New Rose Hotel
10.19.06 (4:13 pm) [edit]
I don't have a lot of hope for William Gibson these days. His novel Neuromancer collected a bunch of scattered themes and ideas sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick had been toying with for years, codified them, added a thick layer of grime and invented a new lexicon to describe it all and cyberpunk was born. Much-imitated in the 80's, Gibson's writing is heavy on atmosphere and future slang. But like Douglas Adams, his writing loses a lot outside of a text environment. Gibson's screenwriting efforts are pretty much all disasters (Johnny Mnemonic, a couple of the absolute worst episodes of The X-Files) and I think I've figured out why: his characters are all hipper than thou tough guys spouting made up slang and computer jargon with no real personalities or character development and he cannot structure a plot to save his life. What makes his best works great is the strong atmosphere and world building he does. Then again, his last four books have all been total misfires. Maybe what a Gibson-based film needs is someone else writing the screenplay.New Rose Hotel is based on the Gibson short story of the same name available in the Burning Chrome collection. Directed and co-written by Abel Ferrera (the other writer is Christ Zois), the film is the story of corporate espionage in a future Tokyo. Obviously low budget, there's no high tech gadgets or CG monsters. Like A Scanner Darkly, the film is not really for sci-fi fans so much as it is people who are into talky art films. Honestly, New Rose Hotel has much more in common with French new wave films by people like Godard and Truffaut than films so commonly associated with cyberpunk or "tech noir" like Blade Runner and The Terminator. If you just look at the film at face value, it's mostly Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken having conversations about philosophy and espionage while Asia Argento looks gorgeous and frequently gets naked and/or has sex with people. The film's greatest strength is the way it humanizes Gibson's cardboard cut out characters.
Do not watch this if you want to see a sci-fi action movie.
While many will probably find New Rose Hotel dull, what it does do incredibly well is generate a compelling sense of atmosphere, though it's not really the same atmosphere you'll find in Gibson's writing. Instead of everything being gritty and dirty, the world is sleek and smooth, sort of cold and sleazy. But it's more of a "businessmen in a strip joints" kind of sleazy, not a "junkie shivering in a trash strew alley smelling of piss" kind of sleazy. The cinematography is sharp and pretty and flatters Argento. Ferrera clearly has talent and a distinct vision. The problem is this vision is not one most people are going to want to explore.
Those that can handle the movie's leisurely pace and almost complete lack of action will find a lot of interesting dialogue delivered with panache by Walken and Dafoe. Walken makes a great mentor character, and it's interesting to see Dafoe subdued and heartfelt, a great contrast to his usual scenery chewing persona. Dafoe is so different from his roles in movies like Wild at Heart, eXistenZ, and Spider-Man that it's refreshing.
Dafoe and Walken are free agents that do espionage jobs for different giant corporations. Walken is obsessed with "the edge". Every score has to be more challenging, more dangerous, and worth more money than the last, or he's not interested.
They hang out at a bar/strip joint/brothel, where attractive women get on stage take to turns singing, stripping, and groping one another. The queen of this scene is Asia Argento. While she's not much of a singer, she's simultaneously winsome and seductive. She doesn't so much sing as whisper and moan her song, and it's not hard to see why Dafoe picks her to spend the night with. This leads to a Walken brainstorm: use her in their latest, greatest job.
They promise her a million dollars to seduce an epoch-making genius Japanese scientist (Hiroshi, played by anime and video game artist Yoshitaka Amano) and convince him to flee one mega corporation for another. Walken handles the business side of thing while Dafoe teaches her everything she needs to know about making a Japanese guy fall in love with her. Unfortunately, despite Walken's warning, Dafoe falls for Argento (and can you blame him?)
He and Argento work out a side deal where once the new corporation has secured the Japanese scientist, she'll run away with him and they'll get married. But the thing he forgot is that she is a whore. Her job is to do and say whatever a man wants so that he will give her money. She doesn't have personal investment, and sure enough, that's the case here.
Someone offered her a better deal. Hiroshi's new company flies in every scientist working for them to learn from his genius, but one engineered super virus later and everyone's dead, Asia Argento is missing, all the money they earned is gone, and hitmen are after Dafoe and Walken. Walken sacrifices himself so Dafoe can make his escape, and Dafoe holes up in a scummy coffin hotel, poor and brokenhearted.
That's a pretty cyberpunk ending, or it would be, if the film didn't spend about 15 minutes with him piecing together how she fucked him over by way of tedious flashbacks. Come on, movie, just end. We don't really need that recap.
New Rose Hotel has some interesting dialogue, a couple of cool characters, a cyberpunk deal gone horribly wrong, some good, believable acting, and one very pretty Italian girl in it, but the plot is pretty thin, the pacing is slow, and there's almost no action, so make sure you know what kind of movie you're in for before checking this one out.
Either way, this is still the best screen adaptation of a William Gibson story yet, but it's an art film at its core.