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The Ice Rink

1999, Movie, NR, 82 mins

The Ice Rink: Review

ICE RINK, THE | LA PATINOIRE
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LIVING IN OBLIVION, with a French twist. This mordantly funny satire of filmmaking is a one-joke film, but it's an awfully funny joke. A pretentious, Bresson-quoting auteur (Tom Novembre, the acting alias of the film's director, Belgian novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint) arrives at the ice rink owned and operated by an aging skating star (Jean-Pierre Cassel) hoping to finish his latest opus in time for the Venice Film Festival. The film, Dolores, concerns a glamorous figure skater, a lovestruck ice-hockey goalie, and a game that ends in sudden death — a metaphor, the director muses, for Europe's current predicament. Dolores is sure to be a festival shoo-in, providing disaster doesn't derail the entire production first. The vain American star (Bruce Campbell) has been having it off with his leading lady (Dolores Chaplin, real-life granddaughter of Charlie), much to the jealous director's chagrin. The actress's stunt double has a hairy chest, and the aggressive Lithuanian hockey players hired by the producer (Marie-France Pisier) don't speak a word of French and won't follow direction. And the joke? The whole thing is shot on a solid sheet of ice, which means the cast and crew are either falling down or expending a lot of energy trying not to. Toussaint has both a great stone face and utter unflappability in the face of absurdity; comparisons to Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati are exactly right. But while he shares Keaton's sharp visual wit and Tati's less-is-more approach to physical comedy, that impeccable sense of timing is entirely Toussaint's own. He knows just how long to hold a long shot of a smiling Pisier, desperately trying to make her way across the ice without losing her balance, until it stops being merely amusing and becomes laugh-out-loud hilarious. (In French, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Ken Fox
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