Wickerpark

Herald rating: * *


If the 1996 French film L'Appartement was a less-than-sizzling psychosexual thriller, this tepid remake - intense but curiously devoid of tension - makes the original look like a masterpiece.

It's hard to be specific about how bad it is because the entire plot is a series of contrivances that are impossible to describe without giving the game away.

It's safe to say that its four principals are the unequal and seldom parallel sides of a romantic quadrilateral which, whatever geometry may say, has many more sides than a romantic triangle.

Chief among them is Matthew (Hartnett, who looks like a young Tommy Lee Jones but with none of that fine actor's emotional agility), a would-be photographer on the brink of a glittering corporate career and marriage to a trophy bride. On the verge of a career-enhancing trip to China he overhears a phonecall being made by an old lover, Lisa (Kruger), who, as we xsoon learn, left him without explanation two years before.

This chance event sets in train a complicated set of occasionally intersecting love stories involving another woman (Kruger's Troy co-star Byrne) who may or may not be called Lisa, too.

All these stories are driven by miscommunication and connections missed or forged (in both senses of that word). The plot is diabolically complicated, not least because it unfolds out of chronological order and adds missing pieces of the puzzle with a randomness that seems to be driven as much by caprice as artistry. But in the end it all seems more banal than intriguing.

The original, written and directed by Gilles Mimouni, had a murder mystery at its heart and a blood-stained denouement.

This version, swamped by a studied soundtrack of hit songs (including a Coldplay cover), is ultimately a movie about a group of hideously self-absorbed twentysomethings. Add the fact that there's more chemistry in a double Scotch than in all the on-screen couplings and you're left wondering why Matthew didn't just take the plane and save us all a lot of trouble.

CAST: Josh Hartnett, Rose Byrne, Matthew Lillard, Jessica Pare, Diane Kruger
DIRECTOR: Paul McGuigan
RUNNING TIME: 114 mins
RATING: M, low-level offensive language
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas