Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1118959
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 MAY 2019 FILM FILM "MY friends say I'm like chew- ing gum… I tend to stick around." A pretty wonky line of dialogue even when meant as a weak joke, hopelessly cringe-worthy if said with any measure of seriousness. Sadly, co-writer/director Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire, Breakfast on Pluto, The Bor- gias) has the seemingly per- ennial ingenue Chloë Grace Moretz intone that precise ar- rangement of words in a defin- itive, hammy variant of the lat- ter. What's doubly sad is that an otherwise thrillingly con- structed psychological thriller is characterised by much of the same throughout: a po- face when trenchant humour would have been welcome, and flat telegraphing when haunt- ing ambiguity would have not only been nice, but absolutely necessary. Then again, Jordan is no stranger to camp. Like an Irish version of Joel Schumacher – that equally mercurial, una- pologetic purveyor of glossy sleaze-pulp designed to make just enough money to exist in the scummier peripheries of mainstream Hollywood – his is an eclectic filmography that relishes in entertainment animated by a dash of quease- inducing cruelty. Moving away from his overarching predilec- tion for costumed period fare, with Greta he mines a vein he had first tapped in the scaled- back and creepier In Dreams (1999). And so, Moretz's Frances Mc- Cullen is speedily marshalled into a treadmill of doom like a convenient lamb to the slaugh- ter. While still grieving the loss of her recently-deceased mother – keeping her success- ful businessman father (Colm Feore) at arm's length – the young woman moves to New York to help a friend – the seemingly vapid but otherwise well-meaning Erica (It Follows' Maika Monroe) – "break in" a fancy loft apartment recently purchased by her father, work- ing as a waitress all the while. While riding the subway back home one day, she spots an abandoned handbag and, despite Erica's protestations – "This is Manhattan: you find a bag, you call bomb squad!" – takes it back to its owner; a reclusive but charming French widow, Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert). Slowly but surely, a relationship starts up be- tween the two… and I'm pretty sure you don't need me to tell you that things don't quite go Frances' way from there. Working off a script co-writ- ten with Ray Wright, Jordan succeeds in concocting a thrill- er that is effective on a surface level but is also so derivative and by-the-numbers that it threatens to kill its own sus- pense before it's even allowed to ramp up. It's awkward to use 'TV movie' as a pejorative now that we're living through the small-screen revolution, but the pulpy stranger-danger styl- ings that Jordan dives into with such relish can't help but recall similarly soapy material from a just-slightly-byone era. Luckily, Huppert is on hand to rescue the project, as she's wont to do. An actress whose accomplished backlog has made her something of an ex- pert in subdued menace, she earns her titular character role by crafting a monster who casts a shadow worth trembling un- der. But as the cliches tumble over each other with ludicrous inevitability, it begins to feel as though even Huppert is go- ing through the motions, en- chanting-enough as they may be. Greta is soon revealed to be a retired piano teacher – a canny reference thrown in for the film buffs, but also an un- welcome reminder of similarly uneasy but otherwise richer forays from the French actress. Still, despite the expected tra- jectory of the overall proceed- ings and the tin-eared dialogue all throughout – how much finer would this all have been if given a modicum of genuine, Polanski-like dread! – the final act is allowed to unleash the sensationalism that just about lay dormant within all the while, and it makes for a tru- ly nail-biting conclusion that all but justifies any preceding clunkiness. And hey, anyone with the balls to let that chewing-gum line make it to final edit de- serves some kind of kudos… Though it certainly packs a suspenseful punch in its final act, Neil Jordan's psychological thriller may be a pill too preposterous and silly to swallow for most GRETA GET HER GET IT GRATING GET OUT ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The verdict While its external trap- pings promise a stylishly haunting good time, Greta is hampered by a hammy, tin-eared script that never allows any genuine dread to play out, effectively reducing it to a psychological thriller that's embarrassingly low on genuine psychological hooks. Still, it all ramps up to a can't-look-away conclu- sion and Isabelle Huppert unsurprisingly makes for a memorable psychopath. Teodor Reljic ★ ★ G R E TA ( 15 ) Mining those predictable thrills Stirring the pot: Chloë Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert are mouse and cat, respectively, in Neil Jordan's superficially effective but poorly written psychological thriller