Ray Pride

Okay, so a movie's first scene has little Penelope Cruz squinting her little eyes and squeezing her small Spanish accent, telling her shrink, "He opened me like a flower of pain and it felt gooooooooood."

Do you: A) Await the Variety full-page ads for Halle Berry's performance as the doctor? B) Roll your eyes heavenward? C) Snort, slump and wish you'd thought to bring some popcorn?

"Gothika"--the title has no direct relation to the movie--was produced by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis' Dark Castle Entertainment, a partnership formed several years ago to make the kind of medium-budget, outrageous, or even outright ridiculous ghost stories they admired when they were younger. Dark Castle movies include 1999's superfluous yet successful remake of "House on Haunted Hill," "Thirteen Ghosts" and "Ghost Ship," memorably mostly for the story of Gabriel Byrne, asked why he was prating on about politics during at interview, barked at a journalist, "What? Would you rather I talked about fuckin' 'Ghost Ship'?!"

As supernatural slumming goes, "Gothika"'s no "Sixth Sense," but it's no "Ghost Ship" either. I don't even know if French director Mathieu Kassovitz's first American feature should be described as a good movie or a bad one, but "Gothika" shows a range of actors and craftsmen, including cinematographer Matthew Libatique ("Requiem for a Dream," "Phone Booth") and composer John Ottman ("The Usual Suspects," "X-2") having a gleeful, lurid time. "Gothika," set largely in a standing Quebec penitentiary and on dark country roads, looks absurdly rich for a self-conscious genre romp. Kassovitz also seems to endorse the radical shifts in plot and logic of Sebastian Gutierrez's script, working with the same headlong assurance, if not persuasiveness, as in his 2001 Euro-serial-killer story, "Crimson Rivers." (An actor as well, Kassovitz played the dream-lover in "Amelie.")

Berry's opening scene with Cruz is filled with the kind of rapid-fire analysis and insight common to on-screen therapists and psychologists. Her Dr. Miranda Grey is smarter than the average cookie, it seems, coaxing Chloe (Cruz), incarcerated for slaughtering her father, down from her recurrent visions of being raped by a tattooed Satan. She consults with the head of the institution (Charles S. Dutton), who turns out to be her husband. Their tenderness amid talk of "satanic meanderings" is leavened by the over-friendly attentions of fellow doctor Robert Downey, Jr. "We were just talking about repression," Dutton says as Downey fidgets in the doorway. A nice little triangle is established. It's a dark and stormy night. Crossing a covered bridge, Miranda's car almost plows into a small blonde girl in a nightdress, then drives into a ditch. Hoping to help her, Miranda takes her by the arm, the child bursts into flames: blackness. Ten minutes and the world that "Gothika" has established is over with.

Wholly unlikely yet filled with pert narrative satisfactions, we're suddenly propelled into a "Ladies in the Bughouse" story, where Woodward Penitentiary becomes Miranda's very own snake pit. A terrible crime's been committed in the several days since Miranda was put under medication; Downey tries to help her, but she can't see clearly. So what's the proper thing to do in a case like that? Loose her in the general population with her patients! Have the good doctor walk into the middle of the communal shower for a bit of cinematic humiliation!

Throughout, Kassovitz and Co. provide ample opportunity for Berry's bottom and bosom to take their rightful place on screen, and there's a world of study to be made here in how one reveals the assets of an Academy Award-winning performer without quite doing the Full Naughty, camera dipping and ducking, the angles measured just so as with a tape measure, camera booming upwards as she walks past, revealing swathes of shoulder blade and collarbone, but never the more precious parts. (Kassovitz & Co. also demonstrate keen interest in keeping Berry barefoot amid her confusions, whether in showers, rain, dust or sluicing blood.)

The dialogue is ripe, shy of risible. "This isn't logical, you're already dead!" a ghost gets told. "Logic is overrated," the ghost shrugs, nice, self-aware rallying cry for the excesses compressed within the movie.

"I'm not deluded, I'm possessed!" is one rallying cry, another: "I don't believe in ghosts." What can you say but "Me neither, but they believe in me." The walls close in, in inventive profusion, and the last few turns of the plot are gratifyingly over the top, for those who like their madness with an extra shot of creepiness and who won't be too fearful around the family knives come Thanksgiving.

"Gothika" opens Friday.

(2003-11-19)

Also by Ray Pride

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As compiled by Dominique Auvray, a friend of the late French novelist Marguerite Duras ("The Lover"), "Marguerite: A Reflection of Herself" is an interesting amalgam
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Fearless
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" has a readymade audience in the acolytes of Patrick O'Brian's twenty seafaring novels
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Tip of the Week
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The revolution will not be realized
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I miss the innocence
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Short Runs
(2003-11-05)

Tip of the Week
(2003-10-29)

Looking for Mr. Bad Cop
(2003-10-29)

Passed is prologue
(2003-10-29)

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