Culture

Red Sparrow: A compromised and, at times, incomprehensible movie

March 02, 2018 09:13·
Christine Granville

Christine Granville

"Red Sparrow" is high-class trash, and Lawrence knows it: "Am I good in it?" she mused on Marc Maron's podcast recently.

"There has not been a Francis Lawrence movie like this", concludes Peter Chernin. "He's a very nice guy, but I was mad", she said. ("I feel like something that was taken from me I got back and am using in my art.") Okay.

"Red Sparrow" maintains some of the alluring aspects of a spy thriller. She also mentioned that Red Sparrow doesn't glamorize the world of espionage.

Reuniting Jennifer Lawrence with director Francis Lawrence (no relation), with whom she worked on all three of the Hunger Games sequels, Red Sparrow is a big, expensive spy picture that spins a lot of wheels, but fails to find its gear - an issue that gets increasingly frustrating over its bloated running time. They see Jennifer in a blonde wig and the go, "Oh, it's Atomic Blonde". After suffering a career-ending injury, she must become a spy-rather, a sparrow-to care for her ailing mother. She is manipulated into the government's global spy and Kompromat sex agency by her uncle Vanya. Dominika dismisses the training as "whore school", but her toughness quickly attracts the attention of her teacher (Charlotte Gainsbourg, better than this dreck deserves) and a high-ranking general (Jeremy Irons, exactly what this dreck deserves).

I have said this many times before, and it looks like I have to say it again because no one is listening: If your movie that you think is critiquing misogyny is indistinguishable from misogyny, you are doing it wrong. Or perhaps she's playing both sides, just waiting to see which one will let her live an existence free of demeaning behavior. Just as well then that her uncle - a distracting ringer for Vladimir Putin, played by Matthias Schoenaerts - is a senior officer in the Secret Service.

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Nate's no rube, however, and he quickly identifies who and what Dominika is. She is also made to endure lines like "Every human being is a puzzle of need". It's hard to overlook, for example, the sheer number of sexual assaults Dominika is subjected to or the way the camera ogles its female lead with the same discomfiting gaze as her perverted boss.

PLOT A Russian ballerina is turned into a seductive spy.

A couple of things are worth noting at this point.

At the one hour mark we had already begun checking the time and fidgeting, and the movie runs to a dragging two hours and 20 minutes. Another is that she and Edgerton have no chemistry whatsoever. The plot thickens with the emergence of an American chief of staff for a US senator (Mary-Louise Parker), who herself is trading secrets, as well as other players hopping on to this complex web. (We all need to see much, much more of Mary-Louise Parker.) And then, finally, there's the long, ugly scene in which a Russki torturer, having strapped Nate Nash to a chair, pulls out some sort of skin-peeling implement and begins peeling the skin off his back. That's probably too many, but there are moments of campy excess that make it a semi-worthwhile guilty pleasure.

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