November 4-10, 2004

movies

Cad About the Boy

point and shoot: Jude Law gets cocky.

Is Alfie's rakish obliviousness charming, or just annoying?

Alfie

by Cindy Fuchs

This year's Alfie (Jude Law) keeps a small NYC apartment, adorned with a Let's Get Lost poster. This famous image of Chet Baker—trumpet foregrounded and eyes closed as he presses his face into a woman's torso, as she, in turn, looks so directly into the camera—is at once defiant and wistful, a willfully blind, cool-cat reflection of Alfie's own lack of awareness and his dependence on women, any women, to prop up his sense of self.

This much is well-known from Lewis Gilbert's 1966 film, the one so closely identified with Cilla Black's thrilling rendition of the lyric, "What's it all about?" While this question seems no closer to a resolution, Charles Shyer's film makes it seem strangely inconsequential. In part, this has to do with the new Alfie's adorable quotient; where Michael Caine's Cockney bloke was explicitly rough around the edges, a laddish sort resisting maturation, Law's British womanizer is inevitably pretty, gliding through Manhattan as a limo driver, a gig that affords him endless opportunities to pick up upscale, leggy lovelies.

While the old Alfie reveled in his resolute cluelessness, driving about London in search of "birds," the new one has a certain cultural awareness imposed on him, one the movie addresses selectively. Perhaps to maintain the original film's spirit, this one never mentions sexually transmitted diseases or legal issues. As before, the man's serial shagging—of married lady Dorie (Jane Krakowski); single mom and "semi-permanent-quasi-sort-of-girlfriend" Julie (Marisa Tomei), who eventually tires of being a "glorified booty call"; absinthe-quaffing sophisticate Liz (Susan Sarandon); and the deliriously beautiful, very 1960s-looking addict Nikki (Sienna Miller)—is accompanied by his repeated direct address to the camera.

Back in the day, Alfie's revelations were sometimes disturbing and even surprising. Here was a man admitting that he made decisions based on mad self-love, rejecting conventional responsibility and even courtesy, dropping girls when they even thought about asking too much. Now, his attitude is familiar and his language and confessional mode too typical. Post-Real World and Malcolm in the Middle, self-conscious, fourth-wall-breaking narrators are common and only rarely compelling.

This Alfie has opportunity to comment on his own activities, as well as those of other men, while maintaining his sense of superiority and impeccable taste in clothing. He works at an agency owned by the painfully stereotypical, limping Mr. Wing (Gedde Watanabe). (Could the demasculinization be any clearer?)`The boss' repeated mistreatment of his long-suffering wife (Jo Yang) leads to an object lesson for the observant Alfie: Namely, if you don't respect and romance your girl, she'll leave you.

That's not to say Alfie actually absorbs or fully comprehends this lesson. Rather, he delivers advice to Wing ("Write her a poem!") and goes on his way, disrespecting most everyone who comes his way, including his supposed best friend and co-worker Marlon (Omar Epps). With this liaison, the new Alfie appears to engage the 21st century, though Alfie's status as relationship expert and mentor to Marlon isn't strictly plausible (this is Omar Epps we're talking about). Marlon's problem, introduced early, has to do with his ex, a savvy cocktail waitress named Lonette (Nia Long). He wants her back desperately (such explicit desire being a no-no in Alfie's book of rules) and foolishly asks his buddy to intervene, to make his case to Lonette one night after work.

The predictable result, Lonette's pregnancy, repeats the problem the first Alfie had when he had sex with a married woman (Vivien Merchant) whose invalid husband cannot be mistaken for the father. Aside from the obvious betrayal, the 1966 dilemma was premised on the fact that abortion was illegal; during the infamous scene when she's administered the purgative, he looks straight at the camera and complains, low-voiced and chillingly, "I hate anything like this. My understanding of women only goes so far as the pleasure. When it comes to the pain, I'm like every other bloke. I don't want to know."

This year, the problem is Marlon, who makes up with Lonette that very night and so might discover the treachery, evidenced in the potential baby's appearance. That is, the baby, not the pregnancy per se, will reveal Alfie and Lonette's one-night affiliation. And, if abortion is now legal and available at a neighborhood clinic, it is still traumatic, at least for Lonette. Though Alfie's utter lack of knowledge and empathy is banal, it's also annoying, as he appears to be stuck in a time warp, still believing that men's freedom to sex is eternal.

Alfie's education is, of course, the film's primary business. Still, the film repeats the original's emphasis on his resilience, his efforts to sustain his convenient ignorance and pursuit of specific pleasures. Now, such resilience is less charming than it might have been and certainly less excusable. As lost as Alfie might be, he is surrounded by urgent, provocative signposts that he just can't see.

Alfie Directed by Charles Shyer A Paramount release Opens Friday at area theaters