frankm@microsoft.UUCP (Frank MALONEY) (04/02/91)
PERFECTLY NORMAL
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
PERFECTLY NORMAL is a Canadian film directed by Yves Simoneau,
produced by Michael Burns, and starring Robbie Coltrane, Michael Riley,
Deborah Duchane, and Kenneth Walsh. It is wonderful, funny, fresh,
exciting, and completely satisfying.
Alonzo (Robbie Coltrane) is the vast, pushy, sleazy, operatic
con-man cum restaurateur who unbidden, unwanted, and irresistible moves
in with Renzo (Michael Riley). Renzo is so withdrawn and self-contained
as to be almost catatonic, seemingly incapable of doing anything but
working by day in a brewery, driving his late father's cab by night,
drawing up plans for house he'd probably never build, and playing goalie
on the company hockey team (this is a Canadian movie, after all).
Alonzo takes charge of Renzo's life and most certainly brings a
weird liveliness to it, as does Deborah Duchane's character, who pretty
much has to seduce Renzo and who has one of the funnier bits in a very
funny movie when she asks Renzo:
"Are you going to rip my clothes off and ravish me until I talk to
God?"
To which he replies: "Something like that."
The movie is populated with several wonderful characters, such as
Renzo's "friend" at the brewery, his boss and hockey coach, the coach's
girl friend, Deborah Duchane's girl friend (whose sexual fantasies
provide us with a kind of leitmotiv throughout), inter alios.
The movie ends with two moments of high magic and a bit in between
that I don't understand. Anyone who seen PERFECTLY NORMAL please e-mail
me; I have a question I need to ask.
The director of photography was Alain Dostie and the music was by
Richard Gregoire. They both deserve high marks indeed. Some wonderful
stuff in the brewery and elsewhere and the music through was central to
the movie.
Please do yourself a favor and seek out PERFECTLY NORMAL. Ask your
art house exhibitor why he/she isn't showing it. In Seattle, it is
playing at the Metro Cinema without any visible support, no display ads,
no handbills. It deserves and could win a large following. I can
imagine the situation being similar elsewhere, if it is shown at all. I
think word-of-mouth could build this film into at least an art house
success in the U.S. If anybody wants to post or e-mail how it has done
in Canada and/or whether it has been distributed in Europe, I would be
interested.
(One final word: the film was financed in part by Telefilm Canada
and The Ontario Film Development Corp., one more sign of the superior
civilization in Canada.)
--
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney