Newspaper Page Text
AFFORDABLE FUTON SOFABEDS
Huge Selection • Package Pricing
Southern
taterbeds
* Futons
Since I97S
ACROSS FROM MALL • (706) 543-4323
southernwaterbeds.com
kJ
COODTPIRk
♦d
H*
A
*rei*Ti*J
iu
Itt ONU*<
***&•!
WANT TO CHECK IT OUT?
TRY CLAY
Every Friday, 7-9pm • $?0/perso*
we’ve got
our bag!
• laptop
cases
• purses
m
wrapping
• totes
LOVELY FRENCH LADY
LAOY CHATTERLEY (R) Winner of five Cesars
(Best Film, Best Actress, Best Adapted
Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best
Costume Design), writer-director Pascale Ferran's
exquisitely mannered and sumptuously composed
adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's classic novel re
covers the tome from the skinematic depths of
the 1981 not-quite-softcore porn starring Sylvia
Kristel. (My first encounter as a teen with Lady
Chatterley was on Cinemax After Dark at my
friend's house.) Having nev^r read Lawrence's
work—much less the second, less well-known
as well as less risque,
version, John Thomas
and Lady Jane, adapted
by Ferran and cowriters
Roger Bohbot and Pierre
Trividic—I can't com
ment on the faithful
ness of the translation.
However, with the film
running at nearly three
hours, I cannot imagine
much of the book was
left out. With her hus
band, Lord Chatterley
(Hippolyte Girardot), paralyzed from the waist
down due to a wound received during The Great
War, Constance, Lady Chatterley (Marina Hands),
chained by the gendered expectations of her
era and her class, has become bored. Soon she
enters into an affair with the gamekeeper. Parkin
(Jean-Louis Coulloc'h), a pear-shaped bull of a
man who resembles a middle-aged Brando, who
awakens in her an appetite not merely for sex,
but for passion. Not only is Constance stimulated
by Parkin, the film itself is roused from an hour-
long slumber as silent intertitles briefly blossom
into lively voiceover and the previously unobtru
sive score swells dramatically.
While Lawrence's controversial novel, con
cerned not solely with eroticism but with
inter-class eroticism, was ahead of its time, its
narrative is demonstrably behind ours. (Is not
Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves a modern,
exceedingly relevant retelling of this story?) One
wonders why Ferran felt the need to retell this
story at this time. However, the vivid beauty
of the film and its unfussy removal of morality
from sexuality are timeless. (The separation of
morality and infidelity
is an issue altogether
ignored.) Still, Ferran
never dwells on the sex
act. Rather, she focuses
upon the burgeoning
love between Constance
and Parkin, giving Cesar
Award winner Hands,
a fine young actress
who is not quite as
pornographically pretty
as Kristel (a horrible
actress, mind you), a
detailed character arc to work through. Furtive
in her first, fast sexual encounter, but intrigued
enough to return. Hands' countenance physi
cally brightens every time she is with her lover.
An achievement of art more than entertainment
(though this lengthy film moves more fleetly
than most its size), Lady Chatterley is a film
never to be confused with a movie, a value that
should please many a discerning filmgoer.
The film starts on Friday, Aug. 24 at Cine.
Drew Wheeler
Manna Hands
DAWGS!
baUHcl'1 ,,
Crambos
from S 5. 9!
e.£ta/s
from
SERVING THE BEST FOOD
AND MARGARITAS 1
18 FLAGPOLE COM • AUGUST 22, 2007
HE H«
AAobeRmse
rnnArco k ci* i
1086 Baxter St
706.549.6360
• TOBACCOS•
5J0P BY fit) HUE f\
INCENSE • HAND BLOWN
GLASS • DRINKING ft BOARD
• GAMES • OETOX1FYING
PRODUCTS* CANDLES*
CIGARETTES • CAN SAFES •
GRATEFUL DEAD. PHISH ft
WIDESPREAD PANIC
MERCHANDISE • HEMP SEED
LOTION & MASSAGE OIL • NAG
CHAMPA BODY PRODUCTS •
HOOKAHS ft HOOKAH TOBACCO
AND SO MUCH MORE!
706*546*8787
Collet* Aft • Uaftr Dec*
Expcricpoc \_^srI!f!Nci
Athens' 1st ^
MOVIE PICK
SUPERFUNNY
SUPERBAD (R) Surprisingly and thankfully, this
decade-old script by Knocked Up's newly-minted,
if not superstar, then viable comic lead Seth
Rogen and his childhood buddy Evan Goldberg
wasn't produced during the second coming of
teen sex comedies begun by the success of
American Pie. The super-raunchy all-night ad
ventures of best buds and lovable losers, the
awkwardly oblivious Seth (Michael Cera, "Arrested
Development"^ George Michael Bluth) and the
foul-mouthed Evan (supporting player extraordi
naire Jonah Hill) as they
seek beer and sex was
waiting for the ribald,
heartfelt guidance of
producer Judd Apatow,
the writer-director of
The 40-Year-0td Virgin
and this past summer's
smash Knocked Up.
With Hollywood fully in
support of *he Apatow
brand—marketable,
profitable dirty come
dy—a chance was taken
and the summer gained its second funniest fea
ture (Knocked Up still reigns supreme), one that
will offend your mother (my mom may have loved
Knocked Up, but I don't know if she’s ready for
this flick), discomfit your father, and, depending
on your girlfriend, either send her into paroxysms
of laughter or sentence you to a weekend-long
showing of The Nanny Diaries.
Less cartoonish, more real and megatons more
nastily funny than American Pie, Superbad cap
tures in almost documentarian fashion the life
and travails of the geeky—as in normal—high-
school male. From the benignly cruel putdowns
to the casual monogamous partnership with por
nography to that first awkward drunken hookup,
Superbad addresses the teenage life cycle with
far more truthfulness, f-bombs and penises than
its puerile peers or those PG-13 wannabes.
No topic is too foul or unfunny for Rogen and
Goldberg, but it is the genuine friendship be
tween Seth and Evan that rescues Superbad from
Dumb Comedyland, a cardboard game of imma
turity played by numerous "SNL" vets and Harold
and Kumar. The comedic
brilliance of director
Greg Mottola, Apatow,
Rogen and Goldberg
extends to casting as
well. Cera is a young
comic genius whose
mastery of the awkward
pause is near Newhart-
ian, and Hill rules the
clan of aurally acidic,
insincerely misogynis-
tic, desperately sweet
outcasts. A third teen,
Fogell/ McLovin (newcomer Christopher Mintz-
Plasse), and the two buffoonish cops played by
Rogen and Bill Hader (Hot Rod) add to the effort
less fizz. Superbad even supplies its own coda of
maturity as lessons are learned about drinking,
sex and women. More than an immature comedy
made for and by immature guys, Superbad en
sures the Apatow ethos—and his stable stable of
players, bit and lead—will have many more op
portunities to delight and disgust us atl.
Drew Wheeler
Michael Cera and Jonah Hill
NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS It EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS