REVIEWED - SAIL-PROOF LADYTwo cinema legends return in triumph for Sail-Proof Lady, an extraordinary meditation on reality and illusion suffused with Bressonian austerity, Joycean opacity and Marxist humour.
Mystery has shrouded the whereabouts of its visionary director, the former Brazilian child star Khonne Ortitz, since his 1969 French existentialist epic, Incroyable (Would You Believe?). There are rumours that he was in a monastery in Paris - for some years, it is said, in the company of another less than prolific director, Terrence Malick.
An even more reclusive figure than Greta Garbo, Eve Channing turns up for the first time since her incomparable portrayal of Marguerite Wyck, the adulterous wife of Laurence Olivier in the 1972 thriller Sleuth. Channing is sublime as the enigmatic woman known only as Sail-Proof Lady. In Ortitz's deliciously teasing screenplay, various clues to her name are offered, mostly in references to dates, as she embarks on a complex quest for meaning in her life.
The film is distinctly Warholian in its apparent mundanity. While cynics may claim there's less to it than meets the eye, sharp-eyed viewers may detect layers of hidden meanings as the protagonist casts a quizzical eye over everyday life through the prism that is a Dundrum-style shopping mall in Los Angeles. Sharing Lars von Trier's fear of flying, Ortitz was inspired by his Dogville to shoot the entire film on minimalist sets in the banlieues of Paris.
If this all sounds contrived, well, it has to be, but there is a point to it, as Ortitz gets down to lampooning the film business. Jude Law is wonderfully self-effacing as an exhausted workaholic actor trekking from one film set to another. And there is a veritable feast of sly movie references, most amusingly to a certain Orson Welles film from 1976.
Fans of Sylvester Stallone, if any remain, may be baffled as Ortitz pokes Lubitschian fun at US politics by casting Stallone as the governor of California, who's immersed in reading Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Even more bizarrely, his mother, Jackie Stallone (last seen on Celebrity Big Brother), plays a character claiming to be the reincarnation of a famous actress who won two Oscars in the 1930s.
Channing herself deserves an Oscar, as does Ortitz, for the singular achievement that is Sail-Proof Lady. Patient audiences willing to persevere with his tantalisingly experimental style will be rewarded with a cinematic experience of which it truly can be said that we have never seen its like before. This masterwork deserves an exceptional rating: six stars.
