Welcome to New York **** (2014, Gérard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset) – Movie Review

Gérard Depardieu gives his best performance in years as powerful French banker Mr Devereaux, who’s driven to distraction and destruction by a bizarre, unbridled, uber-frenzied sexual hunger.

Bad Lieutenant auteur Abel Ferrara is also inspired to deliver his best film in years by slightly fictionalising and re-imagining the real-life story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF and French President wanabee, who was arrested in New York on a charge of sexually assaulting a hotel maid that was eventually dropped.

This film’s a huge success. It has three distinct acts. (1) The outrageous hotel room sex scenes as Mr Devereaux indulges his every whim and brutally tries to have forced sex with a hotel maid. We seem to be in a horrifyingly debauched fantasy land that’s pure, or rather impure, theatrical fantasy. (2). A documentary-like middle section with Mr Devereaux apprehended at JFK, strip searched, humiliated by cops, humiliated in jail, humiliated in the courts. (3). Finally Jacqueline Bisset appears as Mr Devereaux’s brittle wife Simone, who flies to New York, gets him out of jail on bail and under house arrest with her in a swanky New York apartment. The couple’s imagined angry, hurt conversations play out like an improvised theatre workshop.

All three sections are riveting. They don’t bang home any particular messages. It’s such a grown-up film that Ferrrara allows you to make of it all what you will. Just like real life. This gives the movie surprising depth and resonance.

The other surprise is the film’s sympathy for the Devereaux  character, while at the same time stirring up proper disgust at the urges that will bring about his downfall. But with that ironic title, Depardieu’s mesmerising, full-on performance, the conduct of the American police and judicial system, and the shockingly chilly portrayal of the wife character, this film is a bold attempt to understand and empathise with a terrified, lost man who has all the riches and power in the world but cannot save himself from self-destruction. Very Bad Lieutenant.

A provocative film, an on-fire star – both are brilliant.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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