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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 6 June 2013
This article is a review of WELCOME TO NEW YORK.
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“I’m not a spring chicken,” Devereaux (Gérard Depardieu)
An elaborate disclaimer initiates us into director Abel Ferrara’s latest dissection of depravity. While declared a work of fiction, there is no getting away from the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal being the leaping off point. Borgias-like – power, money, sex – among the modern corridors of governments and financial institutions is the setting. What might have been a fascinating discourse of how our world still retains feudalistic traits, is instead disappointingly unsubtle and shallow. In light of HOUSE OF CARDS, STATE OF PLAY and THE WIRE, corruption has rarely been so charismatically presented. Even Depardieu unleashed can’t enliven a clunky journey.
An elaborate disclaimer initiates us into director Abel Ferrara’s latest dissection of depravity. While declared a work of fiction, there is no getting away from the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal being the leaping off point. Borgias-like – power, money, sex – among the modern corridors of governments and financial institutions is the setting. What might have been a fascinating discourse of how our world still retains feudalistic traits, is instead disappointingly unsubtle and shallow. In light of HOUSE OF CARDS, STATE OF PLAY and THE WIRE, corruption has rarely been so charismatically presented. Even Depardieu unleashed can’t enliven a clunky journey.
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Depardieu as Depardieu kicks off proceedings, talking about the role, to reporters, we are about to watch him in. Meta, for what purpose? To distance the filmmakers further from any legal ramifications? Post opening credits, a montage of Big Apple shots (not as stylish mind as HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA) give us the place. Not wasting time, WELCOME TO NEW YORK demonstrates Devereaux’s divorce from acceptability: In a meeting with a visiting colleague he presents a prostitute. Plush offices do not deter an animalistic lecherousness amid his colleagues. Cartoonish slobbering gets worse when we reach the lead’s upmarket hotel, where an orgy unfolds. As dispiriting as it is to watch, it is also hard not to laugh at Depardieu’s sex face and grunting noises, which sound akin to Nick Nolte clearing his throat. For all the acres of flesh on display, WELCOME TO NEW YORK is not erotic.
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Politics that might have been from a bygone era, of those in authority taking what they want, is still part of our society; and the filmmakers sledgehammer home that thought. Every scene goes on for far too long. We get the point, move on, one kept wanting to call out to the screen. Interactions are stilted, having the air of improvisation over sculpted scripting. Repeated sentiments and ideas cause tedium to raise its head too frequently.
Debauchery culminating in Devereaux sexually assaulting a chambermaid, begins a presentation of law enforcement minutiae. Arrest and arraignment are punctuated by occasional flashbacks scrabbling to suggest some kind of understanding (but do not).
Unsettling to watch, the audience is meant to see how the dishonest enable such behaviour in the so-called elite. Creaky acting, awful dialogue and rudderless directing derail what might have been a timely project. Inequality leading to abuse of power is still being better scrutinised on the small screen. Come on cinema, catch up.
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