Anne Hathaway: Once Upon a Princess

A long airline flight always gives me a great excuse to check out movies old and new on my seat-back screen. Sometimes there are surprises: flying over the Atlantic in a plane full of sleeping passengers, I decided to watch an oldie: Astaire and Rogers in 1939’s The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. It’s the true tale of a famous dance duo hugely popular just before World War I.  I hadn’t realized, until I saw the film, that the historical Vernon, who had patriotically joined the Royal Flying Corps, died in a plane crash. Uh oh—not a nice thing to think about while aloft in the middle of the night.

 A recent cross-country trip allowed me to watch the new sequel to a comedy favorite of mine, The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Now, twenty years later, filmmakers have gathered the original cast—Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci—to update the story of an ambitious young journalist who finds herself taking orders from the imperious editor of Runway magazine, played by Streep with memorable sangfroid. In the original film, Hathaway’s Andy Sachs was a smart but naïve young college grad who thought she could handle the complexities of a job in the fashion industry while dealing with the demands of the capricious editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly. Ultimately Andy learned . . . and triumphed (mostly) on her own terms. I had heard that the 2026 sequel would take an updated look at the waning role of the print medium within today’s fashion industry, and so it does. Andy is now an award-winning journalist with a new, and much more impressive, job at Runway, and Miranda is now threatened by unexpected forces that want to push her out of her top-dog position. That being said, not a lot has changed in terms of the film’s central relationship. Miranda is still icy; Andy is still puppy-dog eager. (Actually, it’s supporting player Blunt who makes the most striking evolution in the course of the story.) 

Having mildly (but no more) enjoyed this return to the ladies of Runway, I decided to check out the film that first put Hathaway on the map. She was not yet 20 when she starred for director Garry Marshall in Disney’s The Princess Diaries (2001), a family-friendly tale of a girl who makes the most romantic of transformations. Mia, played by Hathaway, is a San Francisco kid with a bohemian mom and very few friends at her trendy prep school. When she first appears on screen she’s almost unrecognizable in her requisite uniform: her hair is a frizzy mop and she wears thick spectacles. Beyond this, she’s gangly and awkward, and  clearly not the greatest of students. But life has a surprise for her, which comes in the form of a soignée Julie Andrews, who turns out to be Mia’s long-absent paternal grandmother—and the reigning monarch of the tiny European kingdom of Genovia. Now Mia, because of her father’s recent death, is next in line for the throne . . . and therefore must learn to conform to royal standards of looks and behavior. Hilarity ensues, as the ugly duckling is (with her grandmother’s loving help) transformed into a swan. It’s the Disney Princess version of Andy Sacks discovering how to dress, how to behave, and how to thrive in the fashion industry.

 Come to think of it, movies are full of these Cinderella stories, in which the drab or gawky young girl metamorphoses into some sort of princess.  I’m thinking, for instance, of Gigi, but YOU may have other examples in mind.

 

 

Food, Glorious Food: “Big Night”

I’ve always enjoyed movies about cooking. Given that we all have to eat, I guess it’s not remarkable that food preparation can be used in so many ways to comment on the human condition. In the 1987 Danish film Babette’s Feast, a French refugee introduces an austere Scandinavian family to the joys of good food . . . and by extension the earthy pleasures of life.  Taiwan-born director Ang Lee, in his 1994 Eat Drink Man Woman, uses a retired chef cooking for his adult daughters as a way to explore Chinese  tradition as well as the relationship between generations. In 2023’s The Taste of Things, starring the luminous Juliette Binoche, a pairing involving love and loss unfolds through the relationship of a gourmet and his loyal cook. And we can’t forget the Pixar animated film, Ratatouille, which proves that you’re never too small to be very good in the kitchen.

 Earlier this year, Netflix presented Nonnas, a star-studded TV movie based on the real-life story of a New York man. He paid tribute to his late mother’s talents as a home cook by launching a popular Staten Island restaurant in which the kitchen is staffed by a clutch of Italian mamas. This slight but charming film is notable for casting veteran actresses of Italian descent (like Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, and Talia Shire), and having them fight epic stove-top battles over cooking techniques and regional specialties.

 Then there’s Big Night, a 1996 labor of love co-written and co-directed by Stanley Tucci. Tucci, a hyper-versatile character actor who was Oscar-nominated for playing an ominous neighbor in 2009’s The Lovely Bones, is most fondly remembered (by me, at least) as a sympathetic gay art director in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada. He also made an impressively down-to-earth Roman Catholic cardinal in last year’s Conclave.

 Throughout his career, Tucci has not been shy about proclaiming his love for good cooking, especially of the Italian variety. In 2021 he hosted  Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, a CNN series that followed him through the land of his ancestors. That same year he published Taste: My Life Through Food, a memoir that spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Other Tucci publications include What I Ate in One Year and several cookbooks.

 So it’s no surprise that when Tucci set about to make an original film, he put food preparation at its center. Big Night casts Tucci and Tony Shalhoub (of Lebanese descent but comfortable playing a wide range of nationalities) as Italian-born brothers determined to create a fine-dining restaurant near the New Jersey shore. In the film, Primo (Shalhoub) is the older brother, an artist in the kitchen who’s intolerant of shortcuts and trendy gimmicks. Tucci himself plays Secundo, the would-be practical brother who’s determined to see the business succeed, but has his own lapses into fantasyland. While locals cram into a livelier but far less authentic Italian-American bistro nearby, the brothers are desperate to stay afloat. That’s when, for reasons the film makes clear, the duo decide to risk everything on an elaborate gourmet banquet that’s spectacular but in many ways poorly conceived. This is a story about the restaurant business—yes!—but even more about the push-and-pull relationship between two brothers with very different visions of what they want to achieve in life.

 Big Night is not an Oscar-winning kind of movie. But it nabbed several writing awards, including an Independent Spirit nod for Best First Screenplay. Clearly, Tucci’s got talent in areas other than acting, and I can’t help wondering what he’ll serve us next. 

 (Here's a fascinationg addendum, provided by Hillel Schwartz, a friend and loyal reader:)  Stanley Tucci played Paul Child (Julia Child's husband) in the 2009 movie Julie & Julia. Tucci wrote about his deep admiration for Julia Child in his Taste and in an article for TIME Magazine: https://time.com/6103409/stanley-tucci-taste-julia-child/.  Ironically, Tucci was diagnosed in 2017 with a tumor at the base of his tongue, and lost his sense of taste and smell, but this was successfully treated with chemotherapy and radiation, although he had to have a feeding tube for six months. And now his co-star in Big Night, Tony Shalhoub, has his own tv series, where he goes around tasting versions of bread in different ethnic cuisines.

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.

 

 

Tallying the Votes: “Conclave”

You’d think that, after November 5, I would have had enough of elections. But there I was, two days later, checking out a film that is all about what it takes to get elected. No, I wasn’t watching  Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick doing everything in her power to be chosen student body president in Election. (That 1999 flick—both delightful and disturbing—turned Matthew Broderick of Ferris Bueller fame into a much-beleaguered grown-up, and established writer/director Alexander Payne as someone to watch. But I digress.)

 What I saw last Thursday night was not about high school girls in very short skirts, but rather about Roman Catholic cardinals in long ones. The brand-new Conclave, based on a popular novel, takes us behind the scenes of the election of a new pope , after his predecessor is found dead in his Vatican apartment. There’s been no murder most foul: it’s clear the old man died of natural causes. Both the public and the princes of the church are in deep mourning . But life goes on, and a new man must quickly be chosen to wear the so-called Ring of the Fisherman, like the one that has just been wrested off of the dead pope’s finger.

 That’s why Roman Catholic cardinals from around the globe are locked in the Sistine Chapel, directly beneath Michelangelo’s famous frescos, to choose one of their number as the Supreme Pontiff. Each will write a name on a small slip of paper, which  will ritualistically be slipped into a chalice. An appointed cardinal reads each ballot. Because it takes a two-thirds majority to win, multiple rounds of balloting are generally required. Then, at last, the burned ballots will emit white rather than black smoke, indicating to those waiting breathlessly outside that a new pope has been chosen.

 The film Conclave makes clear that, amid all the ritual formality of the Latin rite voting process, there’s often a real power struggle going on. The papal candidates make no speeches and issue no campaign promises, but their views are well known to their fellow cardinals, and factions naturally arise in support of various approaches to the ancient institution they all hold dear. Some skullduggery is also to be expected: the always memorable John Lithgow plays a cardinal who trips up a rival by dramatically exposing a long-ago transgression. We meet also a deeply conservative cardinal who seeks to undo many of the church’s recent reforms, a mysterious Mexican cardinal who was elevated in secrecy by the late pope, and Stanley Tucci as an American cardinal who’s probably too liberal-minded to be chosen pope. At the very center of the film is Ralph Fiennes as a deeply scrupulous cardinal faced with the unenviable task of managing the ins and outs of the Holy See. I should not overlook the film’s one important female character, Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes, who sees bad behavior that the cardinals will not admit to. There’s one point the film makes crystal-clear: every cardinal, no matter how modest his manner, secretly dreams of being elevated  to the papacy, and has long since picked out his papal name.

  Conclave is directed by Edward Berger who won acclaim for last year’s All Quiet on the Western Front. He beautifully manages the film’s huge canvas: Conclave is gorgeous to look at, and is well served by a fascinating score. The acting ensemble proves impressive, and Fiennes is deservedly getting raves for his complex role. Yes, toward the end the plot twists become increasingly unconvincing, but Conclave remains a satisfying behind-the-scenes look at a world we’ll never fully know.