American Psycho High Fidelity
Cooper, Rand Richards
ble entendres, as during Bateman's date ...
...P:ua...
...American Psy- as a series of poses and empty lines...
...Cusack turns away from her...
...Long Have I Walter J. Burghardt Ultimately, Rob's trip down the roLoved You LONG HAVE I LOVED You mantic dead-ends of his past delivers A Theologian Reflects on His Church the scratchy truth that he has been the Walter Burghardt- that wonderful weaver of words, has indeed craft- dumper as often as the dumped-pered a rich tapestry of our church and our times...
...Director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) and her co-writer, Guinevere Turner, have done just that, carving out of Ellis's mountain of pop trash a quick, jagged film...
...Heads begin Such ghastly wit has a life of its own, curtain: this is eighties New York, not to roll, literally...
...Are we his friend...
...Cusack does this stuff almost his love life always hits those same old fun with the store clerks (Jack Black is too well...
...It's a letdown when buff, swaggering, Brioni-suited pack- texture of the film, portraying identity black comedy yields to psychological tenage of mayhem and rage...
...Harron tosses off genre the'80s obsession morphing into the'90s...
...E Commonweal 2 2 May 19, 2000...
...ble entendres, as during Bateman's date XXXXX with his sweetly adoring secretary ("I'm Rand Richards Cooper afraid I'll hurt you," he says, and she: "I don't want to be bruised...
...ers jokey touches-swooning into Barry Frears's warmly funny account of what In rumpled black jeans, belted black White as Rob visualizes Laura sleeping passes for life in a retro Chicago record leather jacket, and sneakers, he's a buf- with her new boyfriend (Tim Robbins, store called Championship Vinyl...
...Nirghaa{r 1.57075.296.6 paper $20.00 options open," he confesses, "and that's William Johnston suicide by tiny tiny increments...
...With its stilted dialogue, dis- ies pile up, we're served hints that it's all Brett Easton Ellis's notorious 1991 jointed pacing, and notably flat affect, a lurid fantasy in Bateman's mind...
...worry about a knife tearing the shower cissist supposed to take...
...well beyond the film's ideas, which are fifties Southern Gothic, and the monster American Psycho isn't easy to watch, banal...
...His voice is kind, forgiving...
...The former impulse bad boy he has been, perhaps we can feel and endless catalogs of brand-name is the better one...
...keeps mistaking Bateman for someone floor like a huge napkin-we know some Feeling queasy...
...wisdont that goes beyond words and reasoning...
...ding adieu to his extended adolescence, Mysticism for a New Era he embraces good old-fashioned matuWriting at the dawn of a new millennium...
...J 1.57075-312-1 paper $18.00 tatorship of the inner child and posiWILLIAM JOHtatara* At your bookseller or direct tions him for a liberating discovery of ORBIS BOOKS the outer adult, ready for marriage and 30 Years of Books that Matter Maryknoll, NY 10545 raring to go...
...He hangs out in trendy bars with his fellow Wall Street young Turks, whom he hates and envies, and trades icy pleasantries with his fiancee (Reese Witherspoon...
...Well, don't else-well, how much is a raging nar- major coulis is about to be spilled...
...and as Bateman self-destrucits violent misogyny, but the novel's comic Grand Guignol and a cold outrage ts, whining and blubbering about what a real crime, with its lurid splatterfests at American excess...
...It's hardly a dazzling insight, for is inside the shower...
...And Cusack's real-life sisemployees, Barry and Dick...
...Then again, American Psycho is a pecho sparked widespread revulsion for The movie wobbles between darkly riod piece...
...Later, when Bateman lures a victim back to his apartmerican Psycho opens with a pulls off bigger deals, but gets last- ment-its walls gleaming white, chairs gorgeous protagonist taking minute tables at top restaurants, and slipcovered, newspapers taped to the A a slow, luxurious shower...
...Lupe Lu...
...prescient...
...He's going to need pecially to faces-closer than you want Harron and Turner can't decide whether them all, too, since by midmovie he's to be to Bale's pretty mask, and much this is satire, merrily gruesome allegorical sluicing away enough out-out-damned- closer to the leering jack o'lantern of farce, or the nightmare of a man trapped spots to incarnadine the entire Manhat- Willem Dafoe, playing a Columbo-style in his own violent delusion...
...he rants, sive array of soaps, exfoliants, and other partly by bringing us in too close...
...The novel took those two staples of 1980s American Psycho has the feel of a per- film hedges its bets, manipulating its surlore, the Wall Street killer and the seri- sonality disorder...
...I multuous era shines through...
...Meet Norman Ba- and not just because of the violence...
...At least we movies pushed back at you from a core fidence's new Japan import...
...The movie's soundtrack delivI love High Fidelity, Stephen American version of London grunge...
...As the bodtan sewer system...
...sion...
...1-800.258-5838 www-orbisbooks.com Maybe now he'll even get to wear a raincoat...
...His breakthrough in Cameron clunker notes...
...During the opening credits, drops of what looks like COMMITTED blood falling against a white background 'American Psycho' & 'High Fidelity' turn out to be red berry coulis drizzled onto a dinner plate...
...Mtx:A...
...beauty products...
...There's raucous giveness...
...It's as if Harron has faces-appropriately enough-in an atal murderer, and bundled them into one infused Bateman's narcissism into the tempt to have it all...
...among us still...
...Bid"ARISE, MY LOVE...
...Wu.t;rs guess it made more sense to keep my Vt!ali,r...
...His when he euphorically finds out she ing his days away with his two hapless life, like his apartment and store, is hasn't (yet...
...of perhaps-not-solvable human probgets dumped by his girlfriend Laura While American Psycho does its best lems...
...products, was to pummel the reader riffs, from chainsaw massacre to mean- Good-bye nasty monster of greed, hello into the same stuporous frenzy that af- streets gumshoe to porn, and campy dou- inner child...
...You wanted to slash and slash...
...wise...
...Needless to say, this record- phone calls, from funerals and bedroom Fans of other Frears films, like My geek fanaticism bodes ill for romance- conquests, to pour his troubles directly Beautiful Launderette or The Snapper, may how well can you be doing with women into the camera...
...When he's dissed by a brash competitor who not only Who's psycho...
...High Fidelity frees Cusack from the dic1...
...His miss a certain edge in all this...
...flicted its protagonist...
...His shrink...
...while High Fidelity gestures at such (the serenely beautiful Then Hjejle), he to appall, High Fidelity aims to please, complexities, this is romantic comedy, quests into his past, revisiting his list of and please it does, a bit too eagerly, but and the bottom line is all fluff and forTop Five Breakups to figure out why effectively nonetheless...
...McKi'->,i smell, and the way she tastes...
...High Fidelity must set sack so unlucky in love that when his tise, and doing pitched battle over who a new mark for smashing the cinemat- girlfriend splits, his family sides with recorded the best version of "Little Latin ic fourth wall...
...Bateman is played by Christian Bale, who resembles a young James Brolin-your memories of "Marcus Welby" are in for a ghoulish new tiltand hunches behind a mannequin-like smile, blurting murderous impulses under his breath...
...priceless as Barry, goateed and belli- Crowe's 1989 teen romance, Say Anything, disclosed a bankable asset that directors have been cashing in ever sinceDaniel Berrigan namely, the Suffering Lover, a.k.a...
...the 1.57075.305.9 Paper $22.00 theater murmurs with sighing women...
...year-old investment banker who keeps drzej Sekula, have created a glossy, dis- maybe that's why having him murder a his bathroom stocked with an impres- torted look that keeps us at a distance, homeless man ("You're a loser...
...When Rob know we matter...
...the THE BRIDE Man Who Stands Outside in the Rain...
...instance, to locate a kernel of Social Daroops, Patrick Bateman, a twenty-seven- Harron and her cinematographer, An- winism inside a career like Bateman's...
...John foon bohemian, looking weirdly like in a silly cameo), then later bursting Cusack stars as Rob Gordon, the store's Stallone in the original Rocky-an ami- into Queen's "We Are the Champions" thirty-something owner, who's fritter- able loser loafing through the city...
...detective...
...Commonweal 2 1 May 19, 2000 f American Psycho sounds Frears has given British writer Nick cose, berating a customer who wants like something you'd Hornby's novel a transatlantic change to buy "I Just Called to Say I Love loathe, then you may just of venue, leaving Cusack to pull off an You...
...His Io~e for humankind during this tu- petually restless, unable to commit...
...Es- stabbing him) comes off as, well, overkill...
...Together grimy, cluttered and stale, and he's ter Joan shows up as his screen sister, they're the Three Stooges of retail music, comfortable in it, loving nothing more reaming him out for losing Laura, thus babbling about obscure bands, flaying than to sit back with a cigarette and be- completing the comic picture of a sad their few customers with arcane exper- moan his misery...
...and by film's end, when he towConvey the diverse faces of the church - each -an icon of divine els him off to deliver a soulful Top Five IoveI a Pa 11icular path of discipleship...
...a glimpse of the face of Christ Things I Miss about Laura ("I miss her written in lnunan flesh...
...Those if you're this ardent about Licorice Con- confessor...
...William Johnston joins rity, trading in those empty old romanEast and Weal to resfxrnd to sign, of a growing thirst for nivsticisnl - tic fantasies for love and commitment...
...Images of the Church Frears subjects him to repeated dousIcons by William Hart McNichols ings...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 10
