Fay Grim

The last of my London Film Festival movies (boo hoo! sniff!) but brilliantly, four out of four have been great, and they are all as different as possible from each other. 'Fay Grim' is Hal Hartley's most recent effort, a follow-up to 1997's 'Henry Fool'. Now I am a devotee of Hartley, I worship at the altar of Hartley, and yet I didn't see 'Henry Fool', largely because at the time of release I was suffering from a pretty major vomiting phobia and I'd heard there was on-screen puking. Turned out I was the Fool in this scenario, because with the phobia behind me, it turns out that you can't get 'Henry Fool' on DVD any more. So not a clue what happened in that film. My guess it was a vaguely realist protrayal of a piss-poor novelist down on his luck.

'Fay Grim' focuses on said piss-poor novelist's eponymous abandoned wife, played by the distractingly beautiful Parker Posey (I spent at least half the film vowing to master the art of black eyeliner, and my usual cinema companion got all squirmy in his seat during the lengthy Posey In Paris Inexplicably Wearing Only A Long Coat And Sexy Underwear section.) However, vaguely realist it is not. It is in fact the most stagey, hammy, ridiculously over-the-top spy chase thriller movie spoof thing you are ever likely to see. It's absurd. it's ridiculous. It is utterly implausible. I loved every minute of it. In fact I adored it. And yet I am not one hundred percent convinced it is not secretly a terrible movie.

The thing is, Hal Hartley and I are soulmates. (He doesn't know this yet. I should also probably find out what he looks like, because I am shallow enough that this would make a difference. I always imagine him to look just like Martin Donovan.) I get Hal. What he finds interesting, I find interesting. What he finds funny, I find funny. What he finds beautiful, I find beautiful. He cannot be too self-indulgent for me, because when he is indulging himself, he is indulging me too. Just maybe not you.

Ultimately, if you loved 'Amateur', which you also, goddammit, can't get on DVD, you will love 'Fay Grim' because it's very much in the 'Amateur' school of Hartley's work. It is not as good as 'Amateur', but then what is? if you didn't love 'Amateur', it might be best to avoid. But if you have never seen 'Amateur', and don't know Hartley's work, and can't, for crying out loud, get any of it on DVD, then this is not a bad place to start. Just don't come crying to me if you hate it, because that probably means you hate me too.