Hartford Courant du lieu suivant : Hartford, Connecticut • 46

D6 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Fridc, December 23, 1988 Breakdown' is director's Ken Russell back to his weird breakthrough film Worm with The Lair of the White v.j fj 7 Film review WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, Directed and written by Pedro Almoddvar; director of photography, Jose Luis Alcaine; music composed by Bernardo Bon-: ezzi; edited by Jose Salcedo; executive producer, Agustin Almod6var. An Orion Classics release of a El Oeseo, S. A. Laurenfilm production, opening today at Cinema City, Hartford. Running time: 92 minutes.

Pepa Marcos Carmen Maura Carlos Antonio Banderas Lucia -Julieta Serrano Candela Maria Barranco Marisa Rossy De Palma Mambo Taxi Driver Guillermo Montesinos Paulina Morales Kiti Manver Concierge Chus Lampreave Ivan Fernando Guillen Excellent; Very Good; Good; Fair; ft Poor dubbing, but who also is widely known as the mother of the murderer on a hilarious soap commercial. She has just been dumped by her longtime, live-in lover Ivan, another actor who also specializes in voice work. A striking example of Almo-d6var's spirited inventiveness shows in a stream-of-consciousness sequence in which a fuzzy, dapper image of Ivan, parading down a sidewalk, tosses off come-on lines to a variety of women. This is how Pepa sees the man so recently in her life, and not yet out of her mind. But note the title: it refers to "women," not a "woman." In the dreamlike, vivid, beautiful world of Almod6var's Madrid, many women are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

From Pepa's plight, played out at a dubbing studio and her modern, yet eccentric apartment, the film cuts to an older apartment where a heavily made-up woman of a certain age is preparing herself for some sort of mission by donning a wild and strange outfit. As the film moves forward, delineating Pepa's pain and craziness with black comedy absurdity, the actress and the painted lady come together. Also on the verge of a nervous breakdown is a young model who has gotten much too close to a Shiite terrorist and his friends. A bizarrely ill-matched engaged young couple also becomes enmeshed in Pepa's turmoil, which begins to turn to resourcefulness. And threading through Pepa's misadventures is a bleach-topped taxi driver who fills his cab with the sounds of mambo and stocks it like a corner drugstore-newstand.

i Vestron Pictures Amanda Donohoe plays the mysterious Lady Sylvia Marsh in "The Lair of the White Worm," opening today at Cinema City. By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON Courant Film Critic Ken Russell, that mad and merry prankster, is up to his old tricks in "The Lair of the White Worm," the final novel by Bram Stoker, written while the creator of "Dracula" was dying1 of Bright's disease. For the first time since his early television days, the man who gave the world "Lisztomania" and "Crimes of Passion" is working with a relatively low budget and a young, rather obscure cast. Much of "White Worm," especially the first half, demonstrates Russell's ingenuity and film sense.

When he's being even moderately sensible, the man tells a story cleverly and compellingly. But as it nears its denouement, ''White Worm" turns really crazed, and Russell gleefully abandons himself to its weirdness and wildness. His climax has its humorous moments, and its aftermath is subtle and chilling, in a droll way, though only a diehard devotee could describe this new piece of Russell-mania as totally successful. That Russell dared to film a probably unfilmable story shows both daring and foolhardiness. Yet "White Worm" contains so many interesting' elements that it's easy to see what tempted Russell.

Unlike his tale of the undead Transylvania count, "White Worm" draws exclusively on English legend. Those unfamiliar with the problematic Stoker novel and only horror fanatics know this book, called "The Garden of Evil" in America will see in Russell's film version similarities to H.P. Lovecraft's classic, "The Rats in the Walls." The White Worm is not a worm at all, at least as we.think of worms. It is a huge serpent, a rock-dwelling Loch Ness monster. Though it has an unholy connection with snakes, the Image Animation special effects make it into a sort of Sand Worm, as in David Lynch's "Dune." But the White Worm does not surge up from its rocky snake pit until the wild and crazy climax.

In the beginning, "The Lair of the White Worm" is a mystery, involving a young Scottish archaeologist, two orphaned sisters, a playboy lord whose ancestor once slew a White Worm and a glamorous, cynical, seductive woman who lives in a remote, elegant 'old house and who enjoys playing Snakes Ladders. As the film begins, the Scot digger, one Angus Flint, unearths a strange fossil (which resembles an elongated Buffalo skull), while excavating the side yard of the Trent sisters' bed-and-breakfast. He knows nothing of the Worm, but learns of the legend during an annual fete thrown by the young nobleman, Lord James D'Ampton, whose family has been celebrating the scotching of the snake for hundreds of years. Russell executes the party scene with succinctness and visual wit. He opens with an ancient folk song, "The D'Ampton Worm," rollickingly performed by Emilio Perez Macha-do and Stephan Powys, with violinist Louise Newman.

Then he moves on Carmen Maura plays Pepa Marcos in Almodovar's farce "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Under Almoddvar's playful, zappy, zippy direction, these loopy characters and many more come together with a fine balance between the ordinary and the insane. But although the thin, chattering Maria Barranco delivers a wonderfully rattled performance as the guilt-filled, fear-haunted lover of a terrorist, the centerpiece of Almodovar's film is always Maura, a deft, controlled, yet madcap screwball comedienne who looks like a cross between the young Imogene Coca and Jane Fonda in her "Klute" period. Like all the rest of Almoddvar's film, she is a pleasure to watch as she brings Pepa back to triumphant command of her fate. "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" is far and away the most entertaining and insightful film of the holiday season. Already those who have seen it are picking up the phrase "on the verge of a nervous breakdown" and inserting themselves.

As for the director and his star, they are on the verge of much deserved international success. Rated this film contains numerous vulgarities, a scene in which the star appears in revealing lingerie and a murderous, if ultimately harmless chase. White Worm requires. All of the skulduggery after the first skull digging is carried out with flashes of wit and some Amanda Donohoe is especially; amusing as the snakewoman-vam- pire, especially when she seduces a virgin Boy Scout or quotes Oscar Wilde. Catherine Oxenberg and Sammi Davis make pleasant damsels-in-dis-tressas the Trent girls, and Peter-Capaldi pontificates seriously andi bagpipes doughtily as the Scots' ar-r, chaelologist.

Hugh Grant, seen earlier in "Maurice," makes an especial ly dashing impression as Lord. James, and oddly resembles the1 young James Stewart None of the leads must apologize, for his or her work in "White even Donohoe's campy nude scenes are counterbalanced by her sophisticated playing. For Russell, the film constitutes a move back to partial sanity though he fills it with gimmicks; from many of his previous Now this most curious of directors! turns to the inspiration of his finest! film, "Women in Love." And in the; better, moments in "White there glimmers great hope for the forthcoming Russell version of D.H.; Lawrence's "The Rainbow." Rated this film contains copious nudity, a brief orgy for Roma soldiers and nuns, other perverse sexual ideas, numerous bloody vam- pire attacks and an specially brutal disposition of the vUlainess. Film review THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM. Directed, produced and written by Ken Russell, based on the novel by Bram Stoker; director of photography, Dick Bush; music composed by Stanislas Syrewicz; set designer, Anne Tilby; costume designer.

Michael Jeffrey; edited by Peter Da-vies; special effects by Image Animation; executive producers, William J. Quigley and Dan Ireland. A Vestron Pictures release, opening today at Cinema City, Hartford. Running time: 94 minutes. Lady Sylvia Marsh Amanda Donohoe Lord James D'Ampton Hugh Grant Eve Trent Catherine Oxenberg Angus Flint Peter Capaldi Mary Trent Sammi Davis Peters Stratford Johns P.C.

Emy Paul Brooke Dorothy Trent Imogen Claire Kevin Chris Pitt Excellent; Very Good; Good; Fair; ir Poor to ceremonial revelry, in which a serpent resembling a Chinatown dragon is hacked in half, with food jokes about worms as a delicacy. Later that night, the mysterious woman, Lady Sylvia Marsh, enters the picture in an amusing scene with a police officer, played by the walleyed Stratford Johns of Cars," probably the biggest name in the film. From the start, it is clear that the Marsh woman is a vampiric dragon lady, who will loom as an archfiend in the lives of the trio of innocents with symbolic religious names of Angus (the lamb), and Eve and Mary Trent And as it develops, Eve is a virgin just what the still surviving ancestor of the original the chance Film maker Almodovar what he wants in movies witty, By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON Courant Film Critic From the bright, witty decoupage of its opening titles to its ironic closing tune, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" proclaims Pedro Almod6var as a major star in the European film firmament, a splendid farceur with deep sympathy for his people. Not since Lina Wertmiiller broke into the front ranks of world film makers with her "Swept Away and "Seven Beauties" has a European director-writer displayed such panache, wit and originality as the self-taught 37-year-old Spaniard.

Almoddvar (who signs his films with his surname, perhaps because his brother Agustin is his executive producer) has made several other films in the last four or five years, including the 1986 "Law of Desire," which played a brief date at Trinity College's Cinestudio. "Matador," made in 1985 and 1986, is waiting in the wings, and is still playing in New York. But "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" clearly is the breakthrough Almoddvar film, a comedy that is both acerbic and sweet, satirical and heroic, surreal and real. Initially his visual style proves the most delightful element of this particular Almoddvar work. As suggested in the opening decoupage of women, lips, shoes, clothes and jewelery seemingly cut from glossy magazines (with a witty scissors-and-eyes homage to the Luis Bunuel-Salvador Dali film "An Andalusian Almoddvar likes to play with colorful planes.

His shots are often collages in motion, with layered levels of action. He also emphatically uses humorous details, such as pacing shoes, and dramatic angles such as the floor-level shot with a phone in the foreground when the distraught heroine collapses. At the outset of the film, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" seems so crammed with invention and humor that it's difficult to take it all in. But that's only be- cause its style is truly unique, and also reflects the mental anguish, the fevered near breakdown state of Pepa Marcos, the main woman of the title. As played with high comic concen- tration by the director-writer fa-' vorite actress, Carmen Maura, Pepa is a spurned woman in a hellish fury.

Pepa is an actress who specializes in Light? Dark? I does exactly By BILL COSFORD Knight-Ridder Newspapers When Pedro Almoddvar opened the New York Film Festival with his comedy, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," he was moved to tell the audience at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall that he wanted to marry them all. By the next day he was having xi i i i i secona uiougnis, ana Dy uie lime ne met with reporters in the cold light of an autumn afternoon, his triumph a few days behind him, he was ready to deny everything. "I'm not going to marry you, that's for sure," he said to a representative of his American distributor. "And not you, either," to a reporter visit-', ing his suite in the Parker Meridien I Hotel. If Almoddvar at 38 lacks the de- meanor of the newly betrothed, he is still aglow with enthusiasm for life 1 and love.

No wonder: He has been hailed, since the Miami Film Festival introduced him to American au-, diences in 1984 with his black come- dy about convent nuns, "Dark Habits," as the cinema point man for the "movida," or Spanish "new wave." r. Every country has its new wave these days, it seems, but Almoddvar and the movida are different, if only because we can track this wave to its I particular source: that day in 1975 when the dictator Francisco Franco finally died. In Madrid, Almoddvar (pro- nounced Al-mo-DO-var) had laid in a supply of champagne to celebrate the event, and he was not alone. Repression was to be lifted almost overnight, and the Spanish people knew it and expected a great deal. Certainly, the artists would flourish.

Certainly, Almoddvar did. He made the jump from comic- book artist and 8mm amateur to international celebrity as the direc- a -j r. never tame paeans to the several states of passion. In "Dark Habits," Almoddvar's nuns seek to fulfill their mission via utter identification with the incorri-gibles in their charge, adopting names such as Sister Sewer Rat and sharing drugs and self-administered degradation. In the more accomplished "What Have I Done To Deserve which finally caught the New York film world's glazed eye more than a year after Almoddvar's debut in Miami, an embattled before dispatching her loutish husband with a ham bone later served at -dinner.

"Law of Desire" deals with a murderous homosexual love triangle to some satiric effect The hero and heroine of "Matador," former bullfighter and elegant attorney, are serial sex killers. "Women on the Verge of a Ner- T- I A IL I Your contributions i i I hi I 1 I give kids Orion Pictures Corp. Movie director Pedro Almodovar, on the set of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," has been hailed since the Miami Film Festival introduced him to American audiences in 1984 with his black comedy about convent nuns, "Dark Habits." to experience Camp Courant Thanks to contributions from businesses, civic groups, foundations and people like you, Camp Courant continues to make summer a special time for Hartford children. Every contribution to Camp Courant will be acknowledged in The Hartford Courant. Camp Courant is a free summer day camp for Hartford children ages 5-12.

The camp operates daily Monday through Friday during July and August. Free bus transportation is provided, free breakfast and lunch are served, and counselors supervise activities. In 1988, 22,000 Hartford children enjoyed the rewards of Camp Courant. They laughed. They learned.

They shared. They made new friends. 1 the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle isn't nearly so complex. Despite the presence of a bowl of lethally spiked gazpacho, it's far more farce than fierce. It's a broad comedy in which the heroine played, like most of Almoddvar's leading women, by the splendidly adaptable Carmen Maura is dumped by her boyfriend via a message on her answering machine.

And for most of the film the most violent event remains the hurling of the offending telephone from the window of a high-rise apartment. The light-movie tone of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" notwithstanding, Almoddvar has made a career crafting sharp-edged entertainments that reflect the giddy excesses of a society newly released. His characters indulge themselves in sex, in drugs, in undifferentiated recklessness in ways that more mature cultures have learned to officially disapprove. Not Almoddvar He is a bad boy, indeed. Almoddvar seems most concerned with avoiding categories.

He's aware that some people, including critics, who loved "Dark Habits" and "What Have I Done To Deserve have fretted that he is going too "light" after specializing in dark. "I don't react It doesn't mean anything. I don't know what 'dark' means. When you went to see 'Funny did you complain that it wasn't a tragedy?" It is not good, he said, to go to the cinema with any kind of prejudice. "A film is a film.

"I never have compromised with anybody, anywhere. If I want to make a lighter film, why not?" Already, Almoddvar has arrived at that place where expectations are the most formidable obstacles. And he's in a fighting mood. "Sometimes the critics ask that a film give them what they don't dare ask for. People ask a director to do Yes! I want to make another rewarding summer possible for Hartford children.

Enclosed is my tax-deductible contribution made payable to Camp Courant in the amount of: $2 Other Amount Name Address Citv StateZip Please list my contribution as From something they don't dare to do. I feel free, I do exactly what I want in the movies. "There is no reason for me to be outrageous. But some people expect that. People are very superficial when thinking about the movies.

It seems to me that no one knows what the work of film making represents to a director. There are so many problems, so many things going on during shooting that you can't think of anything but telling the story." "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" began as Almoddvar's reaction to a short romantic melodrama by Jean Cocteau, "The Human Voice," in which Anna Mag-nani played a woman who is abandoned by her lover in a series of telephone calls. Almoddvar could easily have made it as a one-woman film, particularly given his long and close working relationship with Maura, but this director does not remake. "I find it very hard, when I write, to respect the origin, the genesis of an idea, because it flowers into something else." There's only the smallest of sly smiles on his face i when he says, "I could never do a respectful adaptation of anything." Probably not. He may not have the "respectful" instinct in his repertoire.

But Almoddvar does have his causes. One, unsurprising to anyone who sees "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," is the peculiar tyranny of the telephone and its demonic offspring, the answering machine. "I hate them. The telephone doesn't mean communication for me. It's like a block of duties, full of compromises that I have to make.

And it's a chance for the anonymous message. "Plus, if you want to lie, it's easier to lie to a machine. It has this special meaning for me. The telephone can hide a lot of things." j. CampUi POURANT Maft to: Camp Courint Treasurer's Office co The Hartford Courant 285 Broad Street Hartford.

CT 06115 i 'VUU9 Dicaftuuwu uamcu uic iaji foreign language film of the year by A.