Fay Grim

It will be hard to give much of anything away in terms of plot, as the plot consists pretty much of everybody double-crossing everybody else; and it might also be helpful first to watch Henry Fool, although this new film manages to stand on its own two feet. Those feet are wobbly for most of the two hours, but the filmmakers somehow pull it off.

Parker Posey plays Fay Grim, a woman drawn into the adventures of her husband, Henry Fool, when a CIA agent comes around and tries to get her to go to Paris to retrieve some of her husband’s notebooks, the eight-volume collection of which supposedly contains his confessions. From New York to Paris to Istanbul and back to New York we go, then - oddly, however, the filmmakers never stop for very long to admire the scenery (although Parker Posey is awfully easy on the eyes). Along the way we discover that the notebooks might, in fact, contain all manner of written material, from confessions to nuclear weapons sites to satellite data - everything a good mess of a mystery movie needs for big success!

Fay is at first reluctant to participate in all of this nonsense, but then she is told first that her husband is dead, and second that he is alive - this by two different people. At some point along the way, she appears to get into the groove, so to speak, and almost seems to enjoy her work the more she warms up to it (think Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies, but omit the campy humor, which the filmmakers here try for, but fail to achieve). It’s also possible that she has always had a proclivity to espionage - this may be one of the things you get from watching Henry Fool that would help to make Fay Grim a more satisfying movie.

The trouble? (And didn’t you just know there was going to be trouble?) The characters have no real depth (unless they were better fleshed out in Henry Fool and writer-director Hal Hartley is working under the assumption that most of the people who see Fay Grim will be people who both saw and enjoyed Henry Fool) - and since everyone is double-crossing everyone else, no one seems genuine.

Hal Hartley and company are clearly shooting for a kind of tasty spy movie that has an incomprehensible plot and a healthy dose of campy fun. They don’t really succeed with the camp, although Jeff Goldblum as the CIA agent is midly funny, once or twice (especially when he drops F-bombs, which just sound odd coming out of his mouth). There is also a scene involving a cell phone set to vibrate which Fay, wearing a coat with no pockets, chooses to stow down the front of her panties. Naturally, during a somewhat awkward social scene, she gets an urgent call - and keeps getting that call over and over again, since she can’t reach down to extricate the phone, and the person calling absolutely has to get in touch with her at once. It’s kind of a cheap laugh, but Parker Posey does a good job with it.

Now that I’m sitting here and thinking about it, it strikes me that this might be a movie that works a little bit better the second time around. The only problem is that there are so many other movies out there, and so few hours in the day. What was it about this movie that would really make me want to sit down and give another two hours to it?

To flesh out that idea, I’ll mention briefly my favorite movie of all time, The Usual Suspects (an excellent film which some, who know who they are, have not seen). These two films are similar in many respects - mysteries with intricate plots and lots of characters that bring everything together at the end for a big payoff. From script to acting to direction, though, The Ususal Suspects does everything better than Fay Grim - the characters have more depth, the acting is far better, and none of it feels faked. For a movie that wants to make you think about what’s going on, Fay Grim is far too kinetic. And at the end of the two hours, what we have is a movie that isn’t nearly as good as it wants to be.