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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The fake story of a deaf DJ in the coke-drenched clubs of Ibiza; the true story of two Spanish softcore film stars. Plus: David Duchovny's winning directorial debut.
Apr 14, 2005 | Remember when movies were stories where people did stuff -- they drove to the lake house, they got eaten by zombies, they fell in love with totally the wrong person, they broke into the unbreakable bank vault -- and we didn't worry about the fact that none of it was "real"? These days it seems like, unless your movie is set on another planet or stars a guy in a uniform made out of stretchy underwear, you have to try to convince the audience that you're depicting real life.
Of course this is a gross exaggeration in search of a point (earlier this week, I reviewed Todd Solondz's bizarre head trip "Palindromes," and I surely wish that movie had borne some relationship to real life), but you get my drift. Maybe this cinematic micro-trend reflects the influence of reality TV, but then again, journalists are way too eager to blame everything on reality TV, which has apparently led to global warming, the second Bush term and the slump in the mutual-fund market, in addition to its greatest sin: the "career" of Paris Hilton.
In a recent column, I complained about directors who make mockumentaries and then expend useless energy on trying to convince people that they're the real thing. I was praising Andrew Gurland and Huck Botko's hilarious "Mail Order Wife," which doesn't do that -- but also hasn't found much of an audience. Right on cue, this week offers an elaborate biopic of a legendary deaf dance-music DJ, complete with a bewildering viral-marketing campaign that far outdoes last year's "Incident at Loch Ness." Since the movie actually pulls off a difficult combination of over-the-top satire and redemptive love story, I'm encouraging you to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Then there's the highly improbable tale about an ordinary couple who become accidental porn stars in the last years of the Franco dictatorship in Spain -- which appears to be true, at least in its general outlines. Lastly, this week also brings us the sweet (occasionally sticky-sweet) and sad memory film about growing up in the lost Manhattan of the early '70s, written and directed by a semi-major celebrity who knows whereof he speaks.
"It's All Gone Pete Tong": Last night a (deaf) DJ saved my life
In addition to possessing the most confusing title of the year, Canadian filmmaker Michael Dowse's high-energy dance-club saga "It's All Gone Pete Tong" arrives in an elaborate package of spoof and deception that should win the admiration of any practical-joke connoisseur. English comedian Paul Kaye has a star-making role as one Frankie Wilde, a deranged Cockney exile who's more or less the Keith Richards of the cocaine-drenched club scene on Ibiza, the über-trendy Spanish resort island. (The movie's title, by the way, derives from Cockney rhyming slang and also name-checks a different well-known DJ, and that's all the help you're getting from me.)
As other jet-setting DJs like Carl Cox and Paul van Dyk testify in the movie, Frankie's hard-driving dance mixes, hard-partying ways and maniacal stage antics revolutionized Ibiza nightlife in the late '90s, until the combination of a genetic eardrum issue and all those pumping beats rendered Frankie stone deaf. He then falls into the embrace of the Coke Badger, a fuzzy, demonic beast whose love requires you to shovel white powder up your nose by the kilo. (The Internet campaign for this movie is so extensive that even the Badger has his own Web site, complete with sinister purring noises.)
But thanks to a sexy Spanish lip-reading instructor named Penelope (Beatriz Batarda) and a pair of speakers with built-in flip-flops on top, Frankie learns to feel the beat he can't hear. He gets off the snow, if not the Scotch and ciggies, and rises again to the pinnacle of his profession -- before he and Penelope disappear from Ibiza for good. Is he now writing his memoirs (or, as Frankie himself observes, writing a pamphlet, since a book would take too long)? Running a record shop in Oxford? Busking for change on the streets of New York? Holed up in a tropical hideaway plotting his next comeback? Rumors fly, but nobody knows for sure.
