Bringing together Ted Demme, director of The Ref (little seen outside the US) and Scott Rosenberg, writer of the cult thriller Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Beautiful Girls has a lot more than just its female cast to recommend it.
The film deals with that most American of subjects, the high school reunion. A bunch of guys (Matt Dillon, Noah Emmerich, Timothy Hutton, Max Perlich and Michael Rapaport) reassemble in snowbound Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts, to consider their lives since graduation. For most of them, it hasn't exactly been a catalogue of triumphs. They drink, they talk (mainly about girls) and they see a little action (mainly to do with girls). Nothing much else happens in the film, except that everyday lives get looked into which is something that doesn't happen all that often in Hollywood movies.
The male and female performances are uniformly strong, but the real revelation of the film when it opened in the US in February turned out to be 14-year-old Natalie Portman, who starred opposite Jean Reno in Léon (The Professional) and was Al Pacino's troubled daughter in Heat. Here, she plays a flirtatious 12-year-old whose on-screen relationship with Timothy Hutton is disturbingly sensual.
'Natalie absolutely blew me out of my seat in The Professional,' says Demme. 'And, after one reading of the script for Beautiful Girls, I knew she was the only actress who could play this character.'
'Acting probably is making me grow up faster than I normally would because I'm around adults so much of the time,' says Portman herself. 'But they're all quite intent on maintaining my innocence. Ted told me that if anyone ever did anything bad to me, I have 20 big brothers who'd rush to my rescue!'
Prod co: Woods Entertainment.
Prod: Cary Woods
Dir: Ted Demme
Guión (Scr): Scott Rosenberg
Foto (Ph): Adam Kimmel
Art dir (Prod des): Dan Davis
Mus: David A Stewart
Mont (Ed): Jeffrey Wolf
Ints (Cast): Matt Dillon, Noah Emmerich, Lauren Holly, Timothy Hutton, Rosie O'Donnell, Martha Plimpton, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman
Ventas (Sales): Miramax International
Duración (Running time): 110 mins
Programacion (Screening): 19.30, 20 September, Astoria, 3; 09.00, 21 September, Victoria Eugenia
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