Ray Pride

Do nice movies finish first?

The truth about "The Truth About Charlie," Jonathan Demme's first cheerful, antic movie in over a decade, is that it's very nice, like a smile or a wink. It's a cheeky flirt, sly and complicated. Superficially a remake of 1963's "Charade," a Stanley Donen-directed comedy thriller starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, "The Truth About Charlie" has its own dreamy headlong rush that seems gratifyingly out of key with many modern movies. Within Demme's own work, it doesn't have the gleeful malice of "Something Wild" but at least has little hint of the severity of his "serious" movies like "Beloved." Leads Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton suffer, like most of us would, from any comparison to Grant and Hepburn, but they share a winsome charm throughout.

Demme also takes the opportunity of this Paris-set piffle to make homage to filmmakers like Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy. There's one particularly sweet one--the very last few seconds of the film, after the end credits--noting the beloved Francois Truffaut, whom Demme met in New York in the late 1960s while working as a publicist for United Artists promoting "The Bride Wore Black." "I got to be with Truffaut for five days. That was very special to a young man like me who was so in love with his movies. I got him to sign my Truffaut-Hitchcock book, and I've still got it," he says.

While Demme and his co-writers take advantage of the essential plotting, charm and some of the cheeky dialogue of Peter Stone's original script, he seems more interested in making a twenty-first-century movie that attempts to recapture the scatty impishness that many of the French New Wave pictures partook of. "My understanding of the original 'Charade' was that one of its points was to really provide a mixture of genres and, yes, it's very, very, very much a mystery and yes, it also has a romantic dimension, and yes, it wants to be very suspenseful. It also has a very active sense of humor, stopping short of being an out-and-out comedy. I like that about 'Charade,' and I found that an opportunity to make a movie that would really aggressively engage with the audience and the fun of watching a movie, mixing up the genres, sudden changes of mood, and then finally, when I started thinking of taking a, quote, New Wave approach to things, I suddenly started thinking a lot about movies like [Truffaut's] 'Shoot the Piano Player,' a romantic gangster thriller that had a sense of humor that included out-and-out fantasy. With that in mind, it opened other doors for me, possible ways to amuse an audience. It gave me a chance more than anything to feel like all the love I have for all kinds of movies, I've got a chance to use that as a fuel to making this movie. This movie is a [chance] to channel all sorts of things I love about movies. So I hope that this movie has a love of film that communicates in a positive way to the viewer."

Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto manages to make Paris a damp, overcast, brightly colored city while making every single actor look their best, despite a broad range of contrasts. Besides Wahlberg's paleness and Newton's caramel skin, there's another antagonist who's Korean (Joong-Hoon Park from "Nowhere to Hide") and several black characters who are darker. "Tak really does... Think of 'Devil in a Blue Dress,' 'Beloved.' Here is a man, Tak's whole thing has always, always, always been... he's very un-artsy about what his motivation is. His thing is, first and foremost, you've got to make the actors look good. 'That's my job. Make the actors look good unless a character is supposed to look bad. After that, to whatever extent I can create an interesting mood, in the background, in the foreground, great.' That comes next. He really rises to the occasion."

Wahlberg plays a man of many aliases and identities, and I ask about the scene when we first see Wahlberg wearing a beret. I tell Demme that it seems odd, like he shouldn't be, but it doesn't totally throw you out of the picture, then you think, hmm, his character really does want to be immersed in the culture. I'm not even thinking what Cary Grant would look like in the same hat.

"I'm grateful for your impulse in that regard. For tolerating the beret and attempting to not think about the other movie!" the director says, laughing, putting down his espresso. "Mark Wahlberg as we know him and understand him previous to this movie would never wear a beret! I felt Mark's going to be doing something different here. At best, he'll look really cute in a beret and at worst, he'll look silly in a beret and I'm ready for either of those, either is fine.

"I did want to think of Mark's character as a guy who is immersed in French culture who also loves France and loves French movies like "Shoot the Piano Player" and enjoys speaking the language and speaks it quite well. I wore a beret when I lived in Paris for the six months I lived there and I wore it back in New York for a while when I came back. He's one of those Americans who wants to fit in so much he wears a dadgum beret around town, take it or leave it!"

"The Truth About Charlie opens Friday."

(2002-10-23)

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