I needed a beer. The rain pours down and everything I got on me is a suit (looks like they tried to lift the design off the latest Dior Homme collection) and a black trench, ca. Melville, ca. 1968 (the white rose from a friends wedding ceremony withered but still stylish). It's raining and my hair gets wet and there's still about an hour left until Cosmopolis finally starts. It's an hour away, and I am trapped in-between fat mommies and girls in their late teens (??), discussing which rows they will (try to) sit in, one side arguing the first row is the best, the other Robert Pattinson's lap is the best (I throw in that Cronenberg's might be more exciting, but they ignore me, philistines!!).
By the time Cronenberg and Pattinson arrive, I am slightly dried off, observing them from the large windows that keep the Twihards from plunging to their certain death. No signed A History of Violence DVD for me, I guess. But at least I get to see the man up close, and a stuttering, shy, slightly dumbfounded Pattinson.
Is COSMOPOLIS good? It's the American Psycho of My Dinner with Andre. It's the Soft-Porn of Limousines. It's the 1% of good fucking filmmaking!! And you know what?? People will fucking hate this movie.
Cosmopolis opens with this one exclamation some may already know: Pattinson needs a haircut. He's young, hyper-intelligent, possible suffers from a slight form of autism. Rich. Good looking. Married. Moronic. He'll cross the town to get it, even with a hit out on his head, his young wife proclaiming to dislike the smell of sex on his body ("What you smell is my hunger... to have sex with you!!!") and the president blocking most of the town, not to mention weird anarchists doing their ratty stuff. At least two horribly Cronenbergian things will happen to him, to the audience's delight (!?).
So why will people hate this movie?
1.) there is no plot
2.) there is nothing but dialogue
The film at times feels like a stage play - one fan of the novel I talked to afterwards compared it to Shakespeare (!?). The dialogue is stilted, fast and complex, it's like a mad coke-junkies fever dream of socio-capitalist masturbation, the limousine as natural extension (emancipation?) of the modern capitalists office - out of the building, back onto the street.
This movie got STYLE!! If you liked the weird late 60s/futuristic visuals you saw in the trailer, you'll love the look and atmosphere of Cosmopolis. Metric supplied some of the soundtrack, the rest is really dark, interesting Drone.
I am sure Cosmopolis will find its audience. But what sort of audience is that supposed to be? Quite intelligent (a woman outside told me she though the "fülm" was "intelligent"... like, as a genre) - cynical - perverse - not easily bored - interested in socio-politics (and the current problems of capitalism in the US) - people that love to hear other people talk - not Patrick Bateman - really not Patrick Bateman.
Cronenberg tried to make American Psycho in the late 80s. I am glad he didn't, because that may be the reason why we now got Cosmopolis, which is both politically more interesting and valid considering our current state-of-affairs. People will hate this film. The Twihards did.
