINITELY not a boy.
Josette Du Prie
