This really is a delightful film. It would be easy for a film that is centrally concerned with the search for a 'natural' life, free of narratives and contruction, self-imposed and otherwise, to get in way too deep (il n'y a pas de hors-texte etc), but while The Brothers Bloom is clearly aware of the deconstructionist ideas that it invokes, at its heart is a tightly plotted, distinctly human story focused on the brothers Bloom themselves, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo perfect as the con men brothers who are hopelessly entangled in their own story-telling; Rachel Weisz is equally good as the disarmingly open eccentric shut-in who gets caught up in their tale, and Rinko Kikuchi a delightful ornament as the taciturn Bang Bang (I'm pretty sure that her only words in the whole film are "campari" and "fuck me!").
I said after the first time I saw it that it could have been calculated to appeal to me - one of my personal preoccupations as its central theme, a style that seamlessly melds the artificial and the natural (a formal fixation of mine there), three of my favourite actors as the principals - and on a second viewing it still hits all of its marks...along with all of the above, it's clever, witty and self-aware, and it has both pizzazz (a surprisingly hard word to spell, incidentally) and heart.
As an aside, the way that they're all dressed doesn't hurt, either - something to aspire to.
I said after the first time I saw it that it could have been calculated to appeal to me - one of my personal preoccupations as its central theme, a style that seamlessly melds the artificial and the natural (a formal fixation of mine there), three of my favourite actors as the principals - and on a second viewing it still hits all of its marks...along with all of the above, it's clever, witty and self-aware, and it has both pizzazz (a surprisingly hard word to spell, incidentally) and heart.
As an aside, the way that they're all dressed doesn't hurt, either - something to aspire to.
