Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese in 'Side by Side'

Have you ever wondered what your favorite director thought about shooting on digital film? How about actress Greta Gerwig? Have you even considered what the indie actress thought the first time she heard the whirring sound of an actual celluloid camera? What of cinematographers and colorists—how interested are you in exploring their relationships? (Are they adversaries? Do they work as a team? Did they start out adversaries, but thanks to advances in technology, now work as a team?) Have you ever wondered how Keanu Reeves would sound saying such profound phrases as “film has helped us share our experiences and dreams,” or “by the 1980s, Avid had developed digital editing into a cost-effective, computer-based system”?

If the answer to any of the above is “yes—but only if fed to me through a 90-minute documentary”—then you are exactly the niche audience longtime production manager and part-time documentarian Chris Kenneally had in mind for his second feature-length film, Side by Side.

Perhaps that sounds unduly negative. After all, there are many out there for whom portions, at least, of this documentary about the rise of digital film in cinema may be of interest. Side by Side manages the tough task of being an instructive look into the way technology has developed over the years while also being occasionally entertaining. There is a intriguing question prevalent in the movie—which taps the likes of Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Richard Linklater, James Cameron, George Lucas and David Fincher, as well as the special effects guy for Jurassic Park, for answers (and yet, for some ungodly reason, chose Keanu Reeves as its narrator)—one that can be summarized somewhat neatly: Are we at the end of film?

Unfortunately for the producers, that doesn’t take too long to answer. The only people who even try to argue against the relentless march of technology do so purely on an aesthetic basis. Digital film lets you shoot longer, and for less money. It is easier and cheaper to edit. It is better for the planet. The end. As Ms. Gerwig puts it, “They process digital now to make it look like film, as if film is inherently better. Just, we like the way it looks better. Which seems kind of arbitrary, because it’s just what we’re used to.”

Surprisingly, the film chooses independent cinematographers (Reed Morano and Bradford Young) to defend the more expensive, older technology, as if the idea of film reels is now so antiquated that the only people who use them do so specifically so they can talk about how it “feels different.” Hipsters, basically. The film barely acknowledges that most films are still mainly shot on celluloid, with digital cameras filling in occasionally.

With 80 minutes left to fill, Mr. Reeves is left to ask more questions about, you know, movie stuff. Judging from the answers given, the questions range from “Do you remember back when you had ‘dailies’ and had to edit movies by hand?” to “Did Robert Downey Jr. ever pee in jars and leave them around your set as a form of protest?”

It’s not that the answers aren’t interesting: Mr. Lynch, whose last film, Inland Empire, was shot entirely digitally, claims that he will never return to celluloid. Some like Mr. Fincher, on the other hand, recognize that digital film can lead to terrible-looking movies—though he rightly puts the blame on the people who make them, not what equipment they are shot on. And Danny Boyle is perhaps the best example of how an early adopter can turn a public’s interest and make something like digital film mainstream. After watching a Dogme 95 film called The Celebration, which was shot entirely on a Sony Handycam, the director tracked down the film’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle. The result was 28 Days Later, portions of which were shot with digital cameras. In 2009, their film Slumdog Millionaire became the first movie shot predominantly in a digital format to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Mr. Cameron and Mr. Lucas, meanwhile, are super-jazzed to talk—at length and ad nauseam—about every minutiae of digital editing and special effects. This would be less irritating if they weren’t busy taking credit for everything short of inventing the digital camera itself. Actually, Mr. Lucas comes close, boasting about how his company created the analog computer editing system EditDroid, and the next thing you know, he’s referring to the game-changing digital editor Avid as a “we” endeavor. It would have been good to take note here that EditDroid was a commercial failure and was sold to Avid in 1993 after the Star Wars remakes. Only 24 ED systems were ever made.

Frankly, the movie has too much time on its hands: it spends an exorbitant amount of it talking to colorists, special effects animators, editors and various other people with jobs that you’d only care to hear about if you were really really interested in how films are made. And when someone appears whose only movie credit is the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt feature Premium Rush, you have to wonder what he is doing sharing screen time with Mr. Scorcese.

Finally, in a movie that gets into the nitty-gritty of editing and special effects, you would think the glaring continuity error of Mr. Reeves’s hair length would have been noticed and fixed in post. (It goes from very short, with stubbly beard to very long, with neckbeard, before going short again, then long again, etc. It’s quite distracting.)

But let us not nitpick. It’s doubtful that anyone will leave this movie siding with the celluloid purists, believing that the digital process will be the end film as we know it. Auteurs will continue to shoot in whichever medium they prefer, and there will always be hundreds of forgettable flicks for every great one, no matter what technology is employed—a lesson Side by Side proves simply by existing.

SIDE BY SIDE

Two stars out of four
Running Time 99 Minutes
Directed by Chris Kenneally
Starring: Keanu Reeves, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron,
Robert Rodriguez, Walter Murch and David Fincher

The most talked about movie of the weekend won’t actually be coming out for another four months. Between the teaser trailer and the special free IMAX screenings happening tonight, James Cameron’s Avatar has captured everyone’s imagination this week. This is the future, people! Still, if giant blue aliens and computer graphics don’t float your boat, three actual movies hit theaters today. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

Inglourious Basterds

What’s the story: Nearly 15 years in the making—at one point it was rumored that Quentin Tarantino wanted Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzengger and Adam Sandler, among others, to appear—Inglourious Basterds (the title is purposely spelled incorrectly) finally hits theaters today, positioned as a summer oasis for film geeks everywhere. Brad Pitt stars, leading “The Basterds” (played by a battalion of not-what-you’d-expect actors, from The Office’s B.J. Novak to Freaks and Geeks star Samm Levine and schlock horror director Eli Roth) on a Grand Guignol trek through World War II, killing Nazi’s with extreme prejudice. The reviews have been fairly great—our own Rex Reed calls it “one whale of a rigorous entertainment”—but we’re kinda surprised everyone is treating Inglourious Basterds like Mr. Tarantino’s cinematic rebirth. Don't call it a comeback, people, he's been here for years!

Who should see it: Jules and Vince.

Shorts

What’s the story: From Mr. Tarantino’s Grindhouse partner, here comes Shorts. Robert Rodriguez directs this tall tale about a group of kids who find a magical, wish-granting space rock. Truth be told, we never even heard of this movie before today, and watching the trailer makes us wonder if the famously lo-fi director actually let his children direct this time around. Even for the young ones, this thing looks odorous.

Who should see it: The kids from Spy Kids.

Post Grad

What’s the story: Rory Gilmore sighting! Alexis Bledel stars as a recent college graduate (hence the title) who is forced to move home with her parents while she looks for a job and a boyfriend. If you’re sitting there thinking that movie about college graduation coming out when college students are headed back to school is a bad idea, you’re not alone. Still, we sorta love the idea of Michael Keaton and Jane Lynch playing Ms. Bledel’s onscreen parents. Hey, it’s August; we’ll take little victories when we can get them.

Who should see it: Lorelai.

And! Expect skateboarding and energy drinks in X-Games 3D: The Movie; Robin Williams stars as The World’s Greatest Dad; and Liam Neeson gets serious in the IRA drama Five Minutes of Heaven.

Obsessed

What’s the story: Idris Elba is having a bit of a moment. In the last month, the man formerly known as The Wire’s Stringer Bell has appeared as the antagonist in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, spent a few weeks getting under the skin of everyone at Dunder Mifflin on The Office and now stars with Beyoncé and Ali Larter in the umpteenth revamp of the Fatal Attraction model. To wit: a successful businessman has an almost-fling with the office temp, who then tries to ruin his life. That Obsessed sounds especially like the 1993 Timothy Hutton–Lara Flynn Boyle film The Temp is not lost on us.

Who should see it: Lara Flynn Boyle.

Fighting

What’s the story: The title gets right to the point. Channing Tatum (the male Megan Fox) stars as a Southern counterfeiter (!) who moves to New York and winds up becoming an underground street fighter. Terrence Howard appears as his shady con artist manager, a part we can only assume he took after Marvel screwed him out of a payday for Iron Man 2. Damn Marvel!

Who should see it: Ryan Atwood.

The Soloist

What’s the story: If it feels like you’ve seen ads for The Soloist for the better part of a year, that’s probably because you have. The onetime Oscar contender was pushed back from its November release date to April because Paramount felt it would have gotten lost in the shuffle amid all the other competition. An adaptation of the best-selling book about a Los Angeles Times columnist who befriends a schizophrenic and homeless cellist, the film has gotten fairly mixed reviews, mostly drawing positive notices for its two stars, Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. Frankly, we just want to see it because the trailer makes us cry like little children.

Who should see it: Itzhak Perlman.

The Informers

What’s the story: An adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis book of the same name, The Informers has the honor of being one of the worst reviewed films of the year (it has a 15 percent Fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes). Our Rex Reed calls it “[a] rancid load of swill,” and that those are the first five words of his review should tell you something. Stay away.

Who should see it: Patrick Bateman.

Tyson

What’s the story: Director James Tobak’s critically acclaimed documentary about Mike Tyson opens today, positioning itself as the confessions of a broken man. That’s fine, but haven’t we heard Iron Mike’s story enough by now? If we’re going to see him on the big screen this year, we’ll just wait for Mr. Tyson’s cameo in The Hangover. We doubt anything in Tyson could be as eye opening as the former champ singing “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins.

Who should see it: Evander Holyfield.

Earth

What’s the story: This documentary opened Wednesday (on Earth Day, natch) to a slew of surprising controversy. The G-rating was cast in doubt because of the film’s animal-on-animal violence, while the artistic merit was questioned because 70 percent of the footage has been rehashed from the BBC series Planet Earth. About that violence: If kids can handle the near annihilation of the human race (Wall*E, we’re looking at you), they should be fine here.

Who should see it: Al Gore.

There are fanboys and Fangoria subscribers who most certainly just threw up all over their keyboards while reading that last sentence, but let us explain. We've never seen a more obvious case of time passing someone by than its happened with John Carpenter. We can all agree he was a fantastic genre filmmaker, and nothing can take that away from him. The run of success Mr. Carpenter had starting with Assault on Precinct 13 in 1976 (still our favorite of his films) through the late 80s is unparalleled: Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Starman, Big Trouble in Little China. Few directors can stake a claim to such a consistent level of quality on their résumés. Of course it helps that he had Kurt Russell starring in half of those films, but who cares! Mr. Carpenter was a true purveyor of schlocky horror fun, better at his chosen genre than contemporaries like Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper. And no matter how much Robert Rodriguez gnashes his teeth, his work will never hold a candle to a John Carpenter film. They truly don't make movies like that anymore.

And that's the problem. The cheap-looking aesthetic that Mr. Carpenter is famous for is no longer relevant in modern cinema--the Paper Mache sets and cheesy special effects would seem out of place in a YouTube video at this point. It's part of the reason why his last film, 2001's Ghosts of Mars, was so terrible. The film just looked bad. On the other hand, if he adapted to the current landscape of filmmaking, Mr. Carpenter would lose all of the trademarks that make him "John Carpenter." He's stuck in an unfortunate Catch-22 that doesn't have an easy answer. So yes, we're calling for Mr. Carpenter to retire, even though at the very young age of 61 he probably has many more years of viable movie making potential in him. Please John, don't embarrass yourself further. Let's try to keep that legacy intact.

Universal Studios has backed out of backing the movie, whose budget the source pegged at nearly $100 million, because Mr. Rodriguez has insisted on casting his new fiancé, Rose McGowan, in the lead role, famously played by Jane Fonda in the 1968 original directed by Ms. Fonda’s then-husband, Roger Vadim.

The movie depicts a futuristic astronaut who travels the galaxy, seductively conquering everything in her path. More famous names floated for the part included Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry and Jessica Alba.

“It’s sort of embarrassing for everyone involved,” the source said. “No one thinks Rose can carry the movie, but Robert won’t listen.”

The film’s executive producer, Dino De Laurentiis, an Academy Award winner who produced Mr. Vadim’s Barbarella, is keeping mum on the matter, the source said. “He’s technically independent but has a strong connection to Universal. He wants to back Robert and his vision. But Robert’s vision is blurred by Rose.”

Universal’s initial excitement about the project had prompted reports that the movie would be fast-tracked for release in 2008. Indeed, the studio was so excited about the film that upon discovering Mr. Rodriguez’s nepotistic casting preference it came back with a second offer to fund Barbarella with an amount significantly below the original—in the double-digit millions, said the source. Apparently many of those involved have unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mr. Rodriguez to see his way beyond his curvaceous fiancée, best known for her role in the TV series Charmed.

But the director is sticking by his number-one chica, the source said, and with Ms. McGowan billed to fill Fonda’s thigh-high boots, the studio is afraid the box office simply wouldn’t stand up to the investment.

Mr. Rodriguez denied this, claiming the issue was simply one of budget. “Universal had initially signed on for $60 million,” he told the Transom, “but then when we were done with the script it wound up at closer to $82 million, and they had just financed a Will Ferrell movie that was a $130 million and they even cut that down to $100.”

He said Universal would still be happy to fund the picture for $60 million, but that he was shopping it around to other studios in the hopes of getting more money. Mr. Rodriguez is known for his ability to make movies cheaply, but believes it will be difficult with Barbarella since much of the film takes place in outer space, and “we don’t want the movie to look like the original,” he said.

The director alleges that the people at Universal were in fact thrilled with Ms. McGowan’s screen test, “blown over,” as he put it. “They said, ‘What are we looking at?’” Mr. Rodriguez said. “She looks fantastic in the role. … She was perfect for this part. She just has that daring look, a sort of classic sexiness that is also kind of futuristic.”

His bodacious Barbarella vision came to him while flipping through the trades one morning with his fiancée at his side. “I asked Rose, I said, ‘Would you be interested in doing this?’ And she said, ‘Oh, we’d rock that shit so hard.’” Mr. Rodriguez said. “And I said, ‘Well, that sounds like a lot of fun.’”

Reps for Mr. De Laurentiis and Universal had no comment.

Labeling Sin City pornographic, as some of my colleagues have, is technically impossible in view of its R rating and the fact that there are no erotic situations to be found-no doubt disappointing for the constituency of the deeply depraved sent on a wild-goose chase thanks to the film's title. I prefer to think of Sin City as a bizarre cinematic experiment, one in which a live-action film looks and plays out like a graphic novel. Whereas the much-heralded Japanese art of anime is credited with bringing animation closer to live-action cinematography, Mr. Miller and Mr. Rodriguez's Sin City moves in the opposite direction.

As for the controversial "content" of the film, there are no decent, ordinary-much less common-people in Sin City. One cannot imagine what hard-core humanists like George Orwell or James Agee, who idealized the common folk during the global fight against fascism, would have made of this lot. In 1944, Orwell inveighed against James Hadley Chase's No Orchids for Miss Blandish (a poor imitation of William Faulkner's Sanctuary) as American-influenced fascist pulp, while the anti-noirish Agee described Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity as "tellable trash."

And so all the women in Sin City are appropriately clad (or unclad) prostitutes-except for the lesbian parole officer, Lucille (Carla Gugino, in thong panties), and the waitress (Britanny Murphy). Several have been beheaded, mounted as trophies or otherwise devoured by a cannibalistic murderer named Kevin (Elijah Wood). The only male inhabitants of Sin City we're allowed to see are barroom regulars, crooked cops and a corrupt U.S. Senator (Powers Boothe) whose sheltered son is a loathsome child molester (Nick Stahl). We're a long way from the mostly law-abiding domains of Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, places where there are honest folks who can be saved from evildoers.

The extreme stylization and sociological improbability of Miller and Rodriguez's enterprise makes Sin City play much less horrifically than its catalogue of cruelties makes it sound. As it happens, I saw Sin City at an early-afternoon screening at the Loews Orpheum on Third Avenue, and I was surprised by the size and make-up of the audience-large for an-early-in-the-day screening, with more than a few couples, a few solitary women, a few little boys with their fathers, and the rest mostly youngish and oldish male adults. No more than one or two people left before the end of the film. The rest sat there, as silently absorbed as I was, never laughing at the parodies of the Mickey Spillane ethos in the tortured, self-pitying monologues of the three crucial male protagonists: Bruce Willis' William Hartigan, an aging detective with a bum ticker (fittingly, an oversized heart); Mickey Rourke's almost unrecognizable Marv, a Hulk-like vehicle of vengeance searching for the unknown murderer of his hooker sweetheart, Goldie (Jamie King); and Clive Owen's Dwight, a freelance-vigilante type who ends up trying to protect Rosario Dawson's Gail and her small army of heavily armed prostitutes against the unholy alliance of the Mob and its bought-and-paid-for police force.

The practiced talents of these three charismatic action experts keep Sin City afloat despite all the minefields of sheer ridiculousness strewn in their path. There was no applause at the end of the picture, but neither was there any sign of a hostile reaction. Nor should there be, if only because of the curiously chivalric spirit of self-sacrifice at work in the narrative. Now I know that many feminists scoff at any updating of the ancient sagas of knights in shining armor and their ladies fair waving their handkerchiefs out of the palace window, but there is a deeply chivalric code at work in Sin City. Through a visual reference to the La Brea Tar Pits and their submerged prehistoric monsters, there's a semblance of symbolic dragon-slaying by a collective of fearless prostitutes, but there are no individual heroines embarked on a knightly journey of self-discovery.

Three separate stories are told in Sin City, finally merging after a fashion without actually bringing the three knights face to face. The Detective Hartigan story begins and ends the film in an interrupted time stretch of eight years. During this time, Hartigan rescues an 11-year-old girl named Nancy (Makenzie Vega) from the aforementioned fiend child molester, but not before emasculating him in gruesome fashion. That this menace to small children is the son of an unscrupulously vengeful and power-mad Senator did not much strike me as palpably pulpish in this teeth-gnashing period of political chicanery, which seems to be encouraging a dark cynicism in many current movies.

For example, the recent headlines alleging complicity between two police detectives and the Mafia make it plausible that Hartigan would seek to protect Nancy's identity by taking the fall for the crime and serving a prison term in order to keep the police away from her. Of course, in Sin City the only job the now 19-year-old Nancy can get is that of a stripper with a nifty lasso routine. Many of my colleagues were deeply amused by this ironic turn of events, but what I find strangely (if admittedly grotesquely) moving is that her love for Hartigan has remained constant, and his protective feelings for her have remained pure and untarnished, even though his final demolition of the monstrous molester makes Hartigan something of a monster himself.

Mr. Rourke's Marv is the most fully articulated of the three avengers, and it's almost a miracle that his character manages to be so subtle and humorous under what looks like tons of make-up. This performance has been billed as a comeback for Mr. Rourke, and I hope so, for his distinctive blend of intelligence and virility has been sorely missed. His Marv is at his best when he ruefully acknowledges his frequent failures to anticipate obstacles to his ultimate goals. But once he's disposed of the smiling wretch Kevin in a manner gruesomely consistent with Kevin's aforementioned horrors, Marv then becomes comically stoic as he pays the penalty imposed by a befouled justice system.

Clive Owen deserves a special award for keeping a straight face during some of the awkward quick-change gyrations that his character Dwight has to perform as he tries to keep Sin City from blowing up in his face via an all-out war between its various disreputable factions. Quentin Tarantino reportedly directed one especially surreal scene in which Mr. Owen's Dwight fantasizes that he's conversing in a car with the severed head of a slain detective named Jackie Boy (played by an almost unrecognizable Benicio Del Toro).

I don't know whether the anti-clerical message in Sin City appeared in Miller's original graphic novel, or whether he added it through the film's unrepentantly manipulative evildoer, Rutger Hauer's Cardinal Roark. Mr. Miller himself plays the bad priest who is murdered by Marv, so I guess the anti-clericalism in the film originated with him. I can't say that any of the subtexts are brilliantly illuminated, but then neither is the film itself, with its digitally contorted black and gray look and occasional splashes of color (including one dazzling display of a car's hood).

In the end, Sin City is all about death, not sex (sorry, boys)-that and the infinite rottenness and corruption of the world. (A mud-splattered sign late in the film reveals that Sin City's name is actually Basin City.) I should add a word of praise for the vividness of Devon Aoki as a kind of samurai prostitute named Miho; Alexis Bledel as Becky, a turncoat always calling her mom on the phone; Michael Madsen as Hartigan's duplicitous partner; and, finally, Mr. Rodriguez for being an unselfish Renaissance man in insisting on full directorial credit for Mr. Miller, while assuming the additional roles of cinematographer and editor for himself. In the end, I have to say I liked Sin City almost in spite of myself.

Watching Lolita

Agnès Jaoui's Look at Me ( Comme une Image) from a screenplay by Ms. Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, is finally getting its long-delayed theatrical release uptown at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and downtown at the Angelika Film Center, six months after it opened the 42nd Annual Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Time hasn't dulled its flair and panache, such as we've come to expect from the Jaoui-Bacri writing and acting team responsible for such sparkling comedies of good and bad manners as La Goût des Autres ( The Taste of Others, 2000), On Connât la Chanson ( Same Old Song, 1997) and Un Air de Famille (Family Resemblance, 1996). Their detractors in France tend to dismiss them as heavy-handed boulevard farceurs, but American audiences seem to enjoy their satirical thrusts at the French bourgeoisie-who are, after all, not that far removed from their American counterparts.

Look at Me begins with a somewhat plump young girl-ironically named Lolita (Marilou Berry)-in the back of a stationary Paris taxicab. She's trying to placate the surly driver, who is complaining about losing money while waiting for two additional passengers: Lolita's middle-aged father, a literary lion named Etienne (Jean-Pierre Bacri), and his pretty and much younger second wife, Karine (Virginie Desarnauts). The first big laugh of the movie erupts when the bad-tempered Etienne arrives and snarls back at the cab driver, as if Parisians were trying to mimic the fabled incivility of New Yorkers. (No wonder we Manhattanites respond to the Jaoui-Bacri team: They're closer to George S. Kaufman than anyone working in currently infantilized Hollywood.)

Having subdued the now-cowering cabdriver, Etienne and his two female companions take the cab to a bustling celebrity event that's drawn a line of invited guests and wannabe attendees, with a muscular bouncer at the entrance meticulously inspecting everyone's credentials. Etienne and Karine majestically sweep their way in, while the hapless Lolita lingers on the sidewalk to take a cell-phone call from her boyfriend, Mathieu (Julien Baumgarther). The call unsatisfactorily concluded, Lolita tries to join her father and stepmother inside, but the burly guard bars her from entering. Lolita is suddenly distracted by a young man-we learn much later that he's named Sébastien (Keine Bouhiza)-who drunkenly passes out by the curb.

Lolita impulsively takes off her jacket to cover the lightly clad Sébastien, whom she doesn't know from Adam. This and her earlier attempt to reason with the rude cabdriver are our first clues as to the character of the main protagonist. Once Karine comes outside to fetch Lolita, the focus shifts to four new characters waiting near the back of the line. Only much later are these four apparent nobodies identified as Pierre (Laurent Grévill), a still-obscure novelist; Sylvia (Ms. Jaoui), his wife, a singing instructor, Edith (Michèle Moretti), Pierre's elderly editor; and Félix (Serge Riaboukine), his photographer friend and a prospective collaborator on his book. As the four move slowly toward the front of the line, Sylvia and Edith start to argue about which one was supposed to have brought the tickets. At this point, the already impatient Pierre breaks away from the group and heads for home; realizing that they don't have tickets, the others reluctantly follow.

Inside the club, Etienne displays more bad manners towards lesser colleagues, cruel condescension toward his culturally insecure wife, and cold indifference to his ugly duckling young daughter. In record time, he reveals himself to be a monster of mean-spirited snobbery and self-absorption right out of Molière. Eventually, these two separate groups are going to merge to form the narrative nucleus-a scathing satire of the rat race in the power-and-celebrity-addled milieu of Parisian writing and publishing.

For a time, Etienne's relentless rudeness is funny, but as more and more characters spin into his orbit, his cruelty toward others, and their masochistic submission to such abuse, become institutionally sinister. We see that Etienne is the way he is at least partly because too many people allow him to be. He is simply a literary variant of Donald Trump, wallowing in his own arrogance and self-adoration. Etienne even has a full-time stooge, Vincent (Grégoire Oestermann), formerly an "assistant," whom Etienne insults incessantly without fear of reprisal.

For her part, Lolita has long ago realized that Etienne doesn't love anybody besides himself. Her mother, Etienne's first wife, abandoned him to go live in the Antilles. Worse still, Lolita has come to expect that the few men in her life will only pretend to be attracted to her in hopes of currying favor with her powerful father. Her current boyfriend Mathieu, for example, is preparing to dump her after getting what he wants from Etienne. Ms. Berry, the daughter in real life of the celebrated French character actress Josiane Balasko, plays Lolita with an interesting mixture of vulnerability and defiance.

When we return to the second circle formed by Pierre and Sylvia, we discover that Lolita is a pupil of Sylvia's, who has been resisting her entreaties for more singing lessons-until she discovers who Lolita's father is. Lolita grins (or groans?) inwardly as she realizes that even a woman she admires is dazzled by Etienne's eminence as both a writer and a publisher. In her own mind, Sylvia is thinking only of the help that Pierre will get in promoting his new novel once he's seen in the company of Etienne.

All these proceedings would be harsh or sordid if they were not softened by the sublime music of Mozart, Schubert, Handel and Beethoven, sung by the choral group to which Lolita belongs, and in which she finds a spiritual salve to the persistent pain in her heart. Music-the art to which all the other arts aspire-celebrates the final romantic redemption of a fat girl brutalized by the universal conspiracy of brainwashed-by-the-media anorexia worshippers. Mozart has never served a nobler purpose.