Ray Pride

"Simone" is about the ideal of perfection. While writer-director Andrew Niccol's second feature is about female beauty and how our celebrity culture fashions it, it's also about Al Pacino's line readings. Now there's perfection.

Pacino's first outright comedy, "Simone" seems at first to be a standard Hollywood satire, in love with the lore of backlots and star spats and "creative conflicts." A hissy-fit by a patronizing starlet (Winona Ryder, heartbreakingly winsome even when playing a jerk) leads to the shutdown of "Sunrise, Sunset," the newest project by all-but-down-and-out director Viktor Taransky (Pacino). Even studio exec and ex-wife Elaine (Catherine Keener) is about to give up on him, and Viktor has only the love of his 15-year-old daughter Lainey (radiant Evan Rachel Wood) to fall back on. "I can't work with a fake!" he yells.

Enter a computer genius who dies and leaves behind a piece of software for Taransky, "Simulation One," or "S1mØne." A virtual actress in a hard drive. Someone who will do everything the way a director would want. With the production of "Eternity Forever," a silly art film, Simone's a star, Taransky's in control, and everyone wants to know: Who is Simone? Where is she? And just who is she sleeping with?

Working with cinematographer Ed Lachman ("Erin Brockovich," "The Virgin Suicides") and production designer Jan Roelfs ("Gattaca," "Orlando"), the 39-year-old New Zealander Niccol, who began as a commercials director before selling the script of "The Truman Show," has created another exquisitely detailed fable about how we use beauty in our lives. "Reality is grossly overrated," he jokes, before one of his trademark laughs or giggles.

"Our ability to manufacture fraud exceeds our ability to detect it," Taransky says at one point, and like "Truman Show" and "Gattaca," Niccol's script is often on-the-nose about its themes and concerns, allowing other elements to bubble to the surface. "That's what I think when [interviewers] say, 'Oh your film's just about this, everyday people aren't going to get the nuances of the script.' Fortunately, they do."

There are many scenes where Pacino is left to duel with his creation, or his own scary feminine side. "He's also very subtle, so the bigger the screen the better. Great actors have great timing," Niccol says. "So you shouldn't be surprised by what he's done. That's why DeNiro can be funny, too."

While the movie suggests a world gone gaga over the idealized composite, Simone, Niccol cast three other exemplars of beauty: Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder, as gorgeously lit as she's ever been, and the magnificent Evan Rachel Wood. "She's a truly frightening actress, to be that good at that age," Niccol agrees. "I did some looping of the beach scenes. I have this thing where I shoot movies near water, and it makes a racket so I did some looping on that scene at the beach and she could nail a line every time."

Without giving anything away, she winds up being the hero of the piece. "She's the only adult in the film is my view," Niccol says. "Another thing about her. What I realized in casting is that she looks absolutely nothing like Pacino or Keener. But I said, forget it, she's just too good to pass on, y'know. When you watch the film, you immediately buy it because it's such an emotional connection."

Niccol is obviously fixated on elevated ideas of elegance and beauty on screen. I ask what he wants to bring to movies with the heightened look. "I suppose the connection [in my two films] is some sort of quest for perfection."

Journalists want to ask Niccol about themes, but they're such an essential part of the glossy surface of both of his pictures, I ask him about premises instead. "It's a simple premise in many ways, but there's all that complexity about our relationship with celebrity and how the joke here is that fascination with someone who doesn't exist at all. The fact of the self-perpetuating of the lie in the story, Pacino keeping the lie going, then having to keep it going after he wants it over. All the characters are doing that. Claiming they met her, 'I've slept with her.' The final irony for me is when he tells the truth... [all hell breaks loose]." Niccol laughs. "When you finally tell the truth, you're not believed!"

Music is also important in Niccol's films, from the grand sad swell of Michael Nyman's work in "Gattaca," to Carter Burwell's quieter, sadder score for "Simone." "But both composers are sort of minimalist. I pushed both of them to be as emotional as they've ever been. I'm a romantic, I suppose. Hard as it may be to believe!"

The man whose produced scripts are about creation has one last insight into his process: "It's just such a great thing to bring new music into the world. For me, that's one of the best parts of making films." No laugh this time, just a proud smile.

"Simone" opens Friday.

(2002-08-21)

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