The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 22

BIO The Ottawa Citizen, Friday, September 29, 1995 Moves Devil's tot odd atmosphere, cool en mystery Detective movie based on novel STEP BACK IN TIME: Film-makers transform Los Angeles' avenue into street from the '40s Jft LjJLi 3 4 1 Jli" PRIVATE EYE: Denzil Washington, as Easy Rawlins, is drawn into a web of murder and blackmail in Devil In A Blue Dress Rawlins, an airplane mechanic just laid off from his job who desperately needs $100 to pay the mortgage on his house. Owning a house is the most important thing in Easy's life: after serving in the U.S. Army, it's his piece of the America he fought for. The chance for easy money comes Devil In A Blue Dress Starring: Denzel Washington, Tom Sizemore, Jennifer Beals Directed and written by: Carl Franklin Rating: AA Playing at: Orleans, St. Laurent, World Exchange, Westgate By Jay Stone Citizen movies writer It's a time and place we've never seen: the world of the emerging black middle class in postwar Los Angeles, where soldiers back from fighting alongside whites brought with them a new passion for freedom.

Black families lived quietly in tidy suburban neighborhoods, working their way into the American dream. The black underworld lived raucously in smoky jazz clubs, getting fat on stolen liquor. When the worlds clashed, it was intimately This wasn't a place of drive-by: it was a community This is the setting of Devil In A Blue Dress, the film version of Walter Mosley's best-selling detective novel. The critics call it black noir, an African-American view of the film noir mysteries of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and all the other detectives who prowled the mean streets of the 1940s, trying to do one good deed in a universe turned amoral. But Mosley and director Carl Franklin, who also wrote the screenplay insist that it isn't noir at all.

Devil is a piece of social realism, a document from an era seldom portrayed as anything but a footnote in the hardboiled mysteries of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. And that is both the weakness and the strength of Devil In A Blue Dress, Walter Mosley wrote the highly acclaimed mystery novel Devil In A Blue Dress Party Girl may be Party Girl Starring: Parker Posey, Sasha von Scherler Written and directed by: Daisy von Scherler Mayer Rating: AA Playing at: ByTowne Cinema, until Monday "I rare look at U.S. black community in '40s compared, Mosley has some sympa thy for a director trying to put his story on the screen. Carl Franklin, who was also screenwriter for Devil In A Blue Dress, had to change the plot substantially a decision Mosley supports. "It's impossible to take a 270-300-page book and put all those words up there on the screen," the author said in an interview.

"I think he made the plot a lot more clear. I was so interested in the story and the characters I allowed the plot to get very tangled. I like that, but in a movie you can't do that." Mosley, who said he had spent the morning putting the finishing touches on his next Easy Rawlins book, Little Yellow Dog, wrote Devil In A Blue Dress in 1990 to critical and commercial success. He followed it with A Red Death, White Butterfly b-'U Washington is right at home in the role of the reluctant detective, an outsider in the black world and a conspicuous target in the white one. He's a mixture of courage and desperation that exactly mirrors the attitudes Easy needs to save his own skin.

Easy is a fascinating creation, an ordinary man who doesn't even pick up a gun until the end of the story Mosley allows him this decency by providing him with a separate and violent counterpart: a childhood friend named Mouse (Don Cheadle of TV's Picket Fences) who is an enthusiastic killer. Mouse is the other half of Easy's personality the bad half but Cheadle gives him such a playful delight in mayhem that he brightens the movie even as he darkens it. Not as successful is Beals (Flash-dance), whose Daphne is less femme fatale than lost little girl. The sexual chemistry between Easy and Daphne is the real missing McGuffin in this relationship, and it robs the film of much of its edge. As well, the air of political intrigue in boomtown L.A., which lent such a deep resonance to Chinatown, is more childish than menacing in Devil.

The movie ends with a note of happy nostalgia, unusual for either the genre or the subject matter. For all the notes of foreboding and loss in the movie, Franklin's piece of social realism is meant to be warm-hearted. It's as if he were paying a 50-year-old debt to a forgotten dream. Los Angeles that it portrays. But he emphasizes that both the film and the book are meant to be a slice of social realism a rare look at the American black community in the 1940s rather than the film noir of Chandler.

"Raymond Chandler is a wonderful writer. Also he's a very important writer. He and (Dashiel) Hammett, what they did, they realized somehow in their bones that western society was beginning to crumble, and all of these high ethics and morals that people held before were falling apart. They were writing about this existential dilemma. I never get upset when people compare me to them, but Chandler and I write very differently.

Chandler is no longer a name but a descriptive word. So when they say Chandler, that means that they think it's good." the cuff pace least it strikes the right note. Party writer and director is Daisy von Scherler Mayer, whose feature-film debut may not necessarily herald an auspicious career, but she is confident enough to establish a simple, unfussy tone and stick to it. At times, though, Mayer is given to cramming in unnecessary detail, whether it fits or not. A scene of Mary in the shower with her roommate is completely gratuitous, as are some of the supporting characters like Mary's Chinese landlord, and Mary's gay pal.

Derrick. Their only apparent purpose is to portray downtown Manhattan as a good-natured melting pot, where minorities of color and sexual orientation can take refuge. It's the only false note in a film that's otherwise an enjoyable piece of powder-puff camp. makeup, decor "The longest anti-drug video ever made Rlm-going veterans will recognize every plot twist and most of the characters," said Jay Stone. While DiCaprio is "difficult to buy as a sports star," he added, "he has the big, suffering eyes and the twisted face of the junkie that are so necessary to this part," and he "kicks the emotions into high gear for the big scenes of desperation." The Madness of King George: Nigel Hawthorne gave one of the year's best performances and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in this film version of Alan Bennett's play, The Madness of George III.

Based on the life of the King who ruled Britain from 1760 to 1820, the film is the story of the onset of his madness and the personal and political crises that result. Director Nicholas Hytner "mingles the rich atmosphere and brilliant script by Bennett into an unusually intimate history that is thick with intrigue and wit One of the film's many joys is the parallels it hints at with today's royal problems." (Stone) from the mysterious and violent De-Witt Albright (a perfectly creepy Tom Sizemore). He hires Easy to find a woman named Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), a white woman known to frequent black clubs. Thus Easy reluctantly becomes a private eye with an archetypal assignment: look for a mystery woman. But the secrets shrouding her and the two mayoral candidates who are looking for her quickly become murky Evidence comes and goes with the random convenience of the bloody gloves at the O.J.

Simpson trial. At one stage, Easy, already under suspicion, drives a dead white man's car around the city for several days and no one notices. Franklin has simplified the Byzantine plot of the book, but the McGuffin is still an unlikely and predictable grail that's little more than an excuse to immerse us in Central Avenue, the main street of black life. It is in these details where Devil succeeds. From the opening shot of the ancient and beautiful cars gleaming through a dreamy L.A.

to the rough bars and jamming clubs, Franklin along with production designer Gary Frutkoff and cos-tumer designer Sharen Davis takes us on a richly intriguing tour. The details of black life are also instructive, if predictable: Easy's rough treatment at the hands of the police and his transformation into Uneasy when confronted by a gang of racist whites. and Black Betty. His career got a huge boost in 1992 when presidential candidate Bill Clinton said the Rawlins series was his favorite. But it wasn't easy to get started.

The backbone of the first book, the characters of Easy and his blood-hungry friend Mouse, were originally in a novella called Gone Fishing. Mosley sent it to several publishers but couldn't get a bite; he says the refusal was an issue of race. "They said, 'Who wants to read about black men? White people don't. Black women don't like them and black men don't This was the concept they had in publishing." Mosley plans to publish Gone Fishing in a year or two, through a black publisher. He adds that he is pleased with the film version of Devil, especially with the look of the postwar with all her scamming, flirting, and occasional bit of drug use, she makes it seem downright attractive.

Posey, who had a small part in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, manages to accommodate some softness and warmth to Mary that somehow doesn't dilute the cold, brittle attack of all her snappy one-liners. "I wouldn't mind a nice mind-altering substance," she pouts at a party she hosts. "Something that would preferably make my unborn children grow gills." With her flippant, left-field behavior (wait until you see what Mary does with the Dewey decimal system), Posey's comic relief will remind you of all that's fun about Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous: raffish, willful, catty and unabashedly campy It's a one-note performance, sure, but at have her own television show, since she doesn't exist. She's the creation of playwright and screenwriter Paul Rud-nick, the witty man behind play I Hate Hamlet and the recent film Jeffrey. While some of Rudnick's one-liners are repetitive, he occasionally hits the nail on the head with some astute and pointed observations.

Also talking of Field of Dreams, Libby writes, "James Earl Jones loves watching the 1919 Black Sox play, and he makes a big speech about how, back then, America was great and noble. All I could think was, But James Earl, in 1919 baseball was segregated so what was so swell?" This week's new releases (With excerpts from original Citizen reviews): The Basketball Diaries: Leonardo DiCaprio (This Boy's Life, What's Eating Gilbert Grape) stars In this harrowing film based on Jim Carroll's novel, about a New York teenager's nightmarish battle with drugs and the effect it has on his once-promising basketball career. it bounds along at playful, off a whodunit with tons of atmosphere but little mystery The McGuffin, as Alfred Hitchcock called the plot gimmick that everyone is chasing in a mystery film, is well beside the point in Devil. This is a look at a lost world, although no less engrossing for that. Denzel Washington plays Easy Author gives By Jay Stone Citizen movies writer TORONTO When American film-maker Howard Hawks was directing the 1946 movie version of Raymond Chandler's mystery The Big Sleep, he was so confused by the convoluted plot that he had to ask Chandler who had committed one of the murders.

It turned out that Chandler didn't know either. The perils of filming a complex story are familiar to Walter Mosley author of four Easy Rawlins mysteries including Devil In A Blue Dress. The movie version of that story opens today with Denzel Washington playing Rawlins, a neophyte private eye who is reluctantly dragged into a complicated plot involving blackmail, politics and murder. Like Chandler, to whom he is often superficial, but recognize the virtues of falafel and the Dewey decimal system. When you're dealing with a heroine whose motto is live to sieve," you know the flick isn't going to involve much existential hand-wringing.

The party girl in question is 24-year-old Mary (Parker Posey), a Holly Gonightly of the demi-monde that is Manhattan's exclusive club scene. Like your average, enchanting diva, Mary cultivates a froufrou lifestyle without actually ha1 'ing the means to make it happen. Unemployed she scams frei admission by dating the doorman, and picks her designer "Gau-tee-ay" tlx from other people's closets. After she's busted one night for hosting a party at her Chinatown loft, Mary calls her godmother Judy (Sasha von Scherler), a librarian, to bail her out. Steven Mazey VIDEO to so to of or By Pauline Tarn Citizen entertainment writer It's silly and sassy and emptier than air kisses.

The plot is flimsy, the characters are morally inert, and the story has no time for lofty themes. For all those reasons, Party Girl is a guilty pleasure. About the most you can say, after watching a bunch of limp-wristed New York scenesters live out their days of whine and poses, is that at least they OPINION Funny, imaginary film critic does reviews on basis of clothes, The subject of Mary's improvisational lifestyle comes up, and to prove her worth to Judy, she resolves to labor in the library a place she calls "cell block meets the 4-H club. That, in a nutshell, is the justification for the rest of the movie, which consists of party scenes, funky tunes, endless wardrobe changes, and a few limp subplots: Mary's romance with a falafel vendor named Mustafah (Omar Townsend); and the quest of Mary's Hispanic roommate (Guillermo Diaz) keep his job spinning records at the hippest joint in town. Shallow? Yes, but the whole thing is knowing that it doesn't try to be anything other than superficial.

The story bounds along at such a playful, off-the-cuff pace that you end up enjoying its excesses. Mary not only seems at ease be playing all major ethnic groups combined, or at least Jewish, Italian, and Orthodox flamenco. Anne, let me give you some advice: Jewish mothers don't wave their hands so much, because they might break a vase. "Dominick and Eugene reminded me other sensitive dramas that covered universal human dilemmas, such as, What if you were a blind figure skater? What if you met the elephant man? or What if you had to harvest a whole cotton crop in your print housedress?" On Field of Dreams: "Is it just me, or is baseball about as interesting a subject for movies as that kind of Jell-O that makes three layers? I know a lot of men are obsessed with baseball, but a lot of women are obsessed with crash diets, and no one makes a movie about living on popcorn and Tab On Rain Man, in which Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman played brothers: "All I could think of was their poor mother, who waited 25 years between babies." Sadly Gelman-Waxner will never Libby Gelman-Waxner isn't real, but she happens to be one of the funniest film critics writing today Gelman-Waxner, who has a regular column in the film magazine Premiere, couldn't care less about miseen scene, sub-text or chiaroscuro. What Gelman-Waxner cares about is how great Barbra Streisand managed to look in every single frame of The Prince of Tides only spontaneous moment comes when Nick tosses her a football and she screams "My Gelman-Waxner, who by day is a buyer in junior activewear for a major New York department store, reviews films on the basis of the clothes, the makeup and decor; the appearance and private lives of the film's stars; and the number of times she gets to see Dennis Quaid with his shirt off.

Now, with a new paperback collection of her writings from the past four years available in bookstores (If You Ask Me, Fawcett, film buffs can savor her inspired work in one volume. The book deserves a place on the shelves of any movie fan or video collector, right up there with the writings of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. Among Gelman-Waxner's observa tions: "Can anything top a classic like Flashdance, the movie that really began the loose perm?" On Torch Song Trilogy: "Anne Bancroft is Harvey's mom, and she seems i.