|
 Catherine
Hardwicke might be in the midst of creating her own genre, the YA -- or
Young Adult -- girl’s film. The director of the (then-) shocking
tale of two way-precocious pubescent girls in 2003’s Thirteen had her
biggest fame (- and infamy) with the blockbuster
teen-meets-sparkly vampire romance, Twilight {2008}. As the
latter was one of the most unintentionally hilarious films I’d seen in
recent years, I was more than curious as to what to make of her newest
epic, Red Riding Hood.
Nowhere near as awesomely awful as Twilight, Hardwicke seems to dwell in
that same strange fever-dream reality of the adolescent girl. Indeed,
one reckons the producers of the film, including Leonardo DiCaprio, can
see the future and understand it very well may be in the Hello Kitty
wallets of the thirteen to eighteen-year-old set that this film is made
for.
Using
tons of aerial shots of a forest landscape (- apparently leftover
from Twilight), we are transported to medieval times, where
superstition rules a small hamlet buried deep in a non-specifically
European wood. For as long as Valerie can remember, the town has given
its best livestock to a legendary man-eating wolf and the détente has
held with no casualties. The murder of Valerie’s sister sparks hysteria
that the wolf isn’t merely a jumped-up puppy, but a were who walks
amongst them incognito in the daylight. Calling on a wolfbuster in the
form of Father Solomon, unease becomes the stuff of inquisitions as
suspicion as to who the monster might be runs rife, threatening to tear
apart the peaceful little village. This is way too much for a young
girl like Valerie, a plucky thing who already had a fight on her hands
against a proposed arranged marriage to the richest catch in town, when
all she wants is to settle down with her simple woodcutter beau.
Besides those recycled treetops (Sometimes covered with snow to show
a difference from Twilight. Clever!), the production values of Red
Riding Hood are unbelievable and not in a good way. Beginning in a
woodland paradise where we first meet Valerie as a child, Hardwicke
saturates the colours in these scenes giving the film a sumptuous,
lovely storybook feel which is quickly, inexplicably abandoned. Instead
the village suddenly becomes a cheap, obvious-looking Hollywood set
whose ugly and slapdash construction makes one wonder if it’s been
assembled out of plywood by junior high-schoolers. That’s actually an
insult to junior high-schoolers. We do get a ratty-looking wolf that
made me wish Hardwicke had lured some of special effects team from the
Twilight films she didn’t direct to create a better canine. Did I
mention the wolf talks? Well, at least it does to Valerie, which is the
village’s first inkling that there might be a connection between beauty
and the beast.
Aside
from her perhaps unwitting embrace of camp, Hardwicke’s saving grace is
in casting some great actors to try to make up for the film’s
inequities. Gary Oldman in flippy hair and bright purple velvet robes
that look like a loaner from The Princess Bride is clearly in on the
joke. Had he his old Dracula fangs, he couldn’t take bigger bites out
of the scenery. Julie Christie is luminous even as she slums in this
treacle, which she could do in her sleep. She’s truly one fabulous,
feisty grandma with great taste in notice-me outerwear. Virginia
Madsen’s return to a proper big-screen vehicle is tampered by the fact
that her gorgeous face now seems incapable of registering emotion, à la
Cher. Hardwicke brings in Bella’s dad, Billy Burke, the one redeeming
quality of Twilight, to play Valerie’s old man. Burke plays drunk
through the majority of the piece, but one wonders if he hasn’t gone
Method for the surprisingly low energy he exhibits here. As Red
herself, Valerie, Amanda Seyfried’s well-known wide-spaced eyes capture
the adolescent inner turbulence that the Red Riding Hood story is often
a parable for, while conveying the post-modern spunk required of a
Hardwicke heroine.
But it
seems, for the good performances, there must always be the comically
bad. There are a few to speak of, but none so glaring as that of
Valerie’s loverboy, the purported hero and heartthrob of the piece,
Peter, played by Shiloh Fernandez. I was surprised to learn that there
was no dearth of hair products for the medieval metrosexual woodcutter
and further wondered what in olden times the gel responsible for that
perfect fringe wall was made of? Peter constantly tells Valerie of his
love and worry for her as things with the wolf get hairy, but one could
never tell from his facial expressions; the infinitesimal range of which
runs from to catching a bad smell to straight up Blue Steel. Looking as
if he’s never had a splinter in his life, never mind chopped down a
tree, Fernandez seems more like a Gossip Girl refugee for the smug,
self-satisfaction in his every glance and absolute lack of effort in
conveying anything past the mumbled lines of his script.
For
all its shortcomings and overreach (- I didn’t even start on the
faux-lesbian dark ages dance-off.), I can’t despise Red
Riding Hood the way I did Twilight. Twilight was deadly earnest in its
presentation, whereas Red Riding Hood seems to own its flakiness.
Perhaps this is solely owed to the (mostly) superior cast who
play their scenes as if knowing they’ve signed up for a campy pubescent
fantasy that’s either going to be a huge blockbuster or a giant blot on
their CVs. Most manage without winking at the audience, except for Gary
Oldman, who plays to the back rows as if he’s starring in an English
pantomime and even so, it’s all good. I doubt I could take any film of
hers seriously again, but director Hardwicke’s impassioned, overwrought
cinematic fever dreams are broad and strange enough to accommodate all
forms of thespian weirdness and practically cry out for it, which would
have made a film like Red Riding Hood far more interesting and
entertaining than if it’d had been played straight.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
March
11th, 2011
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