G1 has seen it: Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams free 'Cheating' from being common
Actresses make good comedy look better than it really is.
Bradley Cooper 'ugly' and Christian Bale fat and bald are in the cast.
Christian Bale with a mustache, paunchy and struggling to hide his bald head (his hairdo is a prodigy of hair concealment). Bradley Cooper in curlers and John Travolta dancing in “Saturday Night Fever” (completes his mission with flying colors). Jennifer Lawrence platinum and acting like hell (she migrates, in seconds, from crying to laughing to crying again). And Amy Adams with plentiful cleavage and risking a London accent (convincing, even). All in the shoes of unpredictable – or just unbalanced – characters, in a comedy about crooks, with frequent changes of direction and occasional suspense.
“Trick” has the elemental ingredients to secure the audience's attention. But the plot is trivial – Scorsese (in “The Good Fellows”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (in “Boogie nights – Pleasure without limits”), obvious inspirations, have already done better. If the movie looks more than it is (and it's not weak), give credit to the cast – especially the female cast. Or, more accurately, credit Amy Adams. She and Jennifer just won the Golden Globes, and the film took it as best comedy. They are quoted to Oscar.
Amy deserves it. She plays Sydney Prosser, a former adult club dancer who becomes the lover of Irving Rosenfeld, the role of Bale. He is a faker who uses a lawful business (the laundry chain he owns) as a front to sell fake paintings and borrow money on the parallel market. The new "girlfriend" becomes a partner in deceit. But an undercover FBI agent, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), shows up and busts the pair. To avoid jail, the couple agrees to help the police catch other corrupt people – politicians, if they're lucky.
The story is based on a true scandal that took place in the United States in the late 1970s. Directed and co-written by David O. Russell (“The Winner” and “The Good Side of Life”), the film presents the details of an operation for capture the powerful and mobsters of New York and region. To establish momentum and avoid exhaustion with minutiae, Russell resorts to rapid advances from shot to shot. The camera follows behind the actors whenever possible. And there is still considerable talk, with narration that contributes little.
Extra problem: there are times when the impression is that the characters exist to serve the jokes – the opposite would be more legitimate. They are surmountable defects. The film partially bothers and pleases in the final account. Just like Jennifer Lawrence. Pretty as usual and more scandalous than usual, she plays Rosalyn Rosenfeld, Irving's distraught woman. Sometimes she exaggerates and annoys, as in an unnecessary music scene that doesn't even work as a parody of a Queen video. But the actress survives with her reputation intact.
The same goes for Christian Bale – less apprehensive, for the obvious reason of the comedy and the obvious reason for the caricature. In "Batman", he is too serious. In “The Winner”, too tragic. In “The worker”, too thin. In "Tricky", he seems little concerned with revealing how methodical he is capable of being in "character construction". Bradley Cooper is reasonable. It exists in the film to secure the share of male beauty (and to poke fun at aesthetic privilege) and to attribute sexual tension to Amy Adams.
Ridiculous characters
Like Russell's more recent work (“The Winner” and “The Good Side of Life”), “Cheating” has two subjects. It's a film about the harmful effects of the family and it's a love story – self-love, not romantic.
In “The Winner,” Mark Wahlberg is a mediocre boxer, manipulated by his mother and annihilated by his crack-using brother (Christian Bale, in the best interpretation of his life). The central mission was not to become a champion fighter, that's a pretext. Pretext for him to discover and introduce himself to a stranger: self-love. In “The Good Side of Life,” Bradley Cooper is a bipolar teacher, overprotected by his parents and traumatized after his wife leaves him. Convinced by a very interesting neighbor (Jennifer Lawrence) to enter a dance contest, he needs to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Whether she wins the tournament doesn't matter, and then we have another pretext – this time, to regain her self-esteem.
“Trick” deals with these two themes. The families of Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper characters say a lot, or say everything, about who they are when they act outside the home. Freed from the neurosis of the wife and mother, they can finally exercise what they believe to be their most remarkable quality – intelligence. Ultimately, they both suffer from the same affliction: the excess of self-love.
But in the new comedy, even by genre convention, the tone is less serious. Less sentimental. In "The Winner" and "The Bright Side of Life," Russell takes pity on his characters and leads them by the hand. In “Trick”, no. If he takes them by the hand, it is to drop them into situations that examine their ridicule.
On the other hand, visually “Trick” is more ambitious than its predecessors. Not because of the lapels, the nail polish, the lipsticks, the revealing dresses, the prosthetics and the artificially frizzy hair and the tufts (highlight for Jeremy Renner, as a political "father of the poor", in his best performance since "War to terror"). But for scenes like the one at the disco where Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams dance. In conducting the script, however, “Trapaça” is a step down.
It is unfair to say that, as it is not a masterpiece, the film is entirely wrong. To be good, it doesn't have to be the work of genius, which Russell never really was. Assessed by the entire core team, Amy Adams stands out for being the only really must-have aspect of a non-must have, but satisfying film. With a few adjustments, all scene partners could perhaps be replaced. All jokes could be revised or improved. Not Amy. “Cheating” is justified if only for that.
