Robin Wright
“THE CONGRESS” My rating: B- (Opening Sept. 5 at the Alamo Drafthouse)
122 minutes | No MPAA rating
Masterful and maddening, spectacularly original and hugely frustrating, Ari Folman’s “The Congress” is unlike any other film I can name. Though it dabbles with elements explored by fantasy epics like “The Matrix,” it has its own distinct personality.
Some of us are going to love it. Some will be irritated by it. And some — like me — will experience both emotions.
Folman’s film (he was the creator of “Waltz With Bashir,” the brilliant animated effort about PTS among former Israeli soldiers) opens on the aging but still-beautiful face of actress Robin Wright.
Wright is playing herself here — or rather an alternative universe version of herself — and she’s reduced to tears as her long-time agent (Harvey Keitel) tells her that at age 44 her acting career is all but kaput.
She’s made too many bad choices in men, movies, and friends, he says. She’s thrown up too many obstacles about the kind of work she’ll do (no science fiction, no porn, no Holocaust movies) and she has earned a rep for not showing up on the set. Yes, yes, usually it’s because she has to deal with yet another emergency involving her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly going both blind and deaf. But that excuse has gotten old.
A meeting with a bullish exec (Danny Huston) at Miramount Pictures provides a last-ditch solution.
The movie biz has been so changed by digital technology, the desk jockey explains, that actors are obsolete. Most stars have allowed their faces, bodies, voices and emotions to be scanned into a computer where they can be reanimated by skilled CG artists.
The avatar actors thus created can be made younger or older, fatter or thinner. They’re never late. They make no demands or complaints. They never throw tantrums — unless the script calls for it.
“I need Buttercup from ‘The Princess Bride’,” the exec says. “I don’t need you.”
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