DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Rand Ravich
PRODUCER
Andrew Lazar
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Allen Daviau
MUSIC
George S. Clinton
EDITORS
Timothy Alverson
Steve Mirkovich
CAST
Johnny Depp (Spencer Armacost)
Charlize Theron (Jillian Armacost)
Joe Morton (Sherman Reese)
Clea DuVall (Nan)
Donna Murphy (Natalie Streck)
Nick Cassavetes (Alex Streck)
Samantha Eggar (Dr. Patraba)
Gary Grubbs (NASA Director)
Blair Brown (Shelly McLaren)
Tom Noonan (Jackson McLaren)
Tom O'Brien (Allen Dodge)
Lucy Lin (Shelly Carter)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 109m
U.S. release: August 27, 1999
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
|
Okay,
if we concede there are aliens out there (and we might as well),
we're still left with the question, What do they want
from us? "Die," answered the E.T. with admirable straightforwardness
in Independence
Day. But the intergalactic travellers in the somber and
preposterous The Astronaut's Wife have more sinister things
in mind: They want to KNOCK UP OUR WOMEN! Yes, the Weekly
World News has been right all along. Lock up your daughters,
and don't let any of them marry an astronaut.
Johnny Depp, in a rare check-cashing performance (you'd have
to go back to 1995's Nick
of Time to find him this boring), is hotshot astronaut
Spencer Armacost, who along with a partner (Nick Cassavetes)
is repairing the exterior panels of a shuttle out in space when
something strange happens. NASA loses contact with the men for
two minutes, and when they come back down to Earth they won't,
or can't, talk about what happened. Spencer's wife Jillian (Charlize
Theron) is happy to have Spencer home safe; her relief blinds
her, at first, to the ways in which her husband has changed.
Once proud to be a high-flyer, Spencer retires from service and
accepts an offer at some corporation working on a special plane
for use in high-tech warfare. The new job is in New York, which
Spencer always used to hate. It's not long before we begin to
suspect that Spencer isn't Spencer any more, though it takes
Jillian a lot longer to figure it out.
Making his feature debut, writer-director Rand Ravich goes about
his grim business as if assembling a particularly moody car commercial.
The result, thanks to the great cinematographer Allen Daviau
(E.T.),
is easy on the eyes, but the filmmaking is of the hey-look-Ma-I'm-a-director
school, with many, many circling overhead shots, and without
the playfulness and vigor that an inspired show-off like Brian
De Palma could bring to it. The Astronaut's Wife isn't
any fun, and it drags along while we watch Jillian sink deeper
and deeper into her predicament. For instance, Jillian discovers
she's pregnant, and an ultrasound determines that she's carrying
twins -- which means something ominous, I think, but I've already
forgotten what. The situation, not to mention Charlize Theron's
unflattering pixie haircut, explicitly recalls Roman Polanski's
paranoid masterpiece Rosemary's Baby, but that film had
an infinitely more colorful cast of characters and an undercurrent
of diabolical wit. This movie has nothing except a vague biological
dread: What exactly is Jillian carrying inside her? And why does
Spencer, or whatever he is, seem so intent on the babies' well-being?
The movie wastes an interesting cast of likable character actors:
Blair Brown and Tom Noonan as Spencer's new benefactors, Joe
Morton as a NASA man desperate to tell Jillian the truth, Clea
DuVall (The
Faculty) as Jillian's sister, Donna Murphy (Star
Trek Insurrection) as a woman stricken with grief over
the fate of her husband. But generally, this is the sort of coldhearted
movie that sets up a vulnerable heroine and then picks off everyone
around her who can help her; don't bother getting too attached
to most of the characters.
Theron acts up a storm; it's basically her movie, and she's appealing
in a fragile way, but the mechanics of the plot end up making
her look like a sap. As for Depp, there were times when I thought
I was watching Val Kilmer, and most of the time you could be
watching just about anyone else in the role. A mild Southern
drawl is about all Depp brings to the party, and Ravich uses
him like a masked heavy in a slasher film. Jillian turns around
-- gasp! -- he's there. Jillian sneaks out to meet someone
who can help her -- eek! -- he's there again. He's so
consistently everywhere that I expected to learn that the aliens
had cloned him, but no, he just has that horror-movie knack of
being wherever he needs to be, whenever he needs to be there.
The Astronaut's Wife builds sputteringly to a climax involving
running water, a radio, and an alien that looks like the aquatic
E.T.s in The Abyss crossed with an octopus. It also boasts
what I call the wrong kind of bleak ending. I have nothing
against unhappy endings, but they have to be prepared for, and
we have to be prepared for them, even in subtle ways we don't
recognize until after the movie is over (see The
Sixth Sense). But the ending of The Astronaut's Wife
leaves you with nothing; all of Jillian's agony and terror amount
to nothing, and all of our suffering while watching her suffering
means nothing. (If this is why they needed reshoots, I'd hate
to see the original ending.) The movie is a high-toned grind,
and if you manage to develop any emotional connection to the
heroine, it isn't repaid -- it's thrown back in your face. The
Astronaut's Wife isn't so much chilling as pointlessly unpleasant
and mean-spirited. |
