{"id":57480,"date":"2025-08-09T18:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T18:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/57480\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T18:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T18:30:08","slug":"willem-dafoe-in-a-murky-family-melodrama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/57480\/","title":{"rendered":"Willem Dafoe in a Murky Family Melodrama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNo man is an island, except, perhaps, a man who owns one. The alienating, even dehumanizing effects of extreme wealth and privilege are brought to bear in \u201cThe Birthday Party<\/a>,\u201d a grim little kinda-Greek tragedy that, despite a lengthy guest list, may as well be a one-man show. The latest feature by Spanish writer-director Miguel \u00c1ngel Jim\u00e9nez functions chiefly as an ode to the many menacing screen moods of one Willem Dafoe<\/a>, cast as a cold-blooded 1970s shipping magnate plainly modeled on Aristotle Onassis, albeit with the kind of dark, gnarled glamor that the big O himself could only dream of. Brooding, glowering and sometimes even speak-singing his way through proceedings, Dafoe is rarely less than compelling; the same cannot be said, however, for the leaden film around him.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdapted from a well-regarded 2007 novel by Greek writer Panos Karnezis, \u201cThe Birthday Party\u201d may honor the Aegean milieu of the text, but there\u2019s an overriding air of Europudding placelessness to this Greek-Spanish-Dutch-British co-production with an accomplished if underserved multinational cast. That somewhat softens the specific satirical bite of the source material, with Karnezis\u2019 detailed mirroring of Onassis\u2019 life story largely excised in the screenplay \u2014 along with reams of backstory feeding into the weekend-spanning timeline of the central narrative. What\u2019s left feels both dramatically and emotionally sparse, despite escalatingly cruel actions and consequences. Dafoe\u2019s presence and a distinctively baleful island ambience represent the chief selling points of this predominantly feel-bad exercise, premiering in Locarno\u2019s Piazza Grande program.<\/p>\n

\n\tA brief prologue introduces terse tycoon Marco Timoleon (Dafoe) at his lowest personal ebb, responding with dour stoicism to the news that his teenage son \u2014 and favorite child \u2014 has been killed in a seaplane crash. Heavy rain lashes into the water surrounding his private island; cut to a decade or so later, and the weather has improved but a lowering atmosphere remains, signaled by the plunging shadows and pewtery finish of Gris Jordana\u2019s lensing. It\u2019s late summer, even if the temperature seems to drop in any room Timoleon enters, and the island is about to be more populated than it\u2019s been in many a year. Timoleon\u2019s daughter and sole surviving heir Sofia (Vic Carmen Sonne, Danish star of last year\u2019s \u201cThe Girl With the Needle\u201d) is turning 25, and he\u2019s marking the occasion with an extravagant party.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong those in attendance is principled doctor Patrikios (Christos Stergioglou), a former close ally of Timoleon\u2019s. He\u2019s surprised to be invited after years of estrangement, though he learns his services are required for most unsavory reasons. A more obvious invitee is young British writer Forster (\u201cPeaky Blinders\u201d star Joe Cole), given that he\u2019s both writing a biography of Timoleon and having a fling with Sofia, which turns out to be an even stickier conflict of interests than you might imagine. Also present is Olivia (Emma Suarez), Sofia\u2019s stepmother and soon to be Timoleon\u2019s ex-wife, plus a host of friends, foes and in-between acquaintances who clutter the story without really advancing it.<\/p>\n

\n\tChiefly, this is a study of a father-daughter relationship soured by grief and parental partiality: Timoleon cannot conceal his preference for the child he lost, to the point that Sofia wonders aloud if he wishes her dead instead. That doesn\u2019t stop him, however, from wielding stifling control over her adult life, when a major secret she has been harboring comes to light. Sonne matches Dafoe\u2019s intensity with a clenched, internally ruined air, though it\u2019s a little hard to identify in her the feckless party girl that others speak of. Yet the power in these two performances isn\u2019t supplemented by much texture in the stern, declamatory writing: There\u2019s little sense of how this relationship functions, or once functioned, outside these particularly fraught scenes. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat grip the film exerts is largely down to its clammy sensory qualities: the salty humidity felt in Jordana\u2019s compositions, the ostentatious proportions and forbidding dimness of Myrte Beltman\u2019s production, the sweaty sallowness of one face after another. Alexandros Livitsanos and Prins Obi\u2019s score is suitably, disconcertaingly stark and atonal, setting the tone for the film\u2019s most peculiar sonic coup: Dafoe\u2019s muttered, distinctly unmusical recitation of the old Nina Simone standard \u201cDon\u2019t Let Me Be Misunderstood.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m just a soul whose intentions are good,\u201d he intones, his delivery casting doubt on every word in that lyric \u2014 beginning with the \u201csoul\u201d part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No man is an island, except, perhaps, a man who owns one. The alienating, even dehumanizing effects of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,34429,38066,337,27252,27253],"class_list":["post-57480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-locarno-film-festival","tag-miguel-angel-jimenez","tag-movies","tag-the-birthday-party","tag-willem-dafoe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}