THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (Daniel Alfredson 2009)

[Chris Knipp]

Daniel Alfredson: The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/661/4m9ura.jpg
NOOMI RAPACE IN THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

The Girl who keeps bouncing back

It's not giving away too much to say straight off that the wiry, secretive, and strangely charismatic dragon-tattooed heroine of the Swedish action-mystery series is much battered but still breathing when this second installment ends. She has to survive for the third installment. Like the first film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (http://www.cinescene.com/knipp/dragontattoo.htm), shown in the US in Swedish with (mostly legible) English subtitles earlier this year, but with a new director, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a workmanlike, not great, movie. Yes, it's the same "Girl," and the title refers to an episode in her past life we already know about, but see more fully enacted this time. This one reads very much like several episodes of "Law and Order" or "Prime Suspect." This time we're spared a laborious introduction and plunge right in. This is leaner, meaner storytelling, with less gruesome cruelties but more direct and traditional physical action -- fires, escapes, chases.

Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), AKA the "Girl," is the creation of Stieg Larsson, a researcher into sexual violence against women who turned his special knowledge into three bestselling novels and then prematurely died. Lisbeth is a young woman who not only witnessed the repeated abuse of her own mother, but was later repeatedly raped and tortured herself. These hardships have only tempered her steel will, strengthened her and endowed her with a superhuman desire to wreck vengeance (extra-legal if need be) and bring justice in a world where others are abused as she was. She is not only a computer hacking whiz and ace investigator but a chain-smoker, sexual athlete, and all-around mean girl to tangle with in a fight. Undoubtedly the focus and peculiarity of Noomi Rapace, an intense performer in the lead role, is a major factor in the success and unique flavor of this movie series. Since American remakes are planned the obvious question arises: who on earth can follow Ms. Rapace's act? And will anyone else be able to make the character of Lisbeth as convincing?

When Lisbeth is tracking down some records at a remote house two mean, armed bikers approach, dead set on eliminating her, and we know full well she'll take them down in a couple of minutes; the fun is just in watching how. There has never been quite this kind of punk, chain-smoking, oft-disguised underdog -- and lesbian! -- before. The more you see of her the more you like her, respect her, and wish she was on your team.

Not as much introductory exposition is provided this time; knowledge of the first book or movie is perhaps assumed, though not absolutely necessary; indeed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's lengthy opening section wasn't even necessary for the first episode, but it helps to know the first part of the trilogy. Again there is an investigation being carried out by stringers for the magazine Millennium. A woman is finishing her doctoral thesis about sex traffickers, and her boyfriend is following up. Highly placed officials turn out to have been customers. There are murders. Lisbeth's cohort and ally Mikael Blomquist (Michael Nyqvist) gets involved, events are in the news, and Mikael and Lisbeth are one step ahead of the police: the Tattooed Girl's a suspect. Her occasional lesbian lover Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi) gets involved in the revenge of the bad guys along with a professional boxer (Paolo Roberto), who gets knocked silly by a blond hulk called Niedermann (Mikael Spreitz) -- a heavy who somehow doesn't seem quite as terrifying to look at as the story wants to make him: writer Stieg Larsson isn't as successful with his villains as he is with their victims and avengers. Lisbeth's tormentor and legal guardian Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson), whom she punished so severely in the first film, turns up again here, for a while. Again there are flashbacks to Lisbeth's traumatic past. She's one of those heroes whose back-story needs constant freshening up.

As all this unfolded, and the several plot lines were neatly tied up, I watched entertained but not overwhelmed. This is workmanlike stuff, nothing more. Events sometimes feel rushed. One misses the atmosphere of noir or the suspense and cliffhangers of an actual miniseries. The novelty is having this kind of stuff coming from the nation of very different sorts of cinema, of Bergman's masterful gloom, Roy Andersson's tart black humor, Jan Troell's stoical epics, or, most recently, Tomas Alfredson's unforgettably downbeat little vampire movie Let the Right One In, itself destined for a Hollywood version unlikely to match the original. I've heard it said that in Sweden when the novels came out you were considered barely a citizen if you didn't read them; at the same time some made it a point of honor not to. Hence the excitement surrounding what has turned into a series of international bestsellers (with the aforementioned and inevitable Hollywood remakes) -- an excitement partly due to the arrival of an unaccustomed kind of sensationalism into a small, depressed country. Such stories are less unusual in England, and that's why we can think of a number of British television series that come pretty close to these Swedish versions. These days crime-mystery fans have an ever-heightening taste for the dark and scary, hence the appeal of the focus here on sexual violence and misogyny. Unlikely that the series would have taken off as it has if the writer Stieg Larsson hadn't come up with his abused, determined young female protagonist. If only she'd been rewarded for her originality with better films in which to do her thing.

The Girl Who Played with Fire opened July 9, 2010 in "select theaters" in the US. Its predecessor, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which opened March 19, 2010, has been "the highest-grossing limited-only release of 2010 thus far," according to Box Office Mojo.

[oscar jubis]

[QUOTE=Chris Knipp;24653]The Girl Who Played with Fire is a workmanlike, not great, movie.
I agree. The fact that the series is a box-office phenomenon of sorts, as far as subtitled movies go, doesn't make it great, does it? The series is entertaining and engaging. I cannot say I was bored or wishing I was elsewhere. However, most viewers don't seem to mind the sadistic violence in which the films wallow, or overwrought plot elements for that matter. I do.
Speaking strictly from the p.o.v. of someone involved in the running of a stand-alone "art cinema", this is the kind of film that makes it possible for us to program documentaries and more challenging fare.

Since American remakes are planned the obvious question arises: who on earth can follow Ms. Rapace's act? And will anyone else be able to make the character of Lisbeth as convincing?
Carey Mulligan (An Education) will play Lisbeth in a remake scheduled for 2012 release. Mulligan will also star in a remake of My Fair Lady scheduled for release the same year. Can Mulligan make us forget Ms. Rapace and Audrey Hepburn? Mulligan must have considerable self-confidence to think she can pull this stunt off. Talk about a young actress testing her performative range!

There has never been quite this kind of punk, chain-smoking, oft-disguised underdog -- and lesbian! -- before.
Isn't her sexuality more fluid than the categorical lesbian designation implies?

Unlikely that the series would have taken off as it has if the writer Stieg Larsson hadn't come up with his abused, determined young female protagonist. If only she'd been rewarded for her originality with better films in which to do her thing.
Indeed.

[Chris Knipp]

A.O. Scott in his NY Times review (http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/movies/09girl.html) (I'd think he was up to speed on it) seems to think the Hollywood Lisbeth isn't yet decided: will it be "Ellen Page? Carey Mulligan (listed as 'rumored' on the IMDB Web site)? Miley Cyrus?" he asks. I notice "they" say David Fincher wants to direct the remake (or the first one) and Daniel Craig may be cast to "star." (A misnomer -- it should be "costar" -- but in such speculations the speculators rarely know much about the material under consideration.) Brad Pitt has also been mentioned, and, for Lisbeth, Kristen Stewart. With such people involved, box office will be potentially good. I suppose it's fun to speculate, though that's not how I like to spend my time. As for Lisbeth's sexuality, yes, she definitely swings both ways (is a "sexual athlete") but people tend to call her lesbian in the film, and I think people understand that doesn't preclude her being bisexual. I tend to agree on the violence and ugliness. I thought a flashback to new (to us) horrors when Lisbeth was in a mental institution were, again, unwarranted and over the top. Without reading them it still seems justified to guess that the books are no masterpieces and more the work of a lucky amateur than anything close to literature.

[oscar jubis]

Pretty nifty genre flick, I'd say.
I like Scott's take, especially when he says Lisbeth "elicits disparate instincts in viewers" and Mikhael is "the conduit between her inscrutability and the audience's desire to know her better". He's also right to note that this series is structured like Harry Potter, in that the protagonists are "simultaneously drawn forward and back". The central theme is misogyny and male privilege at their most extreme, hence the narrative generates suspense and strong emotions but minimal reflection. From CK's review of Dragon Tattoo: "The story line runs so far to sensationalism there's no room for complexity beyond plot twists." Plot twists and one memorable character on her way to achieving iconic status. I can foresee a future in which new thriller heroines are described and analyzed in relation to Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium novels.

[Chris Knipp]

Your reaction to the first in the franchise was less favorable, I believe. This indeed may be a slight improvement, but I don't like the series and cringe to think of the Hollywood remakes.

[oscar jubis]

Since I started working at an "art cinema", I have been even more concerned than ever about the sustainability of stand-alone "art cinemas" (as opposed to multiplexes that devote a screen or two to off-Hollywood fare). More than half of what is show at these theaters is foreign-language films. I don't know of any other country where people find having to read subtitles to be such a chore. So I am always happy when subtitled films do well at the box-office. This is a good thing for American culture in general and critical to the survival of art cinemas.

Surveying the past five years:
Pan's Labyrinth, Jet Li's Fearless and Almodovar's Volver were huge successes. These 3 films helped make 2006 the best year for foreign-language films since 2000, when that phenomenon titled Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon collected $128 million, more than double what any other foreign language film has ever made in America. 2007 was also a good year thanks mostly to The Lives of Others, La Vie en Rose, and The Orphanage. However, we haven't had successes of this magnitude at the b.o. in 2008 and 2009. The Millennium trilogy and I am Love are poised to make 2010 a very good year for art cinemas. What happens is that these films draw people to the theaters who don't regularly watch foreign-language films and they are exposed to other foreign films via trailers, posters, program guides, etc. One could complain that these films are not that good, and perhaps they are not, but their success is very good for the development of film culture in America.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't know of any other country where people find having to read subtitles to be such a chore.
I'm a little surprised you say that, though the practice of dubbing is something predetermined in many countries rather than based on public attitude. But I'm usre you know as the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_%28filmmaking%29#Generally_dubbing_countri es)"Dubbing" says, that "In the French, German, Spanish, Russian (Theatrical release and high profile video only) and Italian-speaking markets of Europe, almost all foreign films and television shows are dubbed." In Paris and other big French cities of course in the nice cinemas foreign films are shown with French subtitles. That is more rare in Italy and "the Germanophone dubbing market is the largest in Europe," that is, Germany dubs the most. The article describes dubbing as prevalent in many Slavic countries and Spain.

Dubbing seems to be well nigh universal for American TV programs shown in other countries, and in Latin America a lot of films are shown with subtitles but also shown dubbed, especially blockbuster movies, normally dubbed in Mexico and various other Latin American countries. This is why an e-pal of mine in Colombia used to make an effort to get US DVDs of American movies so he could watch them with the original sountrack, being someone training to teach English and also a film buff.

I think I summarized this article before. I'm no expert but it seems quite a good article, which goes into considerable detail about a wide range of the countries of the world. Much detail about Quebc, where TV and films are dubbed into two different kinds of French depending on the audience. Sometimes fancy US DVDs of US blockbusters come with the possiblity of clicking on a French soundtrack made in Quebec.

Similarly complicated details are given about Asia. I know from the early days of Wong Kar Wai before Tarantino started the US releases of well subtitled DVDs, you got Hong Kong ones with crazy subtitles, in chinese and English,but what we may not have realied is how Chinese films have always been routinely re-dubbed in Mandarin, so that many, many of the Chinese films we may have watched in Chinese with subtitles were already dubbed.

I remember in the Seventies Asian martial arts films and some European films sometimes came here dubbed into English, usually very badly, and it was almost impossible to watch them. That seems to have died away in this country. I'm sure I've also said before here that in Italy people always insist that the dubbing in their country is a fine art, they take pride in it, and they have no objection to it. This partly goes back to the fact that until relatively recently all Italian films were post-dubbed. This is true of the famous films of Fellini, Antonioni, Rossellini, etc, and contributed to the possibility of using non-actors in neorealist films like LA TERRA TREAM or LADRI DI BICLETTI, but also L'AVVENTURA or 8 1/2, so that the art of dubbing fostered the development of a whole rich genre.

All that aside, I doubt any cinephile wants to watch a dubbed film except for laughs. i would agree with you, Oscar, that it's a shame many (seemingly?) intelligent Americans express an unwillingness to go to a subtitled film. But there is not much of a stomach for dubbed films either, and hence only small specialty distributors are willing to handle foreign films, unlike in other countries where big distributors handle American blockbusters whether dubbed or with subtitles. And we regret this, and American film buffs who live away from big urban centers suffer from it more. But there is an explanation, and lack of availability or lack of interest in subtitled films is not peculiar to America.

[oscar jubis]

What's crucial to my argument is that a majority of US filmgoers avoid subs but I wrote the quoted sentence and you are right to challenge it. I know from personal experience that subtitling is preferred to dubbing in Spanish-speaking countries (I am referring specifically to live action theatrical movies, not to TV). From people I meet from Asia and Europe, few if any like dubbing. Italians, generally speaking, have historically preferred dubbing and probably continue to do so. I don't know if they would avoid a film that can only be seen with subs the way Americans do. If so, my statement would be wrong.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't know either. I can only rely on the Wikipedia article, which goes beyind your anecdotal evidence. Anyway I agree with you about American audiences, it is a pity there isn't perhaps as much appetite for subtitles as there is in countries where audiences find most of the films they want to see are foreign. You didn't mention Germany or Spain. And I understand that blockbuster American films are dubbed in Latin America. It's complicated, but as I said at the beginning these things are mainly determined by decisions often jmade long ago in each country as to whether distributors will send out foreign films dubbed or with subtitles, and is not determined by polling the local public as their taste or tolerance lefels.

[oscar jubis]

When I lived in El Salvador, and the last time I visited in 1998, only animated and a few "family films" where shown in a dubbed version. To a large extent, this continues to be the case according to two cousins who live there. I checked the "cartelera de cine" and learned that currently they are showing dubbed versions of Despicable Me, Shrek 4, The Karate Kid and the PG-rated Furry Vengeance with Brendan Fraser. You have to read subtitles if you want to watch Inception, Eclipse, Knight & Day, Sex in the City 2, and just about everything else. Same for Scandinavia from comments I read.On the other hand, I learned that Spaniards do like their dubbed movies and some voice actors become famous. Here's a pertinent article: http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/06/20/spanish_cinema_leaves_mark_on_us_films/

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, the Wikipedia Dubbing article I referred to explains all that. as being true for various countries, dubbed versions for "family" or children's movies. You keep emphasizing dominance of subtitles in one country or another, but that Boston article focuses on dubbing in Spain and a giant cineplex unlike any other that shows only dubbed movies. Interesting sidelight that 3D rejuvenated waning box office returns in Spain recently. Maybe that's the aim here, they think it will get more saps into theaters because the effect won't work as well at home. It soon will, but who cares?
Franco first used dubbing as a mode of censorship to control the meaning of films, instill national patriotism, and ensure that Spaniards were exposed to only one language, Castilian. In the 1953 film “Mogambo,’’ starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner, dubbers rewrote the dialogue to make it seem like the lovers were siblings. Franco deemed love affairs too vulgar for Spanish audiences. Today, many films in Spain are dubbed into Castilian, Catalán, Basque, and Galician. This is like China and Quebec, only more complicated. Dubbing can be manipulative, but it's not certain that subtitles films in a language the audience hasn't the faintest knowledge of, can be accurately interpreted or that the subtitles, with their loss of nuance and simplification, don't also manipulate audience response. I've watched Japanese films with subtitles for decades, but not knowing more than a few words of Japanese, I still find it very hard to "read" the intonations of speakers. The topic is infinitely complex, but what bearing it has on the wan interest in the US in subtitles films outside a few art houses, I do not know.

[Chris Knipp]

Going back to the DRAGON TATTOO series, one of the reasons that people go to see the films here and all over is that the novels have been big international bestsellers. I don't intend to read them, but people who have say they're the super page-turner kind, the books you "can't put down." I find the subtitles inadequate, because they are often illegible.

[oscar jubis]

That's right.

[Chris Knipp]

Trailer for dubbed version of THE EXPENDABLES in France:

http://www.expendables-lesiteofficiel.fr/?xtor=ad-871541