| "Cafe Don's Plum" is released in Moscow In 1995, Leonardo DiCaprio, not yet a star, but already a promising twenty-year-old actor, got the idea to help his less famous friends and got involved with them in a project called Don's Plum Cafe, directed by 23-year-old R.D. Robb (who hasn't shown himself since then). When the film grew from an initially planned short film to a full-length film, DiCaprio and his friend and co-star Tobey Maguire did not recognize the child. God knows what scared them off: either their own improvised dialogues about anal stimulation with the help of peeled carrots, or the distinct taste of amateurism inherent in the film, but they opposed the release of the film. The producers sued the actors for breach of contract. The parties reached a settlement agreement: the producers promised not to release the film in American distribution, but retained foreign rights. And then the project was “adopted” by Lars von Trier. His company Zentropa Productions acquired the rights to European distribution, edited the loose material and premiered this February at the Berlin Film Festival. They say that Trier was captivated by the “dogmatic” style of the film, shot with a hand-held camera in an improvisational manner. This, of course, is nonsense. A film with DiCaprio is a very good business, even if it was shot on a Krasnogorsk camera by a member of the film club.
This is the background, but there will be no history. Just like she’s not in the film itself, which is an hour and a half chatter of infantile teenagers in a diner called Don’s Plum. Topics: sex, masturbation, drugs, flying saucers. In Russia, where by historical standards there were queues at McDonald's until recently, diners seem exotic, but for America there is nothing more familiar and familiar than a cramped diner with seats made of sticky leatherette, a broken jukebox, a meager assortment of non-alcoholic cocktails and French fries. , which inexplicably manages to cool down on the way from the kitchen to the dining room. A couple of accurate details, a couple of juicy characters, a few funny lines.
DiCaprio plays poorly, on cliches. A kind of vulnerable teenager who, as one annotation says, “underneath the rough crust of cynicism hides a sensitive heart.” You can't see a sensitive heart - you can see a not-so-skilled actor who thinks that the louder you scream and the more you frown, the more expressive you will be. His less famous but more talented partner Tobey Maguire, who has played in Pleasantville, Cider House Rules and Geeks since the days of Don's Plum, looks better. It turns out that already at the age of 19 he knew how to play innocence without looking like a complete idiot - a rare acting gift that makes him the most likely contender for the place of the great James Stewart in the 21st century.
Distributors advertise “Don's Plum Cafe” as a cheeky youth comedy with swearing, sex and fights. What else do they have left? In fact, you won’t hear any supernatural revelations from the screen, and the height of indecency will be the chaste story of an embarrassed girl about lovemaking with a teddy bear. And today this film, obviously outdated and unable to stand the test of time, but nevertheless attractive, will bring pleasure not so much to cheerful teenagers as to aging youth who love to spend time in the O. G.I.”: wow, we weren’t the only ones who were so stupid, timid, unlucky five or ten years ago. Alexey MEDVEDEV |
|
