Word: plarr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...story begins harmlessly enough, spotlighting the young doctor Eduardo Plarr (Richard Gere), as he struts his way through a small Argentine town near the Paraguay border. The handsome drifter, Plarr is half English, half Paraguyan and not quite anything. Although he'd rather keep to himself, he gets thrown into an inadvertant friendship with the English consul Charlie Fortnum (Michael Caine), and entangled by the demands of two old friends, now Paraguayan revolutionaries, who pressure him to help them kidnap a visiting American dignitary. Playing on Parr's apparent feeling for his father, a political prisoner in Paraguay...
While his friends play politics, Plarr for some reason plays the gigolo; he begins an affair with Fortnum's wife (Elpidia Carrillo), an unusual Indian girl who first caught his eye when he saw her working in the town brothel. The uncharacteristic obsession doesn't add much depth to Plarr, who seems as reluctant and detached from this involvement as from all the others...
...could argue that the vapidity is studied, that it serves a greater artistic end, that it underscores Plarr's sense of emptiness and search for identity. But after about 20 minutes, one is hard-pressed to care. Although Plarr goes through the proper noble motions--tending sick peasant children, standing up to the police chief after the hospital is raided and displaying proper filial devotion to his absent father--he nevertheless comes off as a filial playboy. When the police commissioner questions Parr about a "crime of passion," he responds, "Passion? I'm English." Try maladjusted...
...film has a saving grace, it's Michael Caine. As Fortnum, Caine plays Plarr's antithesis--a diplomatic has-been who is vocal, inefficient, frumpy and, more often than not, drunk. Fortnum's expressiveness is near-heroic beside the doctor's iron mask, but the endearing consul can't carry the film alone. Like the proverbial tree in the forest, Fortnum's sentiments flag for want of a receiver among the other characters...
...Says Plarr: "It is much easier not to believe in God at all." Says Leon: "Are you sure...