That which is good about Martin Pieter Zandvliet’s Applause (Denmark, 2009) is extremely good. There’s a tour-de-force performance by its lead actress, Paprika Steen, which may warrant one of those ‘…if you see it for no other reason, see it for this performance…’ blurbs. And the script, by Zandvliet and Anders Frithiof August, is quite good at presenting the situations and characters, rather than explaining them outright - it’s a film script to be shown, rather than a story to be told. It provides a consistent narrative structure without imposing particular ideological constraints on its performers, or its audience.
Ms. Steen portrays Thea Barfoed, a well-known actress who has spent the last eighteen months extracting herself from the bottle, and her self-destructive dependence on it. It ruined her marriage, estranging her from a dutiful husband and two small sons. As the film opens, she’s playing Martha in a production of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’ Edward Albee’s dissection of a marriage running on liquor, mutual loathing and co-dependent neediness. One might assume that Thea’s using the role to exorcise demons that she’s all too familiar with in her real life. But her real-life occupation seems to be convincing her husband (who has remarried) that Everything’s OK Now, She’s Different, and Can She Have Their Children Back Now, Please? So, as the film proceeds, we start gauging whether Thea is sincerely different from her past self, and just having an awkwardly frustrating time making the long, slow, patient, real transition back to responsible adulthood, or whether this needy, passive-aggressive, antisocial, self-loathing harridan never had, and never will get, a clue as to why her life ended up to be such a shipwreck. Ms. Steen exhibits admirable range and credibility in setting those two outer behavioral boundaries, and then working most of the territory in-between across the length of the film. The film is About Her, in its entirety, and Steen is the subject of practically every frame.
When films like this work, they’re riveting, because we recognize the common humanity we share with characters like these, even as they plumb depths that perhaps you or I might never allow ourselves to find ourselves in. Or we empathize because we sense how much closer those depths might be to us than we’d like to imagine, how fragile our hold on the contented present might really be. And those are certainly things worth contemplating. John Cassavettes, an admittedly strong influence on Mr. Zandvliet, made astonishing films like ‘A Woman Under the Influence,’ ‘Husbands,’ and ‘Love Streams’ exploring that very subject – how fragile our hold on grounded reality really is, and whether things like love and family and the idea of God are really strong enough to save us from our perpetually inherent internal demons.
Sadly, this is the larger picture that Mr. Zandvliet seems to have let slip through his fingers. This only works if there’s a fully realized world surrounding Thea that we see her in relation to. Cassavettes’ films work because we understand why the individuals are compelling within the larger context of the other lives they touch. But any information we receive about the lives that are affected by Thea are only presented to us through Thea’s viewpoint. All we know about them is how they react to Thea. And this psychological myopia is only reinforced by Zandvliet’s visual choices. The predominant shot in any, any, scene in the film, regardless of circumstances, is the close-up of Thea. Thea preoccupied. Thea cajoling. Thea looking lovingly at her sons. Thea bullshitting her husband. Thea flirting with a stranger at a bar. Thea mortified. Thea furious. We don’t even see the other actors on stage in the ‘Virginia Woolf’ scenes. And those predominant close-ups are predominantly hand-held. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – Steadicam is becoming the AutoTune of filmmaking. There are actually set shots sprinkled in here and there, where he’s chosen to place the camera and compose a frame and express something visually rather than just document it. But they are few and far between.
For all of its genuine dramatic worth, I couldn’t help but be disappointed in the film as a whole. Mr. Zandvliet has intelligence and heart, but until he figures out how to get out of his own way as a director, he’s going to sell his earnest collaborators short.
‘Applause’ is part of the European Union Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It screens Sunday, March 20th at 3:00 P.M., and also Wednesday, March 23th at 6:00 P.M.
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