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New Rose Hotel

03  APR
SAT


Directed by  Abel Ferrara
Written by  Abel Ferrara, Christ Zois, William Gibson
Starring:  Christopher Walken (Fox)
Willem Dafoe (X)
Asia Argento (Sandii)
Runtime: 92 minutes

Comment:
After having suffered the dullness of The Funeral about two years ago, I wasn't very inclined to see another movie directed by Abel Ferrara and featuring Christopher Walken and Annabella Sciorra. However, this time the script was based on a short story by William Gibson and so I hoped in something more interesting. In fact the result is quite good, although the original story was a bit too short to support a whole movie...

The movie is set in a not too distant future where the big multinationals are always seeking for good scientists in order to exploit the results of their researches. Hiroshi is a sort of genius in chemical synthesis and the Hosaka corporation is trying to subtract him from his current employee with the aid of two 'experts' in this field. They study him, searching for his weaknesses and finally found one: women. So they hire the young and sexy Sandii and train her for the mission, although it's not easy not to fall in love with her themselves...

While the story by William Gibson is organized as a collection of memories of the events, the movie has a first half that features a regular narration while the second half shows the same happenings through the memory of one of the characters. It's interesting to notice that this sort of 'second narration' doesn't simply show the events from a different point of view, adding details and putting lights on various vague plot lines as it usually happens in various other movies. In fact, some of the scenes shown in the first half are shown again in the second half but they look slightly different due to some details (especially dialogues) changed or swapped between scenes. While this may just seem confusing or boring, I found this idea particularly good as it is a perfect attempt to extract something more from a short story.

A major criticism that can be made on this movie is that there isn't much in the story to justify a full-length movie and the characters' development is rather scarce. Moreover, it is far too obvious that the budget was very limited, the superimposition of a color display to a Palm Pilot to pretend it was a hi-tech device looks like one of the worst 'special effects' you'll ever see in a 1998 movie!

I appreciated the rather 'vague' finale but I think most people will just think it is yet another example of lack of a proper story. I admit this movie is not an 'easy' one, it is not for everybody and I am a bit too biased due to my infatuation for William Gibson's masterpiece "Neuromancer"... Probably Abel Ferrara is only able to direct 'strong' movies that you either love or hate, I look forward to see what he'll do after this low-budget movie that have been apparently ignored by both critics and audience.


Rating: 7.0  ***


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© Copyright Sergio Monesi, 1997-1999.
Last updated: 16 Jul 1999