Four of Them

-So I watched this last week, and meant to review it, really, truly, for seriously, but then school came about, and my sister insisted I watch all of Young Justice (which I did. Fuck yeah.), and I didn't remember until just now. So take any of the succeeding with the knowledge that I only half remember what I wanted to say about it at the time.

-So. Steve Buscemi is a fading political journalist who gets assigned to interview a paparazzi-prone TV star (Sienna Miller). They meet at a restaurant, bump heads, hate each other profusely, and storm off. After she inadvertantly causes an accident with the cab he's in, she takes him to her apartment, where they wax about fame, reality, and some such shit.

-It really is a fascinating film (based off the movie by Theo van Gogh, and if you don't recognize the name either way, pity your soul). Miller's apartment, the one they use for the movie, is big, a nice studio apartment, where different areas are structured to make it feel like completely different places from the other. It's claustrophobic when it has to be, lonely, cloying, comfortable. As the two pace and subtly chase each other around, it's like their touring the city, almost, making every conversation fit the surroundings.

-Buscemi and Miller are good here. Going from strangers to enemies to grudging acquaintences to romantically-involved-ers to father-daughter to opponents (it's very different from enemies) to friends, concluding with a mix of it all, a clear winner in the heap, and one could argue, ending it all as strangers. All of this is undercut by a weird sexual tension (any sexual tension of Steve Buscemi is weird, okay?). Buscemi, as always, plays his character's smarm perfectly, narcissistic and aggressive and arrogant, and whenever you get backstory evidence to possibly sympathise with the guy, it never really lands, as either during or after each confession, he seems to try and use it as leverage for something else.

-I don't keep up much with Sienna Miller's tabloid life, or any of her life, really (you know not the contempt I have for her after Layer Cake ), but I imagine this is playing on her reputation as, I don't know, vacuous pseduo-actress/model thing. She really is quite charismatic as a cleverer-than-she-looks starlet who is either very troubled or very manipulative, or maybe she's just too damn sincere. Whatever. I'm sure my sister would like her boots.

-Being biased towards chamber dramas in film, mostly because I respect that, unlike theatre, it takes much greater will-power as a filmmaker not to roam elsewhere, having the power of a portable camera and a budget, that is. I love seeing what people do with the limitations of the sub-genre (in fact, reminded that I was supposed to write something about this while reading an AV Club review of Sunset Limited). Why is this relevant? It's not. But your this far down, so you've either stuck with my incoherent vomit until the end, in which case, wassup, or you skipped down past the preceeding paragraphs, in which case, ...)