A Life in Suitcases. (Movie Review)

From: Variety | Date: June 6, 2005 | Author: Weissberg, Jay

A Life in Suitcases" is being billed as an edited theatrical release version of writer-director Peter Greenaway's three-part HD "Tulse Luper" opus. Scenes also have been added and much has been taken away. Still, only those intimately familiar with the trilogy as a whole will be able to follow the labyrinthine paths made even more mystifying due to the wholesale editing of the six hours-plus trilogy into a normal feature length. These "Suitcases," therefore, will be lucky to get unpacked at festivals let alone art-house theaters.

Greenaway's personal narrative style has frequently been accused of being incomprehensible. However, the "Tulse Luper" trilogy, with its baroque asides and multilayered texts and images, isn't actually difficult to follow.

The basic premise--Tulse Luper (played at different ages by JJ Feild, Stephen Billington and Roger Rees) being swept into the ill-fortuned tides of the 20th century and forced to spend his life in a succession of imprisonments--can easily be understood as a parable of fascism's suppression of the individual.

So, too, the suitcases, all 92 of them, are handy encapsulations of a life which, in its wanderings, parallels the increasingly mobile modern condition.

The problem with this new version is that it never shakes the feeling that it is a condensation, destroying any real understanding of Luper's character and obsessions. Those unfamiliar with the story have little to guide them through the currents that wash Luper on shore in places ranging from Utah to the Soviet gulags.

The humor, especially apparent in the first two installments, has mostly been chucked overboard.

The greatest number of added scenes fit into the ending of the original part one. Players whose function was only hinted at in the trilogy are given more heft: Luper's relationship with Cissie Colpitts (Valentina Cervi) is expanded, and the fate of Luper's double Floris Creps (also played by Feild) is revealed, making sense of the character's inclusion in the story.

The additions, however, forced much more to be hacked off. For a series that's meant to be expansive (with Web sites, books and exhibitions), Greenaway's decision to shrink its core makes little sense.

In what was the original part three, signs of the helmer's evident boredom are even more apparent than in the trilogy, with animated outlines casually superimposed on images as if he's mindlessly doodling on a text he knows too well.

Greenaway said he conceived of the "Tulse Luper" pics as something to be casually dipped into. But, for all its moments of mesmerizing beauty, this version presents images with no engagement, which leads to inevitable tedium.

Looking for a return to the Greenaway of old is pointless, but looking forward to a Greenaway whose considered engagement with his cinematic projects makes artistic sense shouldn't be too much to ask.

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Peter Greenaway

With: JJ Feild, Roger Rees, Raymond J. Barry, Stephen Billington, Valentina Cervi, Roberto Citran, Caroline Dhavernas, Porgy Franssen, Debbie Harry, Albert Kitzl, Steven Mackintosh, Jordi Molla, Drew Mulligan, Ornella Muti, Anna Galiena, Franka Potente, Isabella Rossellini, Maria Schrader, Nigel Terry, Ana Torrent, Scot Williams, Yorick van Wageningen, Jack Wouterse.

Directed, written by Peter Greenaway.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (market), May 12, 2005.

Running time: 125 MIN.

Variety Review

Just three months after the first chapter in the Tulse Luper saga premiered in competition in Cannes comes a continuation that's more of an expansion of the last third of the first film. Peter Greenaway's ambitious "Life History in 16 Episodes" was, according to information in Cannes, to consist of "at least" three feature films as well as a TV series consisting of 16 40-minute episodes, plus a Web site and numerous DVDs. But it's difficult to determine where the film that preemed in Venice fits into the scheme of things--and no press books were on hand to offer a solution.

The Cannes film supposedly was subtitled "The Moab Story," though this title did not appear onscreen. Similarly, this second feature in the series supposedly was subtitled "Antwerp" (again, not onscren). It was referred to in the opening titles as "Episode 3."

The original film constituted three "episodes" and featured 21 of the 92 suitcases Greenaway has planned to "open" in the unfolding of his eponymous hero's life story. The new film backtracks, re-examining ground covered in the first film Indeed, instead of constituting the second part of the promised trilogy, this film seems to be an extra, almost like an expanded DVD version.

For the record, it covers suitcases 15-28, so it takes us only seven stages past the Cannes film, while including a lot of material previously covered, but here in even more detail.

Briefly, Welshman Tulse Luper (JJ Feild), a journalist who writes about Belgian natural history for the London Times and the Manchester Guardian, is, in 1938, suspected of being a British spy by fascist agents and is incarcerated in what appears to be a gigantic bathroom somewhere in Antwerp's central railway station.

Station master and fascist leader Erik von Hoyten (Jack Wouterse) and the station's combination doctor-dentist, Jan Palmerion (Jordi Molla), along with various underlings, keep the Brit under guard, but they don't stop his sexual liaisons with American Passion Hockmeister (Caroline Dhavernas), a cheerful hedonist, or stenographer and femme fatale Cissie Colpitts (Valentina Cervi).

As before, it's difficult to extrapolate a clear narrative from the mass of statistical information Greenaway hurls at his audience He plays with film form, splitting the image, repeating lines of dialogue and moments of action (often erotic), while narrators appear in tiny squares on the image in a vain attempt to explain what's going on. There is a vast amount of naked flesh on display, and most of the major characters have full frontal action during the course of the wayward drama.

Last image of the film, which has "to be continued ..." in place of end credits, consists of all 92 of the suitcases laid out, unopened, on the station platform.

The film is scattered with dry jokes and aphorisms (example: Most Belgians would like to live in Paris and those who don't, want to live in London) and, along with the nudity, there's a fair level of stylized violence, including castration.

As with all Greenaway films, literary and artistic allusions abound, and the viewer is expected to be pretty up to date with art movements of the last 100 years. Once again, the actors aren't called upon to give detailed performances as much as they are to expose themselves with as much good humor as they can muster. In this respect, Feild, Dhavernas and Cervi come off best.

To say this is very much an acquired taste is putting it mildly, and with the prospect of at least two more feature films in the offing, plus all those DVDs, producer Kees Kasander and his co-producers must be hoping mightily that this singular concept catches on.

U.K.-SPAIN-LUXEMBOURG-HUNGARY-ITALY-GERMANY-RUSSIA)

A Fortissimo Films presentation of a Kasander Prods. (London)/ABS Prods. (Barcelona)/DeLux Prods. (Luxembourg)/Focus Film (Budapest)/GAM Films (Rome)/Net Entertainment (Berlin)/12A Film Studios (Moscow) co-production (International sales: Fortissimo Film Sales, Hong Kong.) Produced by Kees Kasander. Executive producers, Carlo Dusi, Wouter Barendrecht, Michael J. Werner. Co-producers, Eva Baro, Antoni Sole, Jimmy de Brabant, Aron Sipos, Gherardo Pagliei, Elisabetta Riga, Klaus Volkenborn, Sandor Soeth, Alexander Mikhaylov.

Directed, written by Peter Greenaway. Camera (color), Reinier van Brummelen; editors, Elmer Leupen, Chris Wyatt; music, Borut Krzisnik; production designers, Marton Agh, Billy Lelieveld, Pirra Jesus Lorenzo, Bettina Schmidt, Davide Bassan; costume designers, Andrea Flesch, Beatrice Giannini; sound (Dolby Digital), Janos Koporosy; line producers, Jet Christiaanse, Edmon Roch; casting, Sharon Howard-Field, Shaila Rubin. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Undercurrents, Special Event), Aug. 31, 2003. Running time: 108 MIN.