The Paperboy - film review

Zac Efron spends too much time without his shirt but Nicole Kidman is convincing as a woman obsessed with a convicted killer
NICOLE KIDMAN Character(s): Charlotte Bless Film 'THE PAPERBOY' (2012) p37 p38 p39 films
allstar
19 March 2013

One of the things people go to the movies for is to see stars getting their kit off. It’s also one of the reasons people make films in the first place. At Cannes last year, when the director of The Paperboy, Lee Daniels (previously best known for Precious), responded to a question about why there was so much footage of Zac Efron in his underwear, he retorted: “Because I’m gay and I like it.” He later explained that what he should have said was that he himself used always to walk around in his underwear — “of course, I didn’t look like Zac Efron”.

The Paperboy is a sweaty mess of a film, adapting a 1995 thriller by Pete Dexter, set in Florida in 1969. Two brothers — Ward, a journalist on the Miami Times (Matthew McConaughey), and Jack, a college dropout, now literally a paperboy (Efron) — investigate the case of a man on death row, called Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), who may be innocent of the murder he has been convicted for but is nonetheless vile.

An ageing sexpot, Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), one of those women sickly turned on by convicted killers, is determined to marry Hillary if he can be freed. All their efforts end in catastrophe.

The movie is remarkably faithful to the novel’s basic story (Dexter himself co-adapted it) but it has been much switched around racially. Jack narrates the book, whereas the film is presented to us in initial interview and then voiceover commentary by the family’s black maid, played, not terribly well, by Daniels’ friend, the singer Macy Gray.

The subplot about Ward’s secret homosexuality, which leads to him being beaten almost to death, has been racially transposed as well. His friend and fellow journalist, Yardley, is white in the novel but played here by the crisp-voiced black English actor David Oyelowo — and the pick-ups who then assault Ward, just said to be sailors in the book, are black in the film too.

The Paperboy is a concoction in which Daniels appears to be relishing certain scenarios for private reasons rather than because the movie itself demands them. It has a humid stickiness and an Instagram-ish visual fuzz; it is clumsily edited too, gaily pumped along by soul music from the era. It feels strangely amateurish, given the high professsionalism of all the leads here. Efron’s lovely golden torso is swoonily filmed again and again — although he proves here that he can actually act adequately, as well as provoke fantasy.

Kidman gives a great show in a blonde wig and black eyeliner, teetering about in tiny dresses and high heels, denying her age, driven by crazy sexuality. “All the killers who have written me want to press their mouths into my vagina and even the crack of my behind — all except Hillary Van Wetter. He wants to be sucked off himself. I consider this psychological proof of his innocence,” she says, for all the world as though that made sense.

As Hillary, the nightmare from the swamps, John Cusack is excellent, a scary, staring-eyed monster — and the pair have a scene together, when they actually meet for the first time, that’s evidently aspiring to score Basic Instinct-level notoriety.

In the prison visiting room, Charlotte rips away her pantyhose to display herself to Hillary and, remaining some distance apart, keeping her mouth wide open in a big O to simulate oral sex for him, groaning and rustling, both come to orgasm, ignoring the others in the room. In comparison, the much advertised scene where Charlotte urinates on Jack at the beach to salve his jellyfish stings seems perfectly salubrious.

When Hillary actually gets hold of Charlotte and effectively rapes her with her own consent, Daniels provides little cutaway shots of a hunting alligator and a rooting hog, to make sure we get the picture — it’s brutish, it’s nasty.

The Paperboy loves its own down-homey Southernness, its period setting in a time of racial and sexual conflict, that whole swampy mess, much too much. It may yet become a camp classic, if no other kind.

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