Financial Times (London,England)
September 1, 1994, Thursday
WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN (15) Luis Mandoki
THE SLINGSHOT (12) Ake Sandgren
Bernard-Henri Levy
Hollywood has traditionally been reluctant to make films about alcoholism. When drunks do appear on screen, they are usually used for either comic relief or a quick shot of pathos. Eliciting sympathy for the addict is a tricky business, requiring the genius of a Jack Lemmon or a Michael Keaton. Far better to afflict your hero with a less problematic disease. The makers of When a Man Loves a Woman seem to have lost sight of this fact, creating a wino weepie that never really engages the audience’s sympathy. In it, yuppie Alice Green (Meg Ryan) tries to kick her quart-a-day Vodka habit at an exclusive clinic, while her hunky, caring husband (Andy Garcia) looks after their angelic kids in a San Francisco dream home, aided by a diligent ethnic nanny. Setting aside the obvious cavil that if someone who looked like Meg Ryan drank a quart of Stoli a day she would not look much like Meg Ryan, it would still take a rare film indeed to make us care for such a pampered character. Unfortunately, director Luis Mandoki tries to push all our pity buttons without first earning our respect. He, along with writers Ronald Bass and Al Franken, would have us believe that their heroine merely catches alcoholism as she might ‘flu. It doesn’t wash. Kicking the bottle certainly has its heroic elements, but they are of a different order than those found in, say, terminal cases. Ryan is at a loss to portray a character for whom hitting bottom means taking a baby step down the social ladder, while Andy Garcia is equally at sea as her beleaguered spouse. Only Ellen Burstyn as Ryan’s acerbic mother can inject some realistic passion into the film, suggesting that somebody might be to blame for this boozing after all.
***** The Slingshot is one of those perfectly pitched coming-of-age stories that the Swedish film industry churns out with alarming regularity. Set in 1920s Stockholm, it follows the exploits of Roland, a poor yet resourceful 12-year-old who wins friends by using the condoms his progressive parents distribute to make slingshots. Director Ake Sandgren’s touch is as light as a feather, allowing him to modulate scenes of ribald anarchy and gentle emotion without ever hitting a wrong note. Lesser talents would have turned the prophylactic weaponry into the film’s centrepiece, but Sandgren wisely keeps it just one of many arresting images of youth. And it is a measure of the director’s ironic sensibility that when Roland finally escapes poverty for his childhood paradise, his destination turns out to be a reform school. Bernard-Henri Levy’s is an old-style polemic whose maker would like nothing better than to have its audience storm out of the ICA, rush across The Mall and besiege the Foreign Office, demanding something be done about the situation in Bosnia. Levy spent several months in the Balkans last year, collecting imagery too powerful for the TV news – snipers at work, the aftermath of bombings and beheadings, and one unforgettable scene of a concentration camp inmate dying of shock after being given his first drink of water in three days. Levy argues that the Bosnian government’s fate is a political situation which the west has cravenly transformed into a humanitarian crisis. It is a compelling point, though the director’s unchecked partisanship hinders his argument. The Serbs are referred to as ‘scum’ and at no time are they asked to give their side of the story, weak as it may be. NATO’s recent air strikes, meanwhile, undercut Levy’s accusations of western inaction. That said, this remains a disturbing documentary that should shame everyone who claims to suffer from compassion fatigue.
