subject: Review Mia and the Magoo Never Movie 2011 [print this page] Review Mia and the Magoo Never Movie 2011
review Mia and the Magoo Never Movie 2011
A movie to rent: Who Are You Polly Maggoo?It may well be that Darling also influenced the TV interview hook, and the movie is also of a piece with the newfound freedom in British cinema as personified by Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, The Knack). But it also owes a debt to those free-wheeling Paris films of a few years early, by one J-L. Godard (Bande part, Une femme est une femme).
As such, the narrative above such as it is, is presented in a very "modern" style, with jump cuts and apparent non-sequiturs and cod-verite filming on the street. There's also some collage animation that's strikingly pythonesque and similarly, a scene where the characters are around a TV set showing part of that same scene, which then appears on the TV set in a newsroom.
Which itself then appears on the TV set back in the first scene. The film very much characterises the mid-sixties optimism of rule-breaking, celebration of youth and beauty and refusal to take anything seriously. So its various lines of possible enquiry are met with off-the-cuff analysis, open-ended questions and nonsense such as "I became what I am today otherwise I'd be something else.[ watch Mia and the Magoo online ]
If I was something else I wouldn't be what I am". The most incisive insight comes from the sociologist who relates the alternative Cinderella story, wherein an ugly sister cuts off her toe to fit in the glass slipper, bleeding all over her white stocking. The prince takes her anyway. That's fashion right there: fetishism, mutilation, suffering.
William Klein was a fashion photographer before he dabbled in film, and shot this in lovely black and white. Amongst the most exciting parts of the movie are the fashion shows/shoots, in particular the fantastically surreal opening, where the girls wear curved and shaped sheet metal (the designer's next collection is going to be in copper..). He knew the industry well, and the sideswipes are affectionate in the extreme, even down to Grayson Hall's harridan Vogue editor; this is a film that is determined to be light-hearted, peppered with puns and wordplay and dreams and magical imaginings, even some undercranking and slapstick.
The big joke is that it has no interest in answering its own title, because who'd want to be so dull? That the question is not to be taken too seriously is revealed in another pythonesque absurdity: next week's show, "Who Are You Paul VI?".
He's the Pope. The smug bespectacled writer of the TV show (Philippe Noiret) asks if modeling is a masquerade, and taking its cue from Polly's profession, the film answers yes, and that there's nothing wrong with that. This is a film in which the shallow and the ephemeral are celebrated right down to the wilfully arbitrary ending. As the TV producer says, surface is reality too; while it may lack in satirical bite, for the connoisseurs of the superficial it is a charming piece of flummery. [ watch Mia and the Magoo online ]
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