Francis Lawrence (2018)
In Red Sparrow, Jennifer Lawrence is Dominika Egorova – a Russian prima ballerina with the Bolshoi, then a secret agent. As well as being a huge star, Lawrence is a fine actress but the suspension of disbelief these premises require is colossal. For a brief while, early in this long (140-minute) film, her miscasting is slightly amusing. Before long, Lawrence’s glazed look and toneless voice (the effort of maintaining a not good Russian accent seems to have drained her of energy) leave the viewer’s face as glum as hers is. About halfway through Francis Lawrence’s spy thriller, she changes her hairdo and hair colour. The effect is to complete her petrification.
The short-lived amusement at the start connects to Lawrence’s innate charm and sense of fun. You don’t believe she can take this neo-Cold War tripe seriously (the way that a humourless, more self-regarding actress like Natalie Portman might have seemed to do). You keep expecting Lawrence to drop the daft voice and burst out laughing. Even though she doesn’t, there are comical elements in Red Sparrow, chiefly an abundance of clunky lines in Justin Haythe’s screenplay (adapted from a 2013 novel by Jason Matthews) and the aplomb with which they’re delivered. ‘The Cold War did not end – it shattered into a thousand dangerous pieces’ is a good example. This is spoken by Charlotte Rampling, ‘matron’ of ‘State School 4’, where Dominika Egorova is sent to train, with other young patriots, to become intelligence operatives. The resulting cadre of ‘sparrows’, as they’re called, have been schooled to seduce targets through a combination of brains and beauty. (Dominika is the star pupil in both departments.)
I smiled non-stop through Charlotte Rampling’s first few minutes on screen, though I stopped once the aspiring sparrows’ ‘psychological training’, which involves a good deal of physical humiliation, was properly underway. In general, the British actors playing officers in the SVR (effective successor to the KGB) approach their roles – and accents – with a calm, camp confidence that eludes Lawrence. They include Ciarán Hinds, Jeremy Irons and Douglas Hodge: the last-named – especially when his character makes an off-colour joke to Dominika and gives a dirty laugh – even suggests a possible human being. The main American is actually Australian: Joel Edgerton is the maverick CIA agent Nate Nash, whom Dominika is assigned to ensnare and with whom she falls in love (as he does with her). Hard to say quite where Matthias Schoenaerts, another high-ranking SVR operative and Dominika’s creepy uncle, fits into this international scheme. Along with Lawrence, Schoenaerts is the most conspicuously wasted actor in Red Sparrow but his appearance is striking. He doesn’t just look convincingly Russian; he would be physically well cast as the young Vladimir Putin.
Perhaps Hollywood, as much as large sections of the press and political establishments of Russia and the West, is partly relieved that Cold War hostilities are once again a growth industry. Red Sparrow seems antique in the sense that the heroine’s career path – ballet and espionage – reflects what Soviets used to be best known for. (The ballet side of things has been eclipsed by cheating at international sport – probably, in fact, another longstanding Russian tradition but it has a different profile now.) The bad dialogue, the regulation who’s-double-crossing-who arrangements, the fur hats, the moles and agents being ‘turned’ are all reassuringly familiar – the story is set in the present but it’s like stepping back in time. The film’s graphic violence is more de nos jours. There may even be those who’ll regard the torturing of the female lead, as well as the male one, as evidence of equal screen rights in action. Yet these modern elements are no less mechanical and phony than the traditional ones. The same goes for James Newton Howard’s dim suspenseful music.
A friend of mine who liked Winter’s Bone (2010) lamented a few years later that Jennifer Lawrence was being cast in ‘mainstream crap’. As someone who didn’t much like Winter’s Bone or Lawrence in it, I disagreed. I thought she was great in Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013) and good against the odds in Joy (2015). My friend probably had The Hunger Games films chiefly in mind though Lawrence was impressive too in the only one of those that I saw (the first one). You have to draw the mainstream crap line somewhere, though, and Red Sparrow is well beyond it.
8 March 2018
