After an illustrious career in his native Hungary, director Istvan Szabo has carved out an enviable enclave in English speaking films especially with actresses of high caliber,– Glenn Close in MEETING VENUS,Annette Benning in BEING JULIA, and now Helen Mirren in THE DOOR (M).
Coupling her with the great German actress Martina Gedeck, Mirren plays a character called Emerenc, Gedeck’s housekeeper. The eminence of Emerenc and the magnitude of Gedeck’s character, Magda, raises a fairly pedestrian and episodic plot to a notch above the ordinary.
They say good casting is half the work and certainly a good part of the heavy lifting is done by these two stars of the silver screen, technique and experience shining through not so sparkling screenwriting.
Indeed, the story’s origins in a novel by Magda Szabo are never severed as might serve a more polished screenplay, and Andrea Veszits and Istvan Szabo’s scenario merely acts as a blueprint for these two actress architects to erect an edifice of emotion from bare bedrock.
Magda is a novelist, middle class, married to a fat cat bureaucrat.
Emerenc is the far more eccentric character, a keeper of cats and a depository of startling stories concerning storms, Nazis, and the Sovietisation of her homeland.
A series of vignettes really, with an odd theatrical style, THE DOOR does not initially present a welcome mat to audiences. Indeed, some may wonder if they are going to get over the threshold, and then Mirren makes you marvel, kindles care in her character, creates a mystique, not like some femme fatale but of a rich and interesting woman, a strongbox of stories waiting to be accessed, an intricate combination of tall tales and true.
What could have been suet becomes sirloin in the presence of these cinema supernumeraries. The helmer may be hibernating but the mesmerising Mirren and the giddying Geddeck keep us entreatingly awake with an entertaining two handed turn that rates more than just worth a look.
© Richard Cotter
19th July, 2012
Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- THE DOOR, Istvan Szabo, Martina Gedeck, Helen Mirren, Magda Szabo.