Sundance Catalog-Order Bride Free At Last

For those of you who don't know Rip Torn just by his name, you would surely remember him by his face. With his antiquated magician's Van Dyck and generally comic-book haggard features, he is well-cast as a narcissistic rock-and-rock legend in the new independent film, Forty Shades of Blue, a Sundance Film Festival selection. He attacks the role with verve from the very first scenes, which portray him penning and mumbling an acceptance speech (presumably for a lifetime achievement award), while ignoring his striking Russian girlfriend (played by Dina Korzun). It's as if Torn is making up for lost time, finally freed from the one-dimensional supporting roles in blockbuster films like Men in Black, Dodgeball and the baroque classic Freddy Got Fingered.

As you might be able to tell, I admire Rip Torn both for his career and his pornstar name. Sadly, I can't say the same for Forty Shades of Blue. For those who still think the Sundance Film Festival selection stamp is an independent film quality assurance seal, Forty Shades of Blue is an Extinction Level Event for such a quaint notion.

The plot goes something like this: Korzun plays a Russian mail-order girlfriend. Apparently, in Memphis, rock-and-roll legends get to do the mail-order bride thing without actually doing the marriage part. Rip Torn is an irascible, philandering scoundrel. A miserable Korzun stays off the meds by taking care of their 3 year-old son. Torn's emotionally deflated, but hunky son (played by the brutally dull Darren Burrows) comes home from LA to celebrate his father's lifetime achievement award and ends up fucking his stepmother. Burrows apparently comes from the Ed Burns and Richard Gere School of Acting in which the Eyebrow Method (80% of a character is defined by minimal eyebrow movements) is taught as seriously as intelligent design at Bob Jones University.

Can we please ban movies, books, plays, music videos about suburban adultery? When there's a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, $8 dollar per gallon oil prices, nukes in North Korea and Iran but not in Iraq, UK cops shooting random Arabs on subways at point-blank range 8 or 9 times for wearing that suicide bomber uniform, The Denim Jacket, the last thing I want to consider as high-stakes drama is unfulfilled people fucking other unfulfilled people only to realize that they're still, yes, rather unfulfilled. Ira Sachs, the director of Forty Shades of Blue foregoes any modern context, any distinct setting (other than the dead-on interior of Rip Torn's dated Gracelandesque living room), and most pathetically, actually expects us to care about this low stakes, faux-Oedipal plot with characters who are no better together than apart. It's as if he's been playing poker with Richard Ford and Hanif Kureshi for the last ten years ("You cannot mix irony with adultery. Adultery is too big. The Iliad was all about adultery, you know. All in!"). Korzun even writes a song entitled Forty Shades of Blue (wow, coincidence!) and sings it during the film! At least have the decency as a filmmaker to make us laugh once, Ira!

Please send a spam letter to Robert Redford pleading him to donate funds to my fictional Save The Sundance Screenplay foundation. My foundation would donate a few lines of well-written dialogue to one of the many script-challenged Sundance selections. We might even donate lines directly to Dina Korzun, the noble Russian leading actress obviously working for scale when she should have been working for a few sandwiches. She's much too good of an actress to be in films like this.

The same can be said for Rip Torn. If you'd like to see a decent film set in Memphis about half-interesting people that actually looks and feels like, well, Memphis, you might want to spend your $10 on Hustle & Flow. For all its pimp-with-a-heart-of-gold commercialism, at least the movie bothered to have a point.