| Goodbye
Lover
Roland Joffe USA
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| Directed by Palme d'Or winner Roland Joffe, Goodbye Lover unites fresh
writing with established names to emerge as a darkly comic thriller about
the dangers of spin. Sandra Dunmore (Patricia Arquette) and her husband
Jake (Dermot Mulroney) are a young professional couple whose careers rely
on their ability to giftwrap the truth. When Jake's alcoholism begins to
jeopardise his work, Sandra must find a way to support the lifestyle they
both so desperately desire.
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| Avarice runs in the family, and Jake's older brother, Ben
(Don Johnson), a high-powered public relations executive, also wants to
preserve his access to the good life, as does Peggy Blaine (Mary-Louise
Parker), an ambitious junior in his office.
It takes a cynical detective called Rita Pompano (Ellen Degeneres) to see through their carefully disguised agendas. For her first feature, producer Alexandra Milchan was looking for the kind of off-beat material that isn't generally found at big agencies. She and her sister Elinor (daughters of producer Arnon Milchan) found the script, written by first-time writer Ron Peer, at New York-based Gotham Films. They loved it and brought it to Regency. "They said, 'nobody has heard of this writer, nobody has heard of this company. Why should we make it?'' Undeterred, the Milchan sisters set about trying to package it themselves. "We heard that Roland Joffe was looking for something different and we sent it to him. Then, on the day our option was up, Roland called and said he loved it." They made a deal in 24 hours. Don Johnson was an interesting choice for the part of Ben Dunmore, the sexy and sociopathic publicist who is the least-sympathetic character in the script. The film provides an opportunity for Johnson to explore a role with several layers. "I liked the fact that neither the characters nor the story are necessarily what they seem to be, but are more about what's going on underneath," observes Johnson. Patricia Arquette was chosen for her ability to inject an essentially dark character with a genuine zest for life. Bizarrely, she sings numbers from The Sound of Music throughout the film. "It's as if Sandra is 'Julie Andrews: the Bad Seed' explains Arquette. Mulroney too has the chance to make an impact as a degenerate in this film, and make a move away from his boy-next-door image. But it is Joffe's casting of Ellen Degeneres as the jaded detective that will generate the most interesting responses from moviegoers. Since filming ended, Degeneres has gone from being one of the most popular stars on television to being the most controversial and, finally, to being unemployed when her Emmy award-winning eponymous sitcom was cancelled just months after her character 'came out' on the show. Depending on what happens between now and its release, this movie just may be the vehicle she needs to kick-start her stalled career. For Joffe fans, Goodbye Lover will appear to be something of a departure. Gone are the dramatic landscapes and tragic heroes that characterised both The Mission and The Killing Fields. Instead, he gives us shiny surfaces, California sunshine and characters who are motivated entirely by self interest. "When I first read the script," explains Joffe. "I fell in love with the wryness of it, with the idea that in a sociopathic world, the sociopath is king – or in this case, queen." Because the film's theme is the contemporary obsession with image, Joffe and his team sought a way to incorporate this into the picture's visual language. The result is a set that glimmers with glass – a substance that speaks volumes because of its translucent, yet reflective qualities. Designed by Stewart Starkin, an architect with commercial television experience, the transparent labyrinth that is Ben and Jake's office echoes the multi-layered structure of the film. Although director of photography Dante Spinotti (LA Confidential) admits that the reflective surfaces did present challenges, he revelled in the symbolic possibilities they provided. "Shooting into a mirror or a reflection is like having two shots in one. It's like telling two realities at the same time." As Degeneres' character says in the film, "Either the world's right side up or upside down, it depends on how you look at it. Close the book of rules and there's just people caught in situations – like you and me." Alannah Weston |
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