Creeping Through a House, Darkly

Does Neil LaBute dislike women? A common complaint about this award-winning playwright and film director is that he’s a total misogynist who goes out of his way to vent hostility toward what used to be called “the fair sex.” I don’t agree with this assessment: yes, his view of humanity is dark indeed, but I don’t think (judging from what I know of his body of work) that he favors one gender over the other. His characters can be brutal—and sexuality can be the spark that ignites their rage against one another—but he’s an equal opportunity misanthrope. From what I’ve seen, on the screen and in theatres, he doesn’t like anybody very much.

This is not to say that LaBute is a brute in real life. He is married, he has children; for all I know he’s a reliable friend and neighbor. Formerly, during his college years at Brigham Young University, he apparently became (like several good friends of mine) a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Though I’ve corresponded briefly with Neil, I can’t pretend to have anything like a close connection with him. I gather, though, that the sunny optimism of the Mormons in my life doesn’t entirely mesh with his outlook, or with the thrust of his writing and directing career.  

I think what fascinates LaBute is dominance: the way people are prone to seek control over those around them. And, at times, the way the victims contribute to their own subjugation. Those who suffer most usually deserve what they get, either because they’re naïve or because they’re greedy for something to which they’re not really entitled. The latter possibility shows up in the 2022 film I’ve just seen, one that LaBute both wrote and directed. House of Darkness seems ominous from the beginning, when a car pulls up in front of a creepy mansion in the woods. It’s late at night, of course, and no one is around except for the car’s occupants. Hap (Justin Long) is an ultra-cool finance bro, full of quips and self-confidence. Mina (Kate Bosworth) looks angelic, with her filmy white dress and long golden tresses. They’ve just met at a bar in the city, quickly bonded, and he gladly agreed when she asked for a ride home. It’s absolutely clear what’s on his mind, and this is confirmed when (as she goes off to fix some drinks) he has a cellphone chat with the buddy he left behind. He’s gloating about his good fortune . . . but his high spirits don’t last long. 

LaBute likes chamber pieces, in which a very few actors (often in an enclosed space) carry the film. This aesthetic preference also makes good sense: it’s certainly much easier to finance and produce a movie with a small cast and a single location. About half of House of Darkness takes place in what seems to be a mating dance between Hap and Mina, but then several new arrivals appear, changing everything. Mina’s name should give us a clue, but the sudden emergence of someone named Lucy makes it obvious: LaBute is playing with the dramatis personae surrounding Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I love the fact that in LaBute’s film these are tantalizing women in charge of their own destinies. The classic cinematic view of Dracula comes to us by way of Bela Lugosi’s 1931 film portrayal. In the movies, he’s a sexy man who lures innocent young women to a fate worse than death. Here LaBute has fun flipping the script, but Hap deserves (almost) everything he gets. 

 

Surviving a Velvet Morning

In playwright Neil LaBute’s film, Some Velvet Morning, Stanley Tucci is hardly thinking about becoming the next pope. Instead, in this chamber piece from 2013, Tucci’s hot on the trail of an enigmatic young woman who may or may not be named Velvet. LaBute himself personally suggested that I watch this flick, based on my appreciation for an earlier LaBute cinematic work, The Shape of Things. Now that I’ve seen Some Velvet Morning, I can understand why it has divided critics and audiences, even those of the film-festival-going variety. Yes, the writer/director displays in this film his usual mastery of dialogue and his gift for ambiguous characterizations, but I can understand how some moviegoers have come away from it annoyed and even offended. Still, I found it, when all was said and done, genuinely bracing.

 Part of the challenge of Some Velvet Morning comes from the audience’s need to figure out just what is going on. We start with a languid young woman in a bright red minidress stretched out on a sofa in an oh-so-pristine townhouse. Then a well-dressed older gentleman carrying quite a lot of luggage rings her doorbell, and the film kicks into action. These two apparently know each other, though there’s been a long absence, and the viewer is tasked with figuring out exactly what exists between them.

 Perhaps the most instructive moment occurs at the end of the credit sequence, when five words appear on the screen: For August Strindberg, with Love. LaBute, a serious student of classic drama, was clearly influenced on this project by the 19^th century Swedish author of intimate plays like Miss Julie, in which the battle of the sexes plays out with dramatic ferocity. As always, LaBute’s screenwork here feels much like a stage play, with sharply articulated dialogue briskly moving the action forward. But there’s also the vividly cinematic use of the full townhouse set, including steep staircases and well-decorated nooks and crannies to add some visual reality to the story’s twists and turns. 

 Watching the plot unfold, I was struck anew by Tucci’s talent for naturalistic performance. Whatever his mood at any given moment, he’s totally credible, even when lashing out with lightning speed. In both his character’s neediness and his anger, he seems completely real. His opposite number, Alice Eve, was unknown to me. As she changed moods and approaches to the man at the door, I sensed there was something histrionic about her, in contrast to Tucci’s more internalized performance. In time, though, I questioned my own earlier judgment. That’s what this film does to you.

 I won’t go into where it all leads. But at the end of this relatively short film (all of 82 minutes), the viewer should acknowledge having been on quite a journey, one whose conclusion he or she had not quite anticipated. (It’s hardly surprising to me that not everyone is pleased with this outcome.)

 I should add that the film’s curious title was apparently borrowed from a Lee Hazlewood song from 1967, best known from a recording in which he duets with Nancy Sinatra on her “Movin’ with Nancy” album. One critic said at the time, “’Some Velvet Morning’ sounds like two songs spliced together by a madman, or an avant-garde short film in song form.” Its lyrics are famously enigmatic, having puzzled critics and fans for generations. Hazelwood has confirmed that in writing the song he was thinking about classical Greek mythology, and particularly with the beautiful but dangerous Phaedra, whose love life was certainly complicated. Does the song help explain LaBute’s story? Well, maybe, or maybe not.

 

 

Uncovering “The Shape of Things”

Playwright and film director Neil LaBute is surely not typical of the graduates at Brigham Young University. I know, and like, a number of BYU grads. (We worked together at Osaka’s Expo 70, many moons ago.) The former Mormon missionaries with whom I hung out tended to be trustworthy, smart, and often a lot of fun. But their political and social views were on the conservative side, in keeping with the moral tenets of the church that shaped their lives.

 LaBute, who studied theatre at BYU circa 1980, is something of a different story. His plays, which he has also translated to film, lack the basic optimism that I connect with the Church of Latter Day Saints. La Bute’s style is to zero in on the worst of human behavior and follow where it leads. His first big success, which I saw and admired years ago, was In the Company of Men, a play that became an indie film and picked up several prestigious critics’ awards, It’s a cold-eyed look at misogyny in the workplace, with two corporate types joining forces to bedevil a hapless female co-worker, with grim results. (To my surprise, I’ve just learned that this corrosive work debuted at BYU in 1992, and subsequently won an award from the Association for Mormon Letters. So perhaps not all Mormons are as optimistic about mankind as my former co-workers.) 

 The film I saw last night, 2003’s The Shape of Things, also started out as a LaBute play. It debuted in London with a cast made up of Rachel Weisz, Paul Rudd, Gretchen Mol, and Fred Weller. All four also appear in the film version, which is set on and around a picturesque American  college campus, played by the California State University branch in ocean-adjacent Camarillo, CA. Though on-screen other students and faculty members come and go, only the four main actors have speaking roles: there’s no question that this is essentially a filmed play, one in which the focus is narrow and talk is all-important.

 At first it’s easy for the viewer to get restless while watching a series of mostly two-person dialogue scenes. But the mating-dance aspect of the script is intriguing, and the characters are so wildly assorted that we’re curious to see what comes next. The story’s Queen Bee, played by the always fascinating Weisz, is am art student working on a mysterious graduate thesis project. Convinced that art trumps everything (including morality), she is adamant in her choices, one of them being to bed a nebbishy young man who works—after a fashion—as a guard at the campus art museum. As played by an initially unrecognizable Paul Rudd, he’s all too willing to be molded by this beautiful and outrageous young woman, who helps him find the self-confidence he has lacked. The main cast is completed by Fred Weller, as Rudd’s domineering best friend, and his apparently meek fiancée, the perky blonde Gretchen Moll. There’s a powerful twist ending that I wouldn’t dream of divulging, but suffice it to say that there’s not a lot of happily ever after.

 LaBute, who shares with David Mamet a facility for language as well as a basic pessimism about human nature, makes vivid the cruelty of the characters toward one another. This particular piece of work also has fun satirizing the art world. LaBute takes on both the prudes of the past (a giant plaster fig-leaf covering the genitalia of an art museum statue is key to the story’s beginning) and the hip art-for-art’s-sake convictions of the present. If you like witty misanthropy, this one’s for you.