**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras D+
starring Christina Ricci, John Simm, Kyle MacLachlan, John Hurt
screenplay by Rob Young
directed by Marc Munden
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There was a time (from the late-'70s to the late-'80s) when the UK cranked out tart, intelligent films that put their American counterparts to shame. People like Stephen Frears, Hanif Kureshi, Alan Clarke, Mike Leigh, Terence Davies, Neil Jordan, Derek Jarman, and Sally Potter could be counted on to raise hell in the name of motion pictures; whatever their relative merits, they were interested in cinema and not career opportunities, and their commitment to a reality outside of their aesthetics gave them soul and punch. (Even when they made a thriller, like John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday, it was an anti-Thatcher thriller.) Then the '90s happened, and what was called "the multiplex generation" sprang up: suddenly we were doomed to the likes of Danny Boyle and Guy Ritchie, who made films with flashy visuals that failed to obscure their essential vacuity. And so it is with Marc Munden's Miranda, a well-shot, smartly-designed film with an empty space where its brain should be, leaving us with something that looks good, goes down easy, and is instantly forgotten.
Frank (John Simm) works at a small-town library in northern England that is about to be demolished. Miranda (Christina Ricci) is a sultry American who waits and waits inside the library for reasons unknown; though Frank's breathless voiceover indicates that he's smitten ("And there she was! The American Dream!"), it predictably can't elaborate beyond a general expression of lust. They go out, she moves in, and ten days later she's gone–a clear case of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl fucks off in a taxi." But as he tracks her down to London, he discovers that she is–wait for it–not what she seems. For one thing, she hangs out with sleazy procurer John Hurt, never a good sign; for another, she has something to do with selling property to a masochistic businessman (Kyle MacLachlan) who seems to have her under his thumb. Will Frank figure out his ever-elusive former lover? Will Miranda get out of the danger zone of a horndog Kyle MacLachlan? Will John Hurt cash a paycheck for a week's work?
These questions aren't really very interesting, because nobody has been fleshed-out beyond types. Frank is the lovable hangdog who serves as a doppelgänger to all dumb male writers, noble in his pursuit of a trophy girlfriend and "in love" to make it all seem acceptable; Miranda is the girl he has to "figure out," since she obviously can't be counted on to do it by herself. MacLachlan is the typical domineering executive, overzealous and greedy, and John Hurt's character, who uses Miranda as bait for suckers, essentially reprises his role from Scandal. Add to that the now-tiresome use of S&M as a villainous kink and the introduction of "adventure" into Frank's otherwise dreary life, and you have as series of clichés destined to keep you from caring one way or another.
It's a tragedy, because every other department on this film has done its job more than creditably. While no Fellini, director Marc Munden keeps things visually interesting, and is especially adept on sweeping camera movements. DP Ben Davis executes his moves with smoothness and achieves the right tones for various colour-specific locations, and those colours are brilliantly conjured by production designer Alice Normington and costume designer Michele Clapton. It's terrible that these people have been wasted on such lame material–and even worse that they will be wasted again and again on other unworthy productions. Here's hoping that Lynne Ramsay asserts fascistic control over the British film industry, so that we can be spared more shallow dreck like Miranda.
THE DVD
First Look's Miranda DVD (distributed in Canada by TVA) is unexciting, but it does the job. There is a feeling of a slight remove in the 2.32:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, as if there is some kind of digital screen between the picture and the viewer, and as a result deep blacks are not as lustrous as they should be (and the letterbox bands that fall within the 16×9 margins are much greyer than the outermost black bars), but for the most part saturation is vivid and there are no print flaws. The Dolby Digital stereo sound is much better, good at asserting the presence of the film's bright indie-rock score without sounding digitally removed from the rest of the mix. The one extra is a dull 6-minute featurette that offers very little beyond clips from the movie and statements of the obvious from the cast. Trailers for Miranda, Bark, The Jimmy Show, and Lawless Heart round out the disc.
90 minutes; R; 2.32:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Stereo); Spanish subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; TVA/First Look
