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Friday June 29, 2007

Hunks and lovers enthrall ‘Gorgeous!’ ladies

by michael fox
correspondent

Energetic, effervescent and brimming with brio, “Gorgeous!” is your typical sexy romantic comedy — under the influence of three or four double espressos.

Director Lisa Azuelos steamrolls the dreamy, languid romantic fantasyland of Paris with gusto, whipping up a 21st-century tornado of rushed cell phone conversations, towed cars, text messages and slam-bang liaisons.

“Gorgeous!” is a women’s view of modern love and desire (though rarely in that order), depicted through the complicated lives of four vaguely related Sephardic Jewish gals. Three of the women have children they cherish and adore, yet no one and nothing commands their attention as completely as their sex drive.

“Gorgeous!” screens four times in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and is co-presented by Lehrhaus Judaica. It is the opening night film in Marin, with support from the Osher Marin JCC.

The festival staff describes “Gorgeous!” as a date movie, but — if I can use the expression without being pejorative — it’s a quintessential chick flick. Its focus is the stuff women talk about when men aren’t around, and which is of zero interest to men unless they’re the subject (and object) of the conversation.

The central figure, and the strongest character, is a happily divorced beauty salon owner named Isa. A blonde dynamo who can seemingly multitask in her sleep, Isa spends the movie juggling her children, the unwelcome attention of a tax auditor, a handsome British accountant and her nanny, who will be deported if she can’t find a spouse and get permanent residency.

The other three women are (respectively) unhappily divorced, unhappily married to a selfish lout and young, single and unsure what she wants. The movie locates all of them squarely in Mizrahi society, with solid ties and loving extended families.

Of course, this community can be as circumscribing as it is comforting. The men ostensibly hold the power, and even among the women, secrets don’t stay secrets long.

At its core, though, “Gorgeous!” is an empowerment fable. It subverts the old-line power structure in a hundred ways, not least in a brief scene in shul during Yom Kippur services. The men are davening downstairs, in the traditional hierarchical manner, but the gossiping of the women looking down on them is an unmistakable assertion that they can’t be silenced.

While the shul and family-dinner settings are generally patriarchal, the beauty salon is a women-only enterprise. Of course, the pursuit of beauty and weight loss are the steps to attracting a man. Thankfully, “Gorgeous!” bubbles with minor insecurities that never boil over into a major meltdown.

In case you couldn’t guess, these are not women who angst in silence. Azuelos and co-writers Michael Lellouche and Hervé Mimran provide the characters with a nonstop barrage of retorts and one-liners. Contemporary Hollywood movies don’t give female characters the same freedom to be full-throated and hot-blooded, although American television is another story.

Indeed, “Gorgeous!” isn’t so much breezy as frantic. The dialogue comes in such flurries that non-French speakers may find a speed-reading refresher useful for keeping up with the blazing subtitles. (A perfect title if Mel Brooks ever parodies a foreign film.)

Like most romantic comedies, “Gorgeous!” persuades us to accept its happy ending. But why, given the characters’ bumpy track records, restless desires and boatloads of children, do we expect their blissful new relationships to last 10 minutes after the credits roll, let alone forever and ever? Forget I asked.

Fans of Paris-set romantic comedies are also encouraged to seek out the festival entry “Bad Faith,” French writer/director/actor Roschdy Zem’s antic tale of a couple (she’s Jewish, he’s Muslim) expecting a baby.

“Gorgeous!” screens 5 p.m. Sunday, July 22 at the Castro Theatre in S.F., 6:45 p.m. Sunday, July 29 at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley, 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 31 at the Aquarius in Palo Alto and 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4 at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

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