Writer/Director Hal Hartley does the nearly impossible by creating a pretty darn good sequel to one of indie audiences’ favorites, his 1997 Cannes Best Screenplay winner “Henry Fool.”
In creating the sequel he brings back the unique talents of Parker Posey (“A Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration”) and Liam Aiken (“Lemony Snicket’s...,”Road to Perdition”) to team up with Jeff Goldblum (“Jurassic Park,” “Independence Day”). The result is a funny and engaging spy spoof that makes the best of Parker Posey’s under-appreciated comedic talent and capitalizes on Jeff Goldblum’s faux wisdom and imponderable logic.
The scene is seven years after the disappearance of Henry. Fay Grim (Posey) is living with her son Ned (Aiken) and becoming increasing concerned that he will turn out like his disappeared father. This fear is not alleviated when he is expelled from school for bringing a lewd peep show device to class. In addition to the goats and people, the ancient hand-cranked device has a background of strange and foreign writing that could be a clue. Or it could be nonsense. Or it could be a vehicle for Posey, Aiken and Goldblum to go on an adventure to Paris. In any event, the opening scenes with mother, son and high school teacher get the film off to a rollicking start.
Fay and Ned have aged over the years, both on and off the screen (what else...?) This merging of the real life and the characters of the actors is somewhat funny in itself, like the completely inoperable sets of the B horror films of the 50s.
Fay’s brother Simon (James Urbaniak) is suddenly released from prison after serving time for aiding and abetting the mysterious Henry’s getaway seven years past. CIA Agent Fulbright (Goldblum) contacts Fay and tells her she is needed in Paris to retrieve some of Henry’s belongings that have turned up. From there the film jumps from truck loads of poison to Israeli missile sites to spy plane radar jamming to, in the words of Bebe (Elina Lowensohn), “Beeeeg Trouble...”
Virtually every scene in the film is shot with the strangest imaginable camera angles. There is not a right angle in the entire production as lenser Sarah Cawley Cabiya captures the light, shadows and off-kilter kitsch architecture of expressionist film noir. The peep show is almost the only prop in the film. The sound track is extra somber piano with the occasional chirps and clicks of percussion ticking away the seconds until the truth will be revealed and the characters will meet their mutual fate. Or at least until the stage is set for the next sequel.
Writer Hartley is intent on taking the audience from the cozy, middle class interior of the mother/son house in Queens New York to the teeming and dangerous streets of the world, where things are never as they seem and nobody is friends of the Americans.
Fay and Ned are kept in the dark through nearly the entire film. They never know the whole truth, nor are we sure that anybody in the film knows the whole truth, except Henry himself who speaks in mysteries and comes off more like the myth of the elderly Howard Hughes than James Bond.
Hartley keeps things going with a continuous string of one and two-liners that extract laughs from the audience whether they like it or not. The plot development is marginal and the entire production continually threatens to break down into TV sit-com mode. It is only pulled out at the last minute by the talent of the three lead performers and what would appear to be their genuine enjoyment of the scam they are enacting.
Fun stuff for teens and adults alike with only minor violence and sexual references.
Fay Grim
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