SEPTEMBER 1999
www.celtic-connection.com
Page 11
AT THE MOVIES
Hugh Grant: A British Charmer!
EW PEOPLE could argue that Britain historically has produced some of the best actors, both on stage and on the silver screen. British thespians are known for their great dramatic flair. Actors such as Sir Michael Redgrave, Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier quickly come to mind.
to his youthful days. Before his career was effectively jump-started with the surprise sleeper hit Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grant had done scores of television and stage work. Small screen series to benefit from his charisma included The Changeling and the Trials o/Oz, for the BBC. Stateside North Americans caught a glimpse of the boyhood charmer in ABC's Our Sons opposite Julie Andrews and Ann-Margaret and in CBS' Dangerous Love and Till We Meet Again.
On stage, Grant's roles include his work with director Richard Wilson in An Inspector Calls at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre and with Richard Digby Day in Lady Windermere's Fan, Hamlet and Coriolanus at the NotUngham Playhouse. That last location partly explains Grant's unparalleled success this year.
Nevertheless, when it comes to comic talent, the British Isles has never been under-represented. The nation that gave us Peter Sellers, Monty Python and the inimitable Benny Hill has now blessed us with another leading man who mixes comedy with romance as easily as anyone. Enter Hugh Grant.
Perhaps once known only as the boyfriend to model Elizabeth Hurley, Grant has had a long career in the acUng world that dates back
1999 will go down as a huge year for Hugh Grant. First, he co-starred with America's reign-
HUGH GRANT as the charming Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility. Photo: c live Coote
ing film queen, Julia Roberts, in Notting Hill. This Universal Studios feature proved unstoppable at the box office, doing already over 0160 million in worldwide sales and still climbing. Most so-called "experts" would credit Julia Roberts for luring in such masses of people.
Quinn Family Collaboration Destined to Be a Classic
By BILL FORBES
VANCOUVER — This is My Father is a beautiful film, starring Aidan Quinn as a Romeo-like farm labourer in his thirties, and piquante Irish ingenue Moya Farelly as his 17-year old schoolgirl Juliet in the fictional village of Kilcoole, County Gal-way.
Although the parallels with Shakespeare's play are obvious, the basic story idea is said to have come from a brief recollection by Quinn's Irish mother of a real-life scandal in her own village.
The picturesque settings are unforgettably captured in the cinematography of brother Declan Quinn, very effectively directing his first feature film.
With a view to keeping it all in the family, the brothers found a small part for their less well-known sister Marian Quinn, as one of the gossipy village women. She finds herself in something like a galaxy of cinemaUc talent, of which today's Ireland seems to have such a nearly inexhaustible supply.
Worth singling out for special mention is playwright Gina Moxley as the young lead's alcoholic widowed mother and village social leader who bitterly opposes her daughter's unsuitable liaison with the Quinn character, a "poor-house bastard" taken in by decent small-farming foster parents played by Donel Donnelly and Maria McDermottroe.
John Kavanagh is the widow's grinningly loathsome suitor and after-hours spirits purveyor.
Brendan Gleeson appears in a wonderfully understated cameo as one of the local gardai and young Pauline Hutton and Fiona Glascott are equally wonderful as high-spirited modern teenagers. These are only a few mentioned more or less at random, out of a large supporting cast which could hardly be stronger.
Shakespeare's compliant Friar Lawrence secretly helps his pair of lovers along against parental wishes, with disastrous results. The Quinn's typically strict parish priest and fiery visiting mission take the opposite tack, though not to better effect.
Eamonn Morrissey's parish priest is highly believable, although ordering the entire parish on a penitential barefoot pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick, because an unknown miscreant spiked the punch at what he now decrees will be the last dance ever in the village hall, may seem a little extreme, even for the Ireland of 1938.
Stephen Rae's hellfire preaching is also credibly terrifying, even if his rather obvious display of prurience and sexual repression in the confessional is a little too conveniently geared to today's headlines about clerical disgraces.
The entire Romeo and Juliet story is a flashback, in the form of local storytelling to a weary Irish-American schoolteacher of the Nineties, trying to unravel his family background in late middle age.
The teacher is very effectively portrayed by James Caan in the suburban Chicago scenes at the
outset but he is hardly more than a passive listener in a few bridge scenes during the flashback tale which takes up most of the film. The Chicago scenes were actually shot in Montreal, with significant Canadian output both behind and in front of the camera.
Paul Quinn's friend and sometime theatrical collaborator John Cusack makes a somewhat startling appearance — landing on the beach in his bi-plane while the lovers enjoy a brief tryst by the sea — claiming to be a photo-journalist reporting on Europe for Life magazine.
But, his seemingly jarring intrusion can also be seen as the wider world intruding on the characters' isolated Galway village lives when he and Aidan Quinn's character speculate on whether war will be breaking out soon. The girl assumes with some surprise that they must mean in Ireland and it has to be explained to her that thcv're talking about what the flying reporter has just seen in 1938 Germany.
This film seems quite likely destined to become a minor classic, in much the same genre as Ryan's Daughter and for much the same reasons, albeit focusing on a struggle for personal and social rather than political freedom in Ireland-
Unfortunately, its local run at the Fifth Avenue Cinema on Burrard Street has come and gone over the summer months, but in this reviewer's opinion, it's well worth keeping a lookout for it to come by once again or to be released on video.
Few have credited the great performance of Hugh Grant in his role as William Thacker, a mild-mannered bookseller in London's fashionable Notting Hill district. Clearly way out of his element and over his head, somehow this "average" working stiff quite by accident meets America's number one female star and they engage in a whirlwind romance that only Hollywood could conjure up. It works mainly because of Grant's great understated acting ability. And he's done it before.
One single film changed Hugh Grant's career: Four Weddings and a Funeral. This small-budget romantic romp teamed Grant up with Andie MacDowell and was a runaway hit. Warm and charming, both men and women could enjoy its friendly humour. Other recent film outings that have garnered Grant great praise include Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, opposite the beauUful Kristin Scott Thomas and the sexy Sirens.
With the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Hollywood came a knocking on Grant's door with a vengeance. Even before that surprise hit, however, Grant was honing his craft.
He was first noUced while studying at presUgious Oxford University in 1982. An appearance in a movie named frivileged gave him his initial exposure to the world of film-making, but it was his work in 1987 on the Merchant Ivory production of E.M. Foster's Maurice that won him international acclaim, winning him awards at the famous Venice Film Festival.
Years later, in 1994, he would take home more trophies, winning both Golden Globes and a British Academy Award for Four Weddings and a Funeral. By all estimations, this film was the re-birth of a fledgling career.
Since that time, Grant has made scores of movies, some good, some mediocre. Like most talented performers he can do comedy and drama. On the romantic costume drama front, he has starred in such tear-jerkers as The
Remains of the Day and Sense and Sensibility.
On the more comic side, this multi-talented talented actor headlined Chris Columbus' family friendly Nine Months, about a nervous father-to-be. And, he put his best foot forward in the oh-so-quirky The-Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain. Despite the comic and rural flavour of both these films, they didn't take off at the box-office.
A movie that saw a complete change of image for Grant was Extreme Measures, a thriller that he co-produced though his own production company, Simian Films. This month, Grant again shows his business talents when his company unearths Mickey Blue Eyes, a hiliarous gangster comedy where Grant's foppish British persona gets transformed into being an American mafioso.
In this comic gangster send-up, Grant stars as Michael Felgate, a humble auctioneer who makes the big mistake of falling in love with the beautiful daughter of a Mafia kingpin, played respectfully by Godfather alumnus James Caan. Expect lots of laughs in this smartly written film that sees a mild-mannered Englishman trying to pass himself off as the toughest mobster this side of the Corleones.
People who enjoy warm comedies laced with romance can always count on Hugh Grant to deliver the goods. Even when he ran into some personal problems involving a minor arrest, Grant faced the public head-on, admitting he made a stupid mistake, apologizing, and taking the heat. Because of his candor and openness, he earned back the public's trust and respect.
That apology was sincere because the public went back to seeing his movies, as if nothing went wrong. For all practical purposes, nothing did. Such a lesson on how to deal with the public, to save an image, should be required viewing for anyone thinking of entering the public arena or those established personalities wishing to remain there!
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