Word: tediously
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite its apparent intrigue, the story is slow-moving and predictable at its best, simply tedious and dull at its worst. The characterization is vapid, and not just because the novel's richness is lost in the translation, Enchi restricts herself to describing the hair and skin color or the banal speculations of minor players in the story, ("Strong? Of course she is, but only on one level...") They seem to have no personality, no motivation for their actions, and only Yasuko, under her mother-in-law's spell, can be believable in such a state. The author fails miserably...
...most engaging aspect of the novel, the concept of masks from the No Dramas as a symbol for the facade individuals erect to hide their true feelings, loses its power and becomes lost in the quagmire of the tedious plot. By the time the sixth different character remarks that Mieko's face is reminiscent of a No mask, the symbol has become merely bothersome, a tool the author uses to justify the fact that no one understands or is aware of what Mieko is plotting...
...trial of Claus von Bülow for the attempted killing of his wife Sunny transformed family griefs into a Roman circus, and Journalist William Wright adopts a barker's tone in his recollection of the slack, tedious life of the idle rich. (Sunny rose at 11, rarely left the house except to go shopping, and employed eleven gardeners to manicure eleven acres.) He deftly records the countless lies and petty sins of the accused murderer, starting with the facts that Claus was neither a von nor a Bülow (his father, Svend Borberg, was a convicted...
...Keitel); a sumptious Comtesse Sophie de la Borde, lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette (Hanna Schygulla); and various peripheral caricatures of the aristocracy. The wit, the life-blood of an era contained in one carriage, offer the potential for a rich entertainment, but the result is an uneven and tedious sequence of quarrels and flirtations, the names and costumes of history failing to conceal the mediocrity of this entertainment. As Casanova admits at one stage: "The old man didn't take your breath away, but his name, his reputation, his past," Restif's entertaining and informing role as the film...
...excerpts of serious analysis are intended to be heeded, then Scola has produced a muddled failure. The film's frivolity, if intended as a counterbalance--a light-hearted portrayal of chaos--proves nothing of the kind, with the La-Cage-aux-Folles-type fairy-coachmen who are tedious rather than funny. The fresh moments are all to far in between in this frankly boring and undistinguished film; only ardent Mastroianni enthusiasts or connoisseurs of 1790s French fashion will come away from La Nuit de Varennes satisfied...