Niagara Niagara
Niagara Niagara is a hybrid of two already cliché'd subgenres: the
lovers-on-the-run thriller (from Bonnie and Clyde to Natural Born
Killers) and the young-obsessive-compulsives-in-love romance (Benny
& Joon, Angel Baby). Henry Thomas, in the stringy-haired
sensitive-misfit role Johnny Depp is now too old for, falls for Robin Tunney, a
woman whose repertoire of tics and emotional outbursts (Tourette's syndrome
makes her blurt obscenities, and she occasionally lashes out in violence) is
exacerbated by her diet of pills and whiskey. The couple meet-cute while
boosting tchotchkes at a hardware store; later, when they've graduated to armed
robbery, she orders him to quit shoplifting because "it's not classy."
Neither is the film, though director Bob Gosse and screenwriter Matthew Weiss
think they're being subtle by leaving possibly exculpatory details about the
pair's childhoods implied but not spelled out. Still, they manage to
romanticize both violent crime and mental illness. Tunney earned an award at
1997's Venice Film Festival for her performance, but by the time she has her
climactic fit in the toy aisle at a department store, you'll feel relieved that
you no longer have to spend time with her. At the Harvard Square.
-- Gary Susman
|