Screen:
O'Brien, Tom
SCREEN UNMASKING SECRETS 'SORCERESS' & 'A TAXING WOMAN' Sorceress is film's best trip to the Middle Ages since that 1983 gem, The Return of Martin Guerre. Like Guerre, it evolved from the work of...
...Action is quick and economical...
...Her femininity makes her comically vulnerable when she puts the bite on some heavies...
...Although no one is ever much hurt, Itami also stages some tough confrontations between tax collectors and their targets and distributes them evenly over the film with a fine sense of rhythm...
...Itami's style is quick, playful, and seamless and he moves glibly between tones with no sense of incongruity...
...But its real marvel is getting us to sympathize with tax investigators who, in Japan, seem equally detested as here...
...With this backing, it should get outlets on PBS after its movie theater demise...
...Here, the only suspense is the possibility of the stake...
...As many recent reports on college teaching have noted, scholarship can be defined by breadth as well as depth...
...Perhaps inspired by Guerre, and its author Natalie Zemon Davie, Berger mulled over her work...
...when a tax cheat (Tsutomu Yamazaki) falls in love with her, he employs the oddest twist on attraction between cop and thief in some time...
...One scene tells all: when his heroine, a female tax investigator, goes to case out a slot machine arcade suspected of hiding profits, she is not above shouts of wild glee when she accidentally hits a jackpot...
...The acting, while adequate, also makes one recall Guerre...
...She's a good comedian, aware of the counterpoint between her sincere, earnest face and the trouble or embarrassment that her energy always get her into...
...TOM O'BRIEN...
...Berger's ideology is relevant, but not intrusive...
...communicating to a wide audience is as important as advancing the narrow knowledge of an elite in some dry-as-dust journal that even they only pretend to read...
...The score includes a fine throbbing eight-note sax motif that enhances chase scenes where investigators are always trying to grab evidence before the cheats destroy it...
...To be sure, Berger and Schiffman have given us a modern interpretation of the Middle Ages, but it is not a modernist distortion...
...An oaf, he avoids being an ogre...
...Itami also uses her sexuality for love interest...
...Berger's feminism is also clear in her portrayal of De Bourbon, who is treated satirically, but not crudely...
...De Bourbon feels both sexual attraction for Elda and ideological suspicion of her methods, which to him smack of witchcraft...
...wrote to a Truffaut associate, Suzanne Schiff-man...
...Elda is shown to be as religious (in a Franciscan way) as anyone...
...Pacing is also off...
...in its "looking backward,'' the past is allowed to live and 6 May 1988: 279 breathe as the past...
...but clues aplenty are planted early to deflate that...
...Other men resist his violence toward Elda...
...Moreover, the film is not anachronistic...
...Berger's plot is based on the thirteenth-century account of a Dominican friar, one Etienne de Bourbon (played by Tchecky Karo), who was under orders from his superiors to root out heresy...
...Thank goodness Berger defies their orthodoxy...
...involved her as director...
...If only all tax agents really did their job, and went after the crime families and real estate crooks depicted here...
...but true to its theme of healing, the color green dominates so that at times the screen itself looks mossy...
...The film was originally scheduled to be released in New York on April 15-surely someone's little joke...
...and finally-mirabile dictu-persuaded the National Endowment for the Humanities to become one of the film's producers...
...In spite of its flaws, it's a perfect example of what college professors ought to be doing...
...The editing is slick, especially in scenes that cut between actual tailing of evaders and watching a tape of the tail back in the office...
...Tchecky Karo as the friar has Depardieu's height and gait, but not his awkward power...
...Then we would all be paying our taxes and getting back our money's worth: fairness...
...His colors are also carefully selected, mostly stark reds and blues in the indoor, artificial glitz of Tokyo...
...This is heresy to some...
...Although Itami is not pressing any moral or message, one can't help but feel sad watching this...
...co-wrote a screenplay...
...on the other hand, it also helps her think of places where women tax evaders hide secret safe deposit box keys...
...the pace only drags when Itami includes a sentimental bond between Miyamato and Yamazaki over their respective children...
...The film implies (not too heavy-handedly) that the latter is his unconscious defense against the former, and that the hierarchy of the church often used dogma to repress not just science but the threat of female power...
...A co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, her film reflects that book's emphasis on women challenging male authorities (whether doctors or priests), a theme whose impact ranges beyond abortion to less controversial matters such as sports and "natural" childbirth...
...Like its prede-cessor, A Taxing Woman is a curious, even mischievous blend of comedy, thriller, brainy cops-and-robbers, mock heroics, romance, and devil-may-care light eroticism...
...Elda is accorded quietly heroic treatment for her work, especially in numerous shots of nursing, a symbol of feminine power as old as Roman images of "caritas" and as new as The Grapes of Wrath...
...Sorceress has a harsh, period look...
...Nevertheless, Sorceress is leagues above two other medieval films: the 1985 atrocity, The Name of the Rose, and the recent Beatrice, a Gothic melodrama in more ways than one...
...Visiting a rural town, he discovers the beautiful Elda on whom peasants rely for herbal cures...
...Sorceress shares in the spirit and grace of Martin Guerre, but not in the subtlety of its moral puzzle...
...The Dominican gets his big break as a detective when he observes Elda allowing the peasants a superstitious cult, or rather, not discouraging them...
...scenes of him and Elda (Cristine Boisson) don't match the fire of Depardieu and "wife" (Natalie Baye...
...Only afterward (decorous again) does she go and inform the arcade owner that he is being audited...
...The heroine is played by Nobuto Miyamato, the noodle cook in Tampopo...
...A running gag in the film involves her cowlick, which keeps popping up no matter how many times her pertinacity gets her promoted...
...Other strengths make A Taxing Woman a delight...
...A Taxing Woman comes from director Juzo Itami, the maker of Tampopo, "the first Samurai noodle western...
...As a result, the film avoids condescension...
...Like Guerre, it evolved from the work of an American academic, Boston College art professor, Pamela Berger...
...scenes together don't quite build to sharp conclusions...
...She is no modern feminist ahead of her time, but a Christian believer who sees God as the ultimate healer and whose secrets she is trying to understand...
Vol. 115 • May 1988 • No. 9
