Don Jon

The people sitting next to my friend and me walked out of Don Jon about thirty minutes into the movie. And why shouldn't they? Don Jon is about a self-absorbed d-bag from New Jerey (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who's a master of hooking up with women, but who admittedly prefers porn to actual physical contact. He and his buddies rate the girls at the club on a scale of one to ten, and when they spot Scarlet Johansson at the bar, all of them agree she's a "dime." Scarlet plays Barbara Sugarman (the name conjures up all kinds of licentious possibilities), a somewhat pampered girl who knows what she wants and how she can manipulate guys into giving it to her. She and Jon eventually become a couple, but he can't stop looking at porn, and when Barbara finds it on his computer, she's disgusted and breaks up with him.

If you're easily offended by crude language or nudity, Don Jon isn't your movie. As Jon describes his daily habit of trolling the internet for new XXX videos, we're met with a constant montage of images of girls from the web (most of the time just their faces, but sometimes more), and it's admittedly uncomfortable to see in a movie theater. (Porn isn't glamorous, and it isn't dignified. There's something shameful about seeing it even under these conditions.)

But Don Jon isn't about titillating the viewer. We're in the head of a guy who has become so detached from reality that he can't "lose himself" with another human being anymore. He has to go to porn. (The movie also makes some coy observations about women losing themselves in romantic comedies, their version of porn.) There are also some deliciously apt observations about the American family today, a family that's been beat into submissive silence by the booming television and the cell phones. (Jon's sister barely utters a word in any scene she's in: she's always texting, and his father has positioned his seat at the dinner table so he can watch football while he eats.)

There's something very unique about the character of Don Jon, and something very typical at the same time. I think he represents the current young American male: aggressively macho, high on his own sent, and too distracted and too hooked--whatever the drug of choice--to know how much he desperately wants real human interaction. The scenes of Jon at confession--being assigned a certain number of Hail Marys and Lord's Prayers depending on the number of times he's given into temptation--manage to be both hilariously and heartbreakingly believable.

In the end, it comes down to that same old story: boy meets girl, boy can't stop looking at porn, girl breaks up with boy, Julianne Moore sleeps with boy so he can find salvation. I do love Julianne Moore, but I feel that she has been doing this kind of thing for quite a long time. Moore plays a woman whom Jon meets at a night class, and with whom he learns to see more in a woman than just the degree of sexual pleasure she can afford him. She's wonderful--a voice of sanity amidst the cacophony.

It's hard to remember the last time an actor has so lost himself inside a character like this. Joseph Gordon-Levitt becomes the ultimate Guido (he also wrote and directed the film, and with a refreshing amount of imagination). It's almost miraculous that you could feel sympathy for him, since he resembles those idiots from the Jersey Shore, but you do. You really do. Gordon-Levitt has fashioned quite an impressive "romantic comedy," especially because it so honestly hits at some of the nerves being ignored almost everywhere else. With Tony Danza, Glenne Headley, Brie Larson, Rob Brown, and Jeremy Luke. Anne Hathaway and Channing Tatum have cameos as the actors in the romantic comedy that Jon and Barbara watch. ★★★

One Is A Lonely Number

If The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been adapted into a dramatic film, One Is A Lonely Number (1972) is what it might have turned into. It opens with a man walking out on his wife of four years with virtually no reason given, and then follows her journey into self-reliance and acceptance. Her name is Amy, and she's never had to live without a man. She fights off the grubby advances of a sleazy employment agent, gets a job as a lifeguard, befriends a four-time divorcee (Janet Leigh) who's now the head of a club for divorced women who want to get even with their ex-husbands, and forges a sort of father-daughter relationship with an elderly produce man (Melvyn Douglas).

This film is a good example of the many episodic, slightly whimsical dramas to come out of the early 1970s. The director, Mel Stuart (best known for helming Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) manages to keep Amy from being too pathetic, but she has her moments, especially when she breaks down at a production of Shakespeare, crying on the shoulder of the wise old grocer who tells her to "cry until she's finished crying and then learn to live again." It's a noble, obvious women's picture, bolstered by Amy's eventual pluckiness. And the moral of the story isn't something completely silly like, "just wait and you'll find the right man." (When the "right man" does come along--a suave art aficionado played by Monte Markham--he turns out to be married.) Instead, Amy learns to forge a life for herself, and we're left with a cliched but encouraging image of her diving into a swimming pool, frozen in the air so she resembles a bird finally taking flight.

One Is A Lonely Number is certainly dated, but that's part of its charm. It has an enjoyable time-capsule quality to it, and it's refreshing that the film never pretends to be anything other than the story of a woman learning to live on her own. If you can accept the movie on those terms, you'll likely enjoy it.

As for the lead actress, Trish Van Devere, this was her star vehicle. Van Devere's film career was mostly eclipsed by her more famous husband, George C. Scott (with whom she starred opposite many times). But here she's quite good, though miscast. Trish Van Devere almost always is miscast. She's a capable actress who has the makings of an ice queen or a sexy New England boarding school headmistress. But it's hard to believe she could ever be from San Francisco (where this movie is set). (Indeed, Van Devere hails from New Jersey, and she exudes that proper, almost English dignity that makes her always appear to be acting. You can hardly picture Van Devere allowing a man to treat her so badly in real life.) But when she's smiling and cutting up her acting loosens up.

It doesn't help that the dialogue (the script is by David Seltzer from a Rebecca Morris story) feels stilted and stagey, too much like writing. But, as it is, I enjoyed One Is A Lonely Number. (It comes on Turner Classic Movies every once in a while. Since it's never been available on DVD, this is the only way to see it currently.) With Jane Elliot. 97 min. ★★★

Dead Ringers

Jeremy Irons' performance as twin doctors Beverly and Elliott is certainly the best thing about Dead Ringers (1988), a sordid psychological melodrama from David Cronenberg about the ambiguous boundaries of the self and the shared experience of twins whose relationship is more than a little unusual and decidedly creepy. Beverly and Elliott were interested in bodies as children, and as men they've become a pair of imminent gynecologists who have their own practice. All the trouble begins--or shall we say is exposed--when Beverly falls in love with a patient, a flaky actress (Genevieve Bujold) who at first seems like the unstable one in the relationship. But her presence exposes the strange hold the brothers have over each other, and from there Dead Ringers just gets stranger and stranger.

Twins have always been an irresistible topic of interest for directors of the macabre. They fascinated De Palma in his kooky horror film Sisters, and Hitchcock played around with them some, or at least with the idea of the Double (particularly in Vertigo). Where Hitchcock tended to explore the Double on a Freudian level and De Palma for the mere shock value, Cronenberg goes for a more internalized approach: he wants to understand his own fascination with the kind of splintered identities that horror movie twins always occupy. But he doesn't move this worn out genre staple in any new directions. He merely opens them up for a kind of cinematic dissection.

To a degree, the film is successful in its morbid quest. Cronenberg is nothing if not consistent. But it's a depressing experience, from the taciturn actors to the drab yuppie-ish set design to the absolutely humorless script. There's nothing remotely enjoyable about it, unless that clinical Cronenberg look and feel is your idea of a good time. With Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, Shirley Douglas, and Stephen Lack. 115 min. ★★