Femme Fatales, Dizzy Dames & the Sad '70s Saps Who Rescue Them: "The Nice Guys" & "Inherent Vice"

The Nice Guys (2016)
Inherent Vice (2014)

The Nice Guys came on cable again recently. It reminded me anew of how the time-worn themes of the femme fatale and the damsel in distress are played out, again and again, even in contemporary cinema.

Mysterious, unknowable, sexually enticing, and often speaking in riddles, the femme fatale traditionally uses her allure -- knowingly or unknowingly -- to draw the male lead into a mystery, trap, or caper of some kind. As moviemaking has evolved with the culture over the decades, a twist on the femme fatale trope has emerged: That of the ditzy female, usually blonde, whose blithe ignorance gets her into hot water that she must be rescued from, usually by a man who appoints himself her savior. For both the Dizzy Dames and the Femme Fatales, the man endures all manner of humiliation, deprivation, danger and bodily harm to safeguard the clueless woman. The dizzy dame plot and its variations have most often fueled any number of screen comedies (Who’s That Girl, Desperately Seeking Susan, Butterflies Are Free, Something Wild, The Seven-Year Itch, Splash, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Born Yesterday, etc.), but they can be the centerpiece of dramas as well.

Set in 1977 Los Angeles, with all the attendant bellbottoms and disco beats, the story of Nice Guys follows the entangled paths of Jackson Healy, an enforcer for hire played by Russell Crowe, and failing private investigator Holland March, played by Ryan Gosling, who’s got a mortgage and a wanna-be-grown pre-teen daughter. The two men cross paths “cute” – Healy is hired to bang up March at his L.A. hilltop bungalow to warn him off a case – and they reluctantly join forces to locate a porn star who may or may not have died in a car crash, which leads them to the trail of the missing daughter of a local Justice Department official. In the process, the two heroes squabble like Felix and Oscar, ride around a sun-drenched Hollywood in a convertible Cadillac (I would swear that Gosling drives the same Caddy in La La Land), trade blows with bad guys, and stumble through a decadent Hollywood Hills party in search of film footage with the potential to bring down a struggling automaker.

The film, directed by Shane Black, is supposed to be a neo-noir thriller, but its overarching sunniness and toothless sense of danger play more like an original ‘70s episode of Starsky & Hutch than anything approaching Chinatown.

Gosling’s shambling loser character, Holland March, gets a veneer of sympathy for the “cute” relationship he has with his daughter, whom he’s raising alone. But with the two heroes already chest deep in doo-doo chasing after a nudie star and a hippy activist, he loses points in my eyes for cluing in his precocious 13-year-old daughter to all the details of the case as though she’s an adult, leading her to take an active role in their investigation with dire – and comic -- consequences. This is a movie that thinks everything little (white) girls do – no matter how clueless, ill-timed, illogical, or useless, whether they’re 12 or 22 – is somehow just adorable, even as it puts them and everyone around them in peril and requires incredible feats of human endurance to rescue them from.

The plot is overly complicated and somewhat silly, and somehow we the audience are supposed to take a liking to these two endearing, bumbling mercenaries—Nice Guys!-- who just want to do the right thing – for the right price. It’s a pleasant enough romp with some great nostalgic 70s music (the soundtrack boasts Kool & the Gang, EWF, the Bee Gees, America, Kiss, Al Green and more). But it’s hard to drum up enough sympathy for the two leading men or the fallen angels they’re trying to find. While Crowe and Gosling – who reportedly took the roles so that they could work together – seem to be having a rip-roaring good time, It’s no mystery why Nice Guys flopped at the box office.

Nice Guys reminded me of a movie I’d gone to the theater to see a couple of years ago, 2014’s Inherent Vice, adapted from a novel by Thomas Pynchon – an author whose work has previously been dubbed unfilmable. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for difficult, somewhat obtuse material such as There Will Be Blood and The Master, takes a stab at it.

Also set in the Southern California of the early ‘70s, and also about an addled private eye trying to track down a missing person, the flick stars Joaquin Phoenix as Doc, who spends most of his time getting stoned in the beachfront Malibu home he’s barely holding on to. When his beautifully mysterious hippy ex-girlfriend shows up asking for help locating her boyfriend, a wealthy married real estate developer, Doc decides to take the case out of nostalgia for their lost relationship. The result is a labyrinthine and damn near incomprehensible journey throughout the length and breadth of Los Angeles County, as Doc agrees to take on two more equally perplexing missing person cases that confuse and confound him – not to mention the viewing audience.

Along the way Doc encounters a brutal police captain (Josh Brolin), an eccentric attorney (Benicio del Toro), Chinese massage parlor hookers, a bizarre sanitarium, the misuse of laughing gas, fatal speedballs, an Asian ghost ship, and enough weed smoke for three Cheech & Chong movies. The plot is almost too internecine to be followed and begs multiple viewings. Indeed, the title should be "Incoherent Vice." Also billed as a neo-noir dramedy, Inherent Vice combines some kooky characters with a wacked-out atmosphere and a loose-limbed sense of the absurd.

Still, it’s kind of fun to see Joaquin Phoenix disappear completely into yet another oddball character in his filmography (as he did with Paul Anderson’s The Master), and the unique narrative is helped along by the brilliantly zany Josh Brolin and the ever-quirky Benicio del Toro, along with appearances by Reese Witherspoon, Maya Rudolph, Eric Roberts, Owen Wilson, and others.

His Doc is a Dude without much philosophy of his own and way more of a marijuana haze than a series of White Russians can impart. As a result, Inherent Vice can be viewed as a study in murky moods and how actors embody challenging roles. It’s the sort of film that will give you a hangover.

Her (2013)

Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, the voice of Scarlett Johanssen

"That was weird," pronounced my movie mate after viewing Her on Sunday.

"Yes, but also strangely compelling," I said.

Whether you think Her is weird or compelling or both depends on your attitude toward technology, relationships, and/or long close-ups of Joaquin Phoenix's mustachioed mug. Writer/Director Spike Jonze, who specializes in The Weird And Compelling (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Where The Wild Things Are), has created a brilliant meditation on what constitutes "relationship" as well as the inevitable collision of humanity and technology. But unlike such tech-gone-rogue cautionary tales as I-Robot, Artificial Intelligence, The Terminator, or (fill in the name of your favorite Sci-Fi "it's learned to think!" flick), the damage is less violent but no less impactful.

I was curious to see this thought-provoking film, set in a pleasant, near-future Los Angeles where technology has advanced significantly enough to where humans can fall in love with their highly-evolved, talking computers. (It's also a future where apparently the waistlines of pants have been raised to new heights and a sort of washed-out, kindergarten yellow-orange-blue color palette has taken over fashion and design). For me, the film is a commentary on the increasing separation and isolation people feel in an increasingly digitized world, and how human connection becomes that much harder to accomplish. At the same time, Her is deeply romantic, where technology is simply the latest tool by which we express all-too-human longings and needs that require another human to satisfy. Still, whether relationships involve humans or machines, the outcome seems predictable.

By now, you know the setup: Mild-mannered writer Theodore Twombley mopes through his solitary routine, unhinged by the fact that his childhood friend-turned-wife (Rooney Mara) is now divorcing him. On a whim, he downloads a brand-new artificially intelligent OS1 operating system that promises to attune itself to his every need and thought. "Samantha," voiced with throaty enthusiasm by Scarlett Johanssen, not only manages the details of Twombley's external life, but her refreshing candor and curiosity also gain her entry into his internal life as well. When she inquires about the cause of his marriage's demise, Twombley says, "I hid myself away in the relationship." It's a line that any insecure, commitment-phobic, life-distracted person can relate to. It becomes easier, therefore, for Twombley to open up to a consciousness and personality that is always accepting, always supportive, and always there -- until, of course, she's not.

So much of filmmaking wisdom is of the "show, don't tell" variety, but Jonze's script allows the conversations and discoveries between Theodore and Samantha to roll out in organic fashion. These are the kind of getting-to-know-you moments of information, teasing, inside jokes, confession, and dream sharing that can be the foundations of love. Too many movies have characters exchange names and then fall into bed, so this kind of back and forth feels refreshing for a while. Until it goes on too long and starts to feel way too precious and we grow tired of staring at Joaquin's lip fur as he listens to Samantha purr.

There are some truly funny moments in Her, first having to do with the nature of his writing job, then with the 3-D video game he diverts himself with in the evenings (director Jonze voices the impertinent "Alien Child") as well as the "Perfect Mom" video game Theodore's pal Amy (Amy Adams) is programming. The shot of Theodore walking outside, deep in conversation with his OS device, which widens to show that everyone on the street is similarly engaged, is thoroughly ironic. There are also some awkward moments, mostly having to do with sex. "You're a creepy man," accuses a drunken blind date (Olivia Wilde), who only moments before had been engaging Theodore in French kisses and pleas for commitment. And Samantha's plan to utilize a human surrogate in her relationship with Theodore is painful to watch.

Ultimately, though, Her made me want to cry. You will no doubt be thinking, "Why, for heaven's sake?" Some see this film as being hopeful about love. I -- the repressed romantic -- see it as hopeless. With technology becoming more and more complicated and advanced, and more of the world being sucked into its embrace, Her seems less like a cautionary tale and more like a Coming Attractions reel for the future.

FYI: Jonze picked up a Best Screenplay honor for Her at the Golden Globe on Jan. 12.