Sunday 28 March 2010

Alfie (2004)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO LEARNS WHAT)

[This next Plot Buster is for a Hollywood remake of a classic bit of British cinema from the 1960s, which didn't turn out to be half as bad as many people would have thought:)]

Alfie (2004)
Written, directed and produced by Charles Shyer. With Jude Law, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, and Susan Sarandon.

In the end Jude Law learns that you only get out of a relationship what you are prepared to put into it, maybe?

Law plays the eponymous Vespa riding, limo driving, womanising, ambitious cockney about Manhattan.

With good looks and charm to spare, he is able to play the field without commitment. Leading him to wrongly imagine that he is smarter than everyone else, when it comes to matters of love.

However, through a succession of failed relationships, Law's credo of sex without consequences, while searching for the best deal available, is thrown into question.

He is first seen smoothly extricating himself from an extended involvement with a married woman who is beginning to show signs of wanting more than just the slap and tickle he has to offer.

However, in the aftermath of this skillful manoeuvre he inadvertently manages to ruin his best prospect to date for commitment, with single mum, Marisa Tomei, and her young son, whom Law has reluctantly grown to adore.

Law's several subsequent attempts to rekindle the relationship never succeed.

Initially, his disappointment barely registers, though, as, without even breaking stride, Law succeeds in bedding his intended business partner, Omar Epps's recent ex-girlfriend, Nia Long.

Surprisingly for Law, this one night stand actually re-unites the couple, who also happen to be his closest friends in the city.

However, all future plans that the interracial group have are ruined after the restored couple without warning decides to move up-state, after Law secretly helps Long attend an abortion clinic following her encounter with him.

Only much later does Law discover that there was no termination but that Epps still chose to commit to Long despite knowing that her baby was not his, but Law's.

Almost by accident, Law then begins what turns out to be a short-lived but intensely passionate affair with a stunningly beautiful though psychologically unstable young woman.

The impossibility of their long term happiness is brought home to Law, when he gets involved with a fabulously preserved, financially successful, freewheeling man-eater of an older woman played by Susan Sarandon, whose bedroom exploits eclipse even those of Law's. (Sarandon must have sold her soul for the part!)

At last Law thinks he has met his ideal partner and is ready for commitment.

It is ironic then, that it should be from Sarandon that Law learns most about the consequences of his self-indulgent take on life, when she casually rejects him for a younger man.

A rare display of bitter anger reveals just how much Law is affected by the realisation.


If there is a problem with Shyer's re-working of Bill Naughton's original 1966 screenplay adaption of his own novel and play, it is due to the updating of the story for a Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) generation.

Alfie was originally conceived as a brash, unsympathetic and irredeemable character, whose seemingly invulnerable exploits were only made tolerable by the brilliantly beguiling acting of Michael Caine.

In contrast, we pity, rather than despise, the poor life choices Law's, no less brilliantly portrayed, Alfie makes.

Taken on it's own terms the re-make is just as entertaining as the original, and even has something interesting to say about aspects of modern relationships.

It's just that its significance as social commentary could in no way match that of its predecessor, as life has inevitably moved on.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_%282004_film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_%281966_film%29


[Keen witted readers of this Bust who are familiar with the re-make will no doubt be wondering what happened to the episode where Jude Law has a heart-to-heart conversation with a middle-aged man, played by Dick Latessa, whom he meets in the washroom of a cancer clinic.

Although Latessa gets to ask the immortal question "What's it all about, Alfie?" and later has a second encounter with Law during the film's final third, the part is not integral to the story.

So it has, so to speak, hit the Busting-room floor. Remember the Way of the Plot Buster: if it's not essential to the plot, don't include it.

So, this example highlights an important aspect of Plot Busting: reading a Plot Bust is not the same thing as seeing the movie.

But a Bust should represent the essence of a plot even if some of the detail is missing.]