Duplicate, Late
Well, David, I finally saw Duplicity last week, and I was pleasantly surprised. I was also confused. I’m a bit scared of telling you how I was confused because you weren’t confused.
Although the movie is a romantic spy-romp, with a lot of camera time spent making love to plush hotels it kept me interested. Sometimes these simple formulas backfire; the chemistry doesn’t work between the stars, the story dumps off prematurely, ends with a whimper. I did not see the ending coming until just before it happened.
Why do trailers take the low road? Duplicity’s trailers were so uninteresting, and really didn’t give enough of a peek into the multiple layers of the story. It looked like Roberts and Owen played spies who may or may not have cheated on each other romantically. And that was boring. If they’d included some teasers about Wilkinson’s and Giamatti’s roles, a few look-sees into the spy laboratory, I’d have gotten to the theater sooner than I did.
That slow-mo corporate rumble on the airport tarmac was great. Loved it! Should have made the trailer.
I’ve come to appreciate Julia Roberts’ acting. She wasn’t in a stretch situation here, but she has a great earthy presence now that she’s had children. She’s put some weight on too, and is comfortable in that skin. A great step forward for female actresses. There really isn’t another actress “like” Roberts, she’s unique. Most of the time these days, actresses are interchangeable; they look like each other, talk like each other, and they all date Owen Wilson.
Roberts was great in Charlie Wilson’s War.
Owen was fine, too. He seemed a bit dumb at times; he’s the softie and Roberts is the more hard-bitten of the two.
Of course, it ends up that neither is in charge.
Ok, I was confused at the flashbacks and the whole deal with the script Owens and Roberts rehearse.
4 Comments so far
Why do trailers take the low road? Because the people who market movies think most of us are idiots.
In a genre that depends on swankiness and insouciance to sustain fantasy, it’s curious that they opted to make Julia Roberts down to earth, even somber. Overall, in Duplicity their relationship, rather than striving for onscreen therapy, could have used more levity — which would have better set up the final scene.
re their repeated script, rehearsed it to throw off their fellow spies. They assumed they would be bugged.
To sort out the flashbacks, I suppose one could see the movie again while constructing a flow chart. Or Google the sucker. No doubt someone on the Interwebs has already done the work.
You have to like the joke in the sequence of Exotic Spy Lairs: Dubai, Rome, London, New York, and finally Cleveland, where Clive is spying on behalf of frozen pizza.
So you like Julia more than Clive and I’m the opposite. Are we totally gay or what? Then again, he was allowed the funnier line readings. I went back to Children of Men, in which Clive plays one of the all-time great anti-heroes. We ended up spinning it twice in our house. Hate to fabulize but it’s really one the smartest and most vital films of all time.
Oh, yes. Trailers. K and I tend to have a mild disagreement re: trailers. She likes to show up in time to see them; I like to arrive 10 minutes late, just in time to miss trailers. Because I cannot stand the modern trailer style.
90% of them start with a slow pounding noise. The pounding grows louder and louder. Images assault your eyeballs ruthlessly while the pounding becomes earsplitting. Then there’s a brief lull followed an enormous explosion along with a tag line which is usually a variation of, “You are a goddam idiot. We’re absolutely confident we just made made you want to see our goddam film.”
I hate having to see the same trailers over and over. And here in Jackson town it’s unavoidable! Arriving a bit late in order to miss trailers I know I’ve seen could become a new habit.
I did understand that the script had to do with throwing off fellow spies, but the script went overly “Groundhog Day.” And something about the way that little sub plot was dropped in bugged me, and felt round-about, and it somehow polluted, for me, the importance of the script do-overs.
I liked Clive! He did have the funny line readings and his slightly behind-the-game delivery made them funnier. Women can be either gay about other women, or envious. We watch each other a lot. What’s SHE doin’?