POISON SCOOTER

Babel

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel is a multicultural, interlocking story involing a Japanese business man and his teenage deaf-mute daughter, a wealthy American couple visiting Morocco and the Mexican immigrant nanny left behind in the States to care for their two small children. While Iñárritu plays with time structure, jumping through time within a 5 day period, you begin to anticipate what is going to happen, expecting it while not completely sure you know exactly how things will unfold.

The basic theme of the movie is loss, much like Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga's first collaboration 21 Grams a few years back. In their recent film, the loss of a child between Brad Pitt's Richard and his wife Susan (Cate Blanchett) send the course of events in motion as they try to reconnect on a vacation in Morocco and leave their living two kids in the care of their nanny who travels with them back into Mexico for the wedding of her adult son. A freak accident with a gun given as a gift to a Moroccan hunting guide by a visiting Japanese business man disrupts the lives of Richard and Susan and shifts the focus over to the sexually blossoming and depressed daughter of the business man, played with intensity and grace by Rinko Kikuchi.

Both Adriana Barraza as Amelia (the nanny) and Rinko Kikuchi are up for Best Supporting Actress at tonight's Oscar and it's a shame that the Jennifer Hudson express is pretty unstoppable this year. Barraza brings a voice to an illegal in this country, something that we have a tendancy to avoid thinking about as a nation. And Kikuchi is raw and fearless as a deaf mute that wants so depserately to be normal enough to be attractive to boys and wishes she could just tell someone to take her sexually. The awkward situations that Kikuchi's Chieko gets herself into allow the actress to put forth the most demanding performance in the film and from a relative unknown, well it's just a wow type of job.

This film completes the much triumphed trio of strong films from Mexican filmmakers in the past year. And I'll have to say when I'm putting together my own top ten of 2006, something I honestly need to do, Babel is up there in the top five with both Pan's Labyrinth (del Torro) and the much under rewarded Children of Men (Cuarón).

posted by Scooter @ 2:48 PM