Venecia y Toronto: "The Informant!", de Steven Soderbergh (Variety review)

A Warner Bros. release presented in association with Participant Media and Groundswell Prods. of a Section Eight-Jaffe/Braunstein Enterprise production. Produced by Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein, Kurt Eichenwald, Gregory Jacobs, Jennifer Fox. Executive producers, George Clooney, Jeff Skoll, Michael London. Co-producer, Michael Polaire. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Screenplay, Scott Z. Burns, based on the book “The Informant (A True Story)” by Kurt Eichenwald.

Mark Whitacre - Matt Damon
FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard - Scott Bakula
FBI Special Agent Bob Herndon - Joel McHale
Ginger Whitacre - Melanie Lynskey
Terry Wilson - Rick Overton
Mick Andreas - Tom Papa
Mark Cheviron - Tom Wilson
Aubrey Daniel - Clancy Brown
James Epstein - Tony Hale
Robin Mann - Ann Cusack
FBI Special Agent Dean Paisley - Allan Havey
Liz Taylor - Rusty Schwimmer

By TODD MCCARTHY

The wacky little brother of “Erin Brockovich,” “The Informant!” goofs around lightheartedly while still doing some justice to the true-life story of a zealous but wildly delusional corporate whistle-blower. A larky outing for director Steven Soderbergh after the somber rigors of “Che” and “The Girlfriend Experience,” the pic showcases an excellent performance by a chubbed-out Matt Damon as a Midwestern executive who’s so smart he’s dumb. Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny, this Warner Bros. release will have to rely mostly on Damon for its B.O., which looks to be modest.

Having already done a major film that called out big business with a straight face, Soderbergh returns to the same arena with a cocked eyebrow and lots of jokers up his sleeve. The exclamation point on the title and the jaunty, old-fashioned score by Marvin Hamlisch serve as immediate tipoffs as to the film’s hyperreal intentions, which will inevitably put some viewers off, but for others will provide an amusing, original angle on the sort of story that’s almost always done with an earnest sense of self-importance. In some ways, you could call “The Informant!” Soderbergh’s Richard Lester movie, in light of his devotion to the Britain-based American director of cutting, serious comedies.

Packed out with 30 extra pounds, a moustache, artfully done hairpiece and dorky glasses, Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a gung-ho VP at a Decatur, Ill.-based agribusiness firm, Archer Daniels Midland, where “corn goes in one end and profit comes out the other.” A career biochemist entirely behind the promotion of such food additives as lysine, Mark unleashes a staggering corporate and legal tsunami when he tells his boss he’s detected a mole in the ranks that’s allowing a Japanese competitor to mess with their lysine manufacturing.

Instead of meeting a $10 million extortion demand, ADM calls in the FBI, which taps the home phone of the cooperative Mark. At the urging of his wife, Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), Mark goes further, privately informing agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) of a massive international price-fixing scheme involving lysine. Suddenly excited -- in a boyish secret-agent sort of way -- at the prospect of going undercover, Mark agrees to wear a wire at work to provide the evidence the government needs to make its case, and he circles the globe trying to get executives to blurt out what is seldom addressed explicitly.

The lynchpin and most inspired stroke of the entire movie is the voiceover narration screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“The Bourne Ultimatum”) has cooked up for Mark. The almost constant flow of Mark’s interior thoughts crucially signals the man’s active fantasy life, as well as his intelligence, imagination, humor and oddness. Sometimes the private commentary relates to onscreen events, but more often it’s borderline stream-of-consciousness, a wonderful conceit that still only partially reveals the protagonist, but suggests that part of him is out of touch not only with reality but with himself.

Labeling himself Agent 0014, “because I’m twice as smart as James Bond,” Mark also is obsessed with Michael Crichton novels, particularly “Rising Sun,” for its prediction of a Japanese takeover of world business. Other casual details also speak volumes, such as his huge collection of expensive European sports cars.

At a certain point, Mark’s story begins to simultaneously unravel and become more stupendous than ever, driving his FBI contacts batty -- well, there used to be price-fixing but there’s not anymore; there never was a mole in the first place; once the miscreants at ADM are cleared out, Mark will be the last man standing and he’ll run the company. Over the course of 2½ years, Mark and the FBI get plenty of incriminating stuff on tape, but that’s only half the story, as Mark’s machinations become wildly more grandiose.

Soderbergh doesn’t play any of this for outright laughs but has cast quite a few comic actors in supporting roles -- even the Smothers Brothers pop up in cameos, Tom as the ADMchairman, Dick as a judge -- and lets the comedy emerge from the head-spinning swirl of events and mental charades. Filming in actual locations helpfully grounds the flights of the fabulist protag -- even the Whitacre home at the time was used -- and the corporate offices, unstylish suits and assorted bland hotels and offices exude total authenticity. Soderbergh’s lensing alter ego, Peter Andrews, again gets excellent results with the Red camera.

Damon is in very sharp form in his fifth film with Soderbergh. The thesp makes Mark brazen in his conviction that he’s always right and unremorseful about his fabrications, but never in a superior, hubristic manner; as is slowly revealed, he’s always been able to rationalize any alteration of reality that served his purposes, and even when faced with his own deviousness, he never doubts that, “I’m the good guy in all this.”

One weak spot is the portrayal of his marriage. Having known Mark since youth, Ginger sticks with him no matter what. But she has to assume a greater complicity than is gleaned from the way Mark brushes aside her inquiries into developments, and a keener awareness on her part of what goes on in his strange head would have been welcome.

With: Tom Smothers, Dick Smothers.

Camera (Technicolor, HD), Peter Andrews; editor, Stephen Mirrione; music, Marvin Hamlisch; production designer, Doug Meerdink; art directors, David E. Scott, William Hunter; set designers, Dawn Brown Manser, Jane Wuu; set decorator, Dan Clancy; costume designer, Shoshana Rubin; sound (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), Dennis Towns; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Larry Blake; assistant director, Gregory Jacobs; casting, Carmen Cuba. Reviewed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Sept. 1, 2009. (In Venice Film Festival -- noncompeting; Toronto Film Festival -- Special Presentations.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 108 MIN.

"The Informant!", de Steven Soderbergh (Trailer)

"The Girlfriend Experience", de Steven Soderbergh (crítica del Village Voice)

By J. Hoberman

Steven Soderbergh has no particular stylistic signature and one of the most uneven oeuvres imaginable. But he does have interests. The essence of cine Soderbergh is the application of the filmmaker’s intelligence to a specific problem. In Che, it was the nature of a historical actor; in The Girlfriend Experience, it’s the nature of acting.

The hardcore teen queen who took the name Sasha Grey and refers to her porn films as performance art here plays a paid escort called Chelsea. Working out of the posh Manhattan loft she shares with her boyfriend, a professional trainer (played by erstwhile trainer Chris Santos), Chelsea charges $2,000 an hour. For something like $25,000, a "date" with this slim, pretty, perfectly-turned-out 20-year-old can really be like a date. The movie’s opening scene has the escort and her less-than-middle-aged john dining at some painfully hip boîte and discussing the movie they just saw (Man on Wire), before they retire to his pad to make out on the couch—with breakfast the next morning on the penthouse terrace. It’s October 2008, the stock market is plunging, and, like most of Chelsea’s clients, he feels obligated to give her investment advice.

The Girlfriend Experience is a mosaic of short, largely a-chronological scenes. Flashbacks are indistinguishable from flash-forwards; the emphasis is on Chelsea’s behavior in the here and now. Soderbergh’s camera placement signifies the intimacy that is the escort’s product. The economic imperative rules nearly every interaction: Chelsea’s capital is her body and her persona. A conscientious entrepreneur, she dutifully writes up her dates—noting her outfit (half the movie’s budget must have gone for her clothes), topics of conversation, and sexual acts performed or not. She’s developing her own website and, in addition to her accountant and a financial manager, consults some online types, including a sex critic (onetime Premiere movie critic, Glenn Kenny), who offers to "up her profile" by reviewing her services on his blog.

With some clients, Chelsea plays the shrink, low-key and solicitous; with others, she’s simply a source of physical comfort. With most, however, she’s the ideal girlfriend—a poised and personable ingénue—which is more or less the role that Sasha Grey, reader of Thomas Pynchon, composer of "noise music," and winner of the 2008 AVN Award for Best Oral Sex Scene, has in "life." Grey, who has let it be known that she considered taking the porn name "Anna Karina," is the only professional actor in the movie, playing a character who is always acting and who has to cope with things that might afflict any young actress. Or filmmaker. Chelsea is being pursued by a journalist (New York magazine staff writer Mark Jacobson), who wants to write a profile and seems genuinely eager to discuss her "inner you" (which is to say, the real Sasha). The movie’s most shocking bit of prose, however, is the scathingly hostile critical review that starts out panning her "flat affect" and "clammy hands" before really getting personal. Finally, in the movie’s key dramatic interlude, Chelsea is betrayed by a weak-willed screenwriter—art imitating life imitating (Soderbergh’s) art.

No less than Che, or even the Ocean’s Eleven movies, The Girlfriend Experience is a film about its own making. It’s also a hall of mirrors. Are we watching an authentic sacred monster playing the part of a cute little chippie—or is it vice versa? (Imagine one performer embodying both the Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider roles in Last Tango in Paris.) Grey isn’t the first porn actress to go straight, but she may be the first to allegorize her own situation—projecting an on-screen self-confidence that’s indistinguishable from pathos.

Críticas de cine: "Che, el argentino", de Steven Soderbergh

Aquí abajo, otra vez, va la versión extendida de una crítica bastante más reducida publicada hoy en "Clarín" y que se puede leer aquí.


Los norteamericanos acuñaron un término para definir a los rodajes en lugares públicos, a las apuradas, sin pedir permiso y con muy poco presupuesto: los llamaron "guerrilla filmmaking". Y si bien no puede decirse que, con sus 65 millones de dólares de presupuesto, sus actores famosos y sus locaciones internacionales, "Che" haya sido un "rodaje de guerrilla", hay algo en la factura del filme que remeda ese espíritu. Y nada más apropiado que eso para una película sobre Ernesto Guevara.

Steven Soderbergh, cuya carrera siempre ha oscilado entre trabajos efectivos para la industria y otros, muy independientes, para consumo casi personal, encontró en "Che" --como lo hizo en "Traffic"-- un punto de unión entre ambos mundos. Se trata de una gran producción casera, una película que invierte su tiempo y su ritmo en lo que las demás dejan de lado, que evita las escenas que todo el mundo filmaría y que se siente, casi, como el documental del rodaje de una película sobre el Che Guevara. O sobre la imposibilidad de hacer un filme convencional sobre su figura.

Lo que hizo Soderbergh ante tamaño desafío fue tirar a la basura todos los Grandes Exitos. No hay desembarco del Granma, no hay entrada triunfal en La Habana, no hay póster (casi no hay boina) y hay, apenas y al final, una larga secuencia narrada en forma clásica, que es la de la batalla de Santa Clara en la que, como bien dijo el director de "Erin Brocovich" alguna vez, trató de imitar el estilo de John Sturges. Y sin dudas lo logró.

El resto del filme es un "pequeño anecdotario de una revolución". Soderbergh parece partir de la idea que hacer una revolución es --como tantas otras cosas-- un trabajo, una lucha cotidiana, un esfuerzo de un grupo de gente en torno a un objetivo. Ese objetivo no está descontextualizado ni desideologizado --al contrario, uno podría decir que en ciertos momentos el filme se torna algo didáctico, lo que es justificable ya que no todo el planeta es especialista en la vida y obra de Guevara--, pero el director escenifica situaciones que muchos considerarían innecesarias (rutinas diarias de organización, revisaciones médicas, chistes internos, largas escenas de saludos y camaradería, debates específicos en la ONU, conversaciones banales), pero que permiten que el espectador se coloque en la situación, efecto aumentado por la cámara en mano y la imagen digital. No se trata del Mito, la Epica, la Hazaña: son personas avanzando por la isla, sumando a sus filas campesinos, enfrentando peleas internas, lidiando con enemigos y llegando, finalmente, a una victoria que surge casi como lógica consecuencia de todo lo que la precede.

"El argentino" --tamaño título-- no puede ser completamente analizada sin su película-espejo, "Guerrilla", segunda mitad de un filme que se extiende por más de cuatro horas. Son dos películas diferentes --de estilo, ritmo, formato, tono-- pero que se complementan, cierran una saga. Vista así, es como una película inocente, esperanzadora, la recreación de un triunfo pólitico, épico y físico. Falta la caída, la traición, la tragedia. "Che" se completa como película recién al final.

Y si, como han dicho tantos, la revolución no la hace una sola persona, las dos partes del "Che" son mucho más grupales y generosas de lo que suelen ser este tipo de biografías. Guevara es central aquí (en "Guerrilla" lo es mucho menos), pero como parte de un todo humano y geográfico. Es por eso que Soderbergh evita los primeros planos y la postalita. Y si bien en algún momento lo coloca en algún pedestal ético inalcanzable, siempre lo rebaja a lo humano en situaciones ordinarias.

Para eso, claro, hay que referirse al enorme aporte de Benicio del Toro. Es el tipo de actor ideal para esta idea de película: de tono bajo, mesurado, poco creído de sí mismo y con sentido del humor, dueño de una presencia que se impone sin necesidad de gritos. Del Toro es un Guevara sinuoso, enfermizo (el asma está muy remarcado a lo largo del filme, evidenciando la gran complicación extra que implicaba para el Che), discreto. Es un lider humano y accesible. Está ahí, presente, como la película, dando la impresión de que lo que se ve está sucediendo delante de nuestros ojos.

Se podrían criticar varios aspectos de "El argentino", en especial desde la mirada fina de, bueno, los argentinos. Acentos y actuaciones algo irregulares, una entrevista que Guevara da en 1964 al ir a Nueva York en la que se lo escucha explicitando lo tantas veces explicitado, y algunos detalles más. Pero lo que Soderbergh consigue aquí es algo cercano a una hazaña, algo que muchos considerábamos imposible al menos dentro de los convencionalismos narrativos de un cine de ficción tradicional.

Soderbergh no es, digamos, Terrence Malick o Albert Serra, y nunca pensamos que iba a mostrar al Che caminando y silbando bajito por dos horas mientras la cámara se hunde entre la maleza. Pero dentro de sus posibilidades --culturales, económicas, hasta políticas--, lo que ha hecho aquí (y con "aquí" me refiero a la versión completa de "Che", la otra es aún menos convencional y más "europea" que ésta) es en un punto equiparable a lo que Serra hace con El Quijote o los Reyes Magos: atemperar el drama, quitar la psicología, desinflar el Mito.

En "Che", Ernesto Guevara es, literalmente "el argentino". Un tipo en un país que no es el suyo, que se levanta a la mañana para ir a trabajar por algo en lo que cree y que, por las noches, se va a dormir cansado, fatigado, sin saber si podrá cumplir con su tarea. No sabe tampoco que la historia le deparará un lugar privilegiado. Y eso es lo que demuestra que el Che está aquí en buenas manos, ya que un cineasta no se sienta a escribir ni a filmar la Historia: la Historia es algo que surge --o no-- cuando la película se termina.

Entrevista a Steven Soderbergh

Film Comment Link

Cambio de rumbo para Soderbergh

Se sabe que la carrera de Steven Soderbergh se ha caracterizado por la variedad, el cambio y la casi imperiosa necesidad de sorprender, de cambiar de rumbo y de registro. Sin embargo, este cambio que se viene entre la película anterior y la próxima me sorprende hasta a mí. Luego de dirigir la discutida --pero, en mi opinión, bastante lograda-- biografía cinematográfica del Che Guevara, Soderbeergh ha puesto sus ojos en ota biopic, esta de un personaje muy diferente: Liberace, que tendría como protagonista nada menos que a Michael Douglas.

El filme, con guión de Richard LaGravanese, haría otra apuesta fuerte al poner a Matt Damon en el papel de Scott Thorson, el hombre que le hizo un juicio al extravagante pianista por 113 millones asegurando que fue su pareja durante cinco años. Liberace murió en 1987 a los 67 años.

Sin embargo, aseguran en "Variety", la biografía de Liberace no sería la próxima película de Soderbergh, cuyo "Che" fue comprado para su distribución en los Estados Unidos tras un "corte" de 15 minutos a sus más de cuatro horas y media de duración. Soderbergh dirigirá primero "The Girlfriend Experience", sobre una prostituta, el que será otro de sus proyectos de bajo presupuesto hechos en digital, como "Bubble".

El hombre, de cualquier manera, ya tiene otra película terminada: "The Informant", también con Damon.

Especial Trailer Trash - "Che - El Argentino" (2008)