Fay Grim (2006) - Smarter-than-you indie atrocity

♥

The 3 picture-combo poster for Hal Harley's Fay Grim is both sparse and cluttered, featuring a life-weary Jeff Goldblum

Fay Grim, a promiscuous, attractive single mom whose 14 year-old son gets thrown out of high school, wishes her incarcerated brother back to help father the boy. But the CIA wants her to retrieve her dead husband's old journals from Paris, as they contain US state secrets. 

SPOILER She bargains to get her brother out; then her full-bearded publisher boyfriend gets shot, and later, in Istanbul, upon almost getting involved in terrorism, she learns that her husband is alive and is kept as a hostage in Afghanistan, (by a mass-murdering terrorist who seems fairly reasonable.)
This debacle unsurprisingly does not make a thrilling 2-hour film.
It is possible that writer-director Hal Hartley's (No Such Thing (2001)) script was great reading for his dialog is extremely dense, and the plot is full of elaborate jumps and mysteries that get unveiled bit by bit kind of like a Dan Brown novel. But, as you will realize at least after the first hour, Fay Grim may have an excessively complex narrative, but it offers nothing in terms of themes that would make it worth our while to get engaged in how it is going to end. - It has no real substance; it says nothing.
Now what makes Brown's chase-mysteries infinitely more entertaining is that, at least, they have exciting locations and deal with known works of art, religion etc., sometimes even in an interesting, fresh perspective. Fay Grim deals only with its own contrived, cul-de-sac plot. 
Furthermore, it is an independent production that clearly didn't have money for chases, exotic locations, or action, so unless you are a major Parker Posey (Price Check (2012)) fan and find every second you spend 'with' her invaluable, then you are going to have a hard time not getting bored with Fay Grim.

But, hey, Jeff Goldblum (Morning GLory (2010)) is also in it, you might object; and I'm a Goldblum fan! (Aren't we all?) Goldblum has never in my experience given a less enthusiastic performance than here: Playing a ridiculously suave CIA-agent, he has incredibly long lines that he manages to say very, very fast, while walking around with tired morning hair looking like he's just dying for a coffee. So don't count on 'the Blum' to save Fay Grim for you.

The most tiring thing about Fay Grim is its visuals, its look, its photography: Filmed almost entirely in Dutch (slanted) angles (see trailer pic below), in close framings of unassuming localities. It is so unattractive to look at and poses a layer between audience and story throughout the film, almost making you angry at it. Every time a new shot is revealed, you are reminded that this is Hal Hartley's film, and that Hal Hartley has decided on this purposeless Dutch-angled concept, I guess, just because he can. I have not found any internal justification for it, but I have found that Hartley at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival told the audience that the only two shots in the film that were not Dutch/slanted were a mistake, as he and his crew forgot to tilt the camera. Why he would admit that to his audience, I have no idea. Why that is the single point I can read about this visual concept online, is an even bigger problem.

Fay Grim goes from single-mom home drama to literarily obsessed word-feud, and then spirals into a semi-political terrorist story in Europe, without ever amounting to much consequentially. On the other hand, you'll have to stay fiercely attentive to not get thrown off its unsympathetically character-heavy, twisting and turning narrative. The few action scenes are done in thoroughly anticlimactic still images. - New takes on how to do action scenes are certainly welcomed, and Steven Soderbergh succeeded in doing something of the kind in his great Haywire (2011), but this is just. Pffffhh.

Related post:

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 193k $

= Uncertain (likely a box office disaster)
[Fay Grim premiered 11 September (Toronto International Film Festival, Ontario) and runs 118 minutes. The film is the second in Hartley's trilogy about recurring characters, which began with Henry Fool (1997) and ended with Ned Rifle (2014). Shooting took place in Berlin, Germany, Istanbul, Turkey, Paris, France and in New York from January - March 2006. The film opened #46 to a 61k $ first weekend in 28 cinemas in North America, where it only decreased from there, only playing for 4 weeks, grossing 126k $ (65.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 22k $ (11.4 %) and Brazil with 17k $ (8.8 %). The film was mostly screened as a festival presentation. If it was made on an extremely tight 1 mil. $ budget, the film would still count as a box office disaster. Hartley returned with 5 video shorts and eventually theatrically with Meanwhile (2011). Posey returned in Boston Legal (2006, TV-series), Superman Returns (2006, video game, voice) and theatrically in Broken English (2007). Fay Grim is rotten at 46 % with a 5.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Fay Grim?