Claire Dolan
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: B
It was not that long ago we used to get strong, smart,
powerful films like Lodge H. Kerrigan’s Claire Dolan, a 1998 story about
the title character (the talented, late Katrin Cartlidge) and her life as a
bold, cold, totally business-like, high paid prostitute. She is in debt to an even colder pimp (Colm
Meaney in another thankless role) who thinks he knows her better than she knows
herself and intends to collect every last penny of what is owed. When she meets a cab driver (the great
Vincent D’Onofrio in a remarkably understated performance) who likes her, they
fall in love, but it will not be that easy with her current situation.
Instead of the usual, tired, terrorist-pimp clichés, the film
is a set of character examinations, from the people to the world they live
in. Writer/director Kerrigan does not
see that world as a great place, but an ugly trap with redemption being a myth
and life becoming easily cheap, no matter how much anyone may value it. Commodification of the worst kind is rampant
throughout and the film shows any inhumanity without celebrating it like a
snuff film or work that thinks it is cheap by cheaply debasing some of the
characters. No, Claire Dolan is
something much smarter and much better; a film about adults in an adult world
or the kind of film political correctness is ethnically cleansing from screens
worldwide. The only thing that stops
this film from being great is its 95 minutes length. It could and should have been longer, because there was more to
show and say, but it is solid as it stands.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is not bad, but
has some dull colors and detail limits.
Cinematographer Teodoro Maniaci adds to the film with some great shots
throughout that reference the coldness of the city as trap, though only the
slightest hint of anything Film Noir are present. The visual denseness accelerates tensions in all forms as a
result. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
has clear dialogue and a very good music score by Simon Fisher-Turner and Ahrin
Mishan. This was a Dolby SR (Spectral
Recording) analog theatrical release, but there are no surrounds here, less
than you would even expect from such a dialogue-based film. Either way, playback is good and
consistent. Extras include a text-rich
paper foldout in the DVD case offering an interview with Cartlidge & a
short essay by Michael Atkinson, whole the DVD has the original trailer in
English with burned-in French subtitles, trailers for four other New Yorker
DVDs and a 9+ minutes introduction by Kent Jones to the filmmaker and stars.
That is better watched after seeing the film.
- Nicholas Sheffo
