Word: torpor
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...piece, a still life, but understatement--and a raging epidemic of meaningful glances and message-laden smiles--fetter the film badly. When Gilles half-rapes a visitor, the activity is more jarring, more painful to watch, than the plot warrants, simply because it contrasts so sharply with the general torpor. Only one scene is triumphant--when Louise and family friend Yvette (the wonderful Delphine Seyrig, of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) don slacks for the first time and model them for Gilles, and though it is the opposite of physical flesh-baring, it causes a glee symbolic...
...institutional intervention in politics. What could be the appropriate process for appointing HIID's director and staff? The best that can be expected is that if right- or left-wing people are chosen, their political adversaries will raise hell and try to rouse the vast, annoyed center from its torpor. This is actually what happened in the Harberger case. But it has its disadvantages: the confusion about academic freedom that it produces, the unavoidability of enthroning lackluster figures who offend nobody, and, above all, the failure to deal with the root problem of politics secluded against opportunities for conflict...
...S.D.S. colleagues of the tumultuous 1960s are still under ground. One of them, Weather Under ground Leader Bernardino Dohrn, has become something of a cult role model for the dwindled, sullen ranks of the New Left. Nor have Marshall's Seattle Eight co-defendants lapsed into torpor suburbanus. One was jailed only two years ago for conspiracy, another died after years of ruinous drug taking and late nights, and the others tend to espouse leftist causes that range in tone from Jane Fonda chic to Hanoi histrionics...
...broken glass in the run-offs. It wasn't the American Dream, but it was an acceptable substitute: the random and the strange. Driving down 70 could not fit anymore into my easy categories--the images flowing past my windshield demanded my attention. The television mode with its comforting torpor collapsed in the face of scenes no screen could capture...
...exercise its potential magic, there must be beguiling charm and a contagious affection. Farrow and Perkins project neither. Farrow's Phoebe is naive without the endearing thread of home spun innocence. Her vocal habit of putting equal stress on each syllable, word and sentence leads to aural torpor. Perkins' Jason is waspish and petulant with out a trace of roguish lovability...