Day 3 - September 3
Three Cheers for Frears and his countryman Figgis

We live in a flawed universe on an imperfect planet but High Fidelity is a perfect film. If you've already had a chance to see it in your home town and failed to do so, proceed to kick yourself and do penance. I am not a conspiracy buff, but it seems obvious that there's a conspiracy impeding the rightful box office success of terrific films that happen to star John Cusack. Case in point: Pushing Tin, presented at last year's edition of Deauville. Cusack was stupendous (in his patented low key hang-dog manner) as an air traffic controller.

This time around he's stupendous (in his patented low key hang-dog manner) as Rob, the congenitally mopey owner of a Chicago record emporium specialized in rare vinyl LPs. Rob's sensibilities are intimately connected to his ferocious devotion to pop culture's most insidious artifacts -- starting with the songs that sneak into our emotional histories and lodge there like renegade DNA. Rob's latest girlfriend has just left him, prompting a reassessment of Rob's serial failures in romance. Stunningly well adapted from Nick Hornby's novel, this delightful little movie is also cause for celebration because its British core has been keenly adapted to an American milieu - - Chicago to be precise. I'm from Chicago, as is Cusack, and I'm here to vouch for a job well done. On the basis of this film and the previous Stephen Frears-Cusack collaboraion, The Grifters, it's safe to say that these two names together on a movie poster are as sure a bet as Microsoft stock when it first went public.

Frears tells your roving reporter that it was considered a calamity that Hornby's London-set novel was being hi-jacked to the American Midwest, but that "I read the script and actually found it much improved." Frears then mockingly buries his head in his hands and laments "Is that terrible? Should I not have said that?" Hornby's universe was previously adapted with unquestionably high fidelity in the film Fever Pitch, about the author's all-encompassing devotion to soccer.

By the way, Frears (on the basis of our name alone) also told us that FilmFestivals TV "is a terrible idea! Movies should not be relegated to some ghetto - they should circulate freely and people should go to theaters and see them. I like going to the movies. I've noticed I hardly ever watch videos anymore. Probably a sign that I'm growing old and sentimental." Your humble scribe shares this view of the absolute merits of watching films projected on a big screen rather than via video, but begs to differ on the relative merits of the FilmFestivals mission.

Frears, who has enjoyed both rousing success (My Beautiful Laundrette,Dangerous Liaisons) and resounding failure (Hero, Mary Reilly) at the box office is not one to whine, stating with cordial vehemence that an audience is never wrong. "If they don't like your movie, that's their perogative. Make a better movie. There's nothing sillier than an executive who says, 'The audience was stupid.' How can an audience be stupid? If millions of people enjoy the Farrelly Bros. films then that's what they enjoy. It's their right to like what they like and to dislike anything that doesn't capture their fancy."

Frears says that some stories call for the texture that film affords but that it wouldn't have bothered him to shoot High Fidelity on video instead of celluloid. Relatively few filmmakers have made truly groundbreaking films with digital video to date, but Mike Figgis (who, like Frears, is an easy-going Englishman who has told both British and American stories on film) gets my vote for the pick of the litter. His ambitious, utterly engaging Time Code played Deauville today. The film, shot with four DV cameras running simultaneously for 90 minutes, presents the results of those four continuous takes on the four quarters of a composite screen. The emotion generated by the improvisational urgency of sustained uninterrupted takes is ever so convincing. The action underway on the four screens is self-contained but also intersects with the other three tales-in-progress. Until video came along, the best example of letting the camera run for as long as a roll of film would permit was Hitchcock's Rope. The continuous take is a miracle - a much abused one in some quarters. But Figgis has made the visual equivalent of the conceptual leap Jack Kerouac initiated by inserting a big roll of paper into his typewriter to type "On the Road."

Deauville is devoted entirely to American film, with one annual exception; The Prix Michel d'Ornano. The prize, named for the late mayor who helped start the festival 26 years ago (and whose widow Anne is the town's gracious and perfectly bilingual mayor today), rewards a first film from a French writer-director. This year's winner of the cash prize given by Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America is Le Secret (The Secret) by Virginie Wagon. Wagon's intimate, sexually explicit film follows a thirtysomething woman who has a loving husband, a cute young son and a good job she enjoys. The "secret" of the title refers to the torrid affair she embarks upon with an older black American man and the repurcussions of her sudden rediscovery of risk and pleasure and flaunting the status quo. The film, which premiered in Cannes, won the French-language Tournage Award, the top prize at the most recent Avignon Film Festival.

The Deauville competition gets underway tomorrow with Girlfight and Let it Snow. Tomorrow's tribute to Susan Sarandon promises to be the next highlight.

Wilma Radar