Word: bellocq
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...narrative often seems to be languishing somewhere in the film's hazy background. That's a shame, because the screenplay is built around an exciting idea. Malle and Scenarist Polly Platt have hypothesized a romance-and eventual marriage-between Heroine Violet (Brooke Shields) and E.J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine), the legendary photographer of Storyville's glory days. This couple's bizarre March-December affair, like the equally promising relationship between Violet and her prostitute mother (Susan Sarandon), is described only intermittently. Instead of coming to terms with the characters' emotions, Malle dithers away his movie...
Malle tries to make the movie's flavor pass for substance by rilling the film with portentous zoom shots, but the ruse does not succeed. The cast does not do much to flesh out the material either. Be sides having no resemblance to the real Bellocq, Carradine rarely gets a handle on the mysterious photographer-hero. With his sepulchral demeanor, he looks less like an obsessed artist than a constipated undertaker. Sarandon, sputtering like a road-show Tennessee Williams heroine, never creates a credible character. Nor does Singer Frances Faye, playing an ancient madam who does an obligatory...