Ever since she won her Oscar portraying serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, Charlize Theron has been doing two things: producing and planning new projects, and portraying working-class, gritty women fighting the system. Consider, for example, North Country, for which she received an Oscar nomination as another real-life character, a sexually harassed Minnesota mineworker. In her newest movie,
Sleepwalking, she plays a similar character. While these roles do show off Theron’s acting chops, she’s due for a change.
This is not to say that there isn’t merit to this grim but satisfying movie. She portrays a single mother, between jobs, with an intelligent but downtrodden 12-year-old daughter, portrayed by AnnaSophia Robb, last seen in Jumpers, but best known for Bridge to Terabithia. Nick Stahl co-stars as Theron’s brother, a highway construction worker. After Theron runs off with a truck driver, an ill-equipped Stahl is left to raise her daughter in his dingy apartment.
Sleepwalking, which was filmed in the bleak, wintry plains outside Regina,
Saskatchewan, culminates at a remote ranch where Dennis Hopper, as the grandfather, reluctantly shelters the girl and her uncle after they’ve fled the clutches of the social services. I usually condemn such movies, wondering why we need be subjected to dreary lives going nowhere. But this one is the exception. The performances are underplayed superbly, under debut director William Maher. Somehow you care about this troubled little family. The story evokes real life, and Theron is careful not to overplay her supporting part. Sleepwalking is fine ensemble act-
ing in a gritty slice-of-life movie.
Unlike the recent U2 concert film, which was just 14 numbers tossed at us, Meat Loaf’s In Search of Paradise welcomes every viewer, not just his fans. After several years of being cajoled, the rock star finally relented and allowed cameras to follow him and his band at the start of an 18-month world tour. We’re taken backstage, into rehearsals, pre-concert pep sessions, and on the bus as they constantly dissect their latest performance and read the reviews of local critics. The result is 90 minutes of music, interspersed with scenes of a band working as a team, the head of which is a unique performer keenly aware of his fans and his need to adjust and evolve. At one point, Meat Loaf and his band don 1970s garb
and wigs, but soon realize the gimmick isn’t working. Later they scrap their stage routines and make major adjustments for their next concert. It’s a fascinating look at how one artist goes about his work. I wish all so-called concert films were this thorough.
Constantine’s Sword is an unusual documentary about a former priest, James Carroll, exploring the roots of anti-Semitism. Carroll, the son of an Air Force lieutenant general and former FBI agent, begins his movie at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There’s a short interview with the founder and ex-pastor of New Life Church, Ted Haggard (he was caught with a male prostitute), whose minions infiltrated the Academy to preach. There’s an interview with a Jewish graduate of the Academy whose two sons and Christian daughter-in-law recall finding fliers for the Mel Gibson movie Passion of the Christ on their plates at every meal back in 2004. Carroll then talks to religious leaders, shows a photo of his family in an audience with Pope John XXIII, and takes us back to the beginnings of Christianity in the Roman empire of Constantine.
This film is also a journey into Carroll’s own past and the world around him. It uncovers startling tolerance of violence against Jews. Along the Rhine he encounters some of the locations of the infamous Crusade of 1096, the first record of a pogrom against local Jews, perpetrated by French and German hordes headed to the Middle East. He finds the caretaker of an ancient cemetery, a Holocaust survivor, who is overcome by tears while retelling the terrible history of that blood-soaked land. Incredible, and not to be missed.
Then there’s Irina Palm, a very unusual English drama starring Marianne Faithfull—yes that Marianne Faithfull, the 1960s singer and sometime girlfriend of Mick Jagger back in the day. She plays a demure widow whose grandson is dying of an unnamed condition at a nearby hospital. The boy’s only hope is a new treatment available only in far-off Australia. It’ll be paid for, but the boy’s parents, of limited means, will have to pay the plane fare and hotel bills. To earn money to save her grandson’s life, she takes the only job she can land: satisfying men in a sex parlor in London’s seedy Soho district. It’s a terrible secret she’s keeping, but as her “talent” gains her a bit of a reputation, it becomes almost impossible to conceal her new source of income.
Writer/director Sam Garbarski has let his star underplay her role, evoking
pathos and quiet desperation as well as determination. Miki Manojlovic is colorful as the sex palace owner. Kevin Bishop and Siobhan Hewlett head a fine supporting cast as her son and daughter-in-law. Look for Jenny Agutter, who starred as a teenager in Walkabout, in a cameo in this fine, offbeat film.
