"Interview" (2007) - Movie Review

Infamous celebrities get the infamous part from the media and the celebrities from the same media. That would be Sienna Miller’s sex pot soap opera star Katya in “Interview” a film directed and acted by Steve Buscemi. The film plays as a textbook screenplay surviving in the word play and acting but soon the gamble and wordplay becomes too predictable. An untalented spoiled actor having that darkness in her glamour life and the political journalist having a sadness of his own find a chord to connect with each other. The trust game and the odd times when they seduce, humiliate and embarrass each other is little too careless as the secrets are out and the film acknowledges its smartness and open ended finish.

In the book “The Game” by Neil Strauss, he writes about how he managed to get a good interview out of Britney Spears. He began to shelf his journalistic skills and brought out his pick up artist tactics to make her comfortable and well giving a serious look at him, as it is essential to get a good interview. Seen so much of tabloid attacks and exaggerations, there is no sense in the sensational news of a celebrity. The media even the proclaimed elite one succumbed to the business of running it than the actual truth of a story. But when a newspaper is stamped for a serious stuff, it is about the war correspondence and political chaos. True that it requires a consistent coverage but the professionalism taking those while doing the interviews of any one does not take a back seat either. Steve Buscemi’s Pierre is annoyed and feels demoted to be sent to document this star of the B movies and unfulfilling artistic garbage soap operas she does. He is a little too unprofessional.

He is put in his place by his editor, not allowing him to go to Washington DC to cover a political scandal and he has stared the white table cloth and shoved couple of bourbons before Katya arrives. He is annoyed by him being conditioned like a kid in a principal’s room by the restaurant host to not use the cellphone. Katya comes by with the cute ringer which eats the brain as the film progresses. She talks carefree and the host now ogles at the ceiling. It just keeps getting better and better for Pierre. He looks down and becomes detached as possibly he can in the questions he asks to Katya. Katya opposed to the opinions of others is offended and floundered by how she is not taken seriously. It ends in a funny bad note. Both flee and an incident outside leaves Pierre injured and Katya takes him to her loft nearby where the actual film happens.

Katya is the loose cannon of emotions. She swings by from one end to another. One minute she is caring, deep and affectionate towards Pierre and next minute stomps upon those built up reputation. Pierre is no different. Surely he is knocked off by this jumping and screaming sex goddess. But being the righteous ideal jerk he is, he believes to have full control over his penis. Unfortunately not and he kisses her as she closes in on him to dare. Then as the obvious control and demand Katya survives upon, she detaches and again humiliates him. This game keeps going on and by now Pierre gives up and says he does not care anything at all about her cussing and butchering his character. Of course there comes the opening up and things should have been taken differently from there on.

The suspicion between them is the winner and killer for this film. Katya can be herself but she has lost it. Not in the sobbing characters she portrays but being made as the tabloid freakshow. Pierre a man of high stand slowly begins to empathize for her. Before the night, he thought of her as this unreasonable woman swimming in the hedonistic supremacy of the world while weeping at the torturous life she assume to have and now he is wondering whether there is a real reason for the hoopla of her emotional circus. We learn about him through Katya on his professional and personal decline.

The game of high powered venereal tension between Katya and Pierre is further ignited by their professional side and main effects. Both are stealth and scheming in giving out the details. As men and women struggle to not give in openly to their actual inner self and be vulnerable, lot of there is in stake for a rather scandalous actress and a reporter feeling big of the society’s responsible citizen he has been. No doubt that it helps “Interview” with Buscemi and Miller acting precisely in an open claustrophobic loft. But “Interview” suddenly becomes a character of being the film maker. The important nuggets of the cinema stops and look back at its audience. Then it acts smart and is caught up in the carelessness in executing leaving the characters only of facade and insincerity. The cheating is neither clever nor comically cynical. It is only sad because we really cared for these characters and they wear a new skin because that is what they were threatened to.