I just had the opportunity to watch Mister Lonely, Harmony Korine’s newest film. A friend of mine is a writer for a big, fancy magazine, so he gets screeners quite often, in fact he’s interviewing Mr. Korine tomorrow. As most of you know I’ve been pretty excited about seeing this for a while now, so it’s kind of sad to say that it wasn’t what I was hoping for.

The movie actually has two plots, that of Diego Luna (as a Michael Jackson impersonator) and Samantha Morton (as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator) meeting in Paris where she convinces him to join her in a commune with other impersonators in a castle in the highlands. The other plot line follows a group of missionaries in the rainforests somewhere in Brazil. Sadly, I wasn’t able to find any sort of dual meaning in the two plot lines, in fact they couldn’t have been any different. In fact the story was a rather simple one, but it seemed like it went on too long and if there were hidden metaphors, I think they were hidden a bit too well.

I thought Luna and Morton were actually quite good, Morton in particular and her scenes with Denis Lavant who plays Charlie Chaplin. Probably the best part of the movie was the cinematography by Marcel Zyskind. His camera work was beautiful and definitely made the movie feel very ethereal and dream-like all through out, especially in the part with the flying nuns and Buckwheat riding the miniature Shetland pony… yeah you read that right.

Overall though, I’d say that Harmony Korine wasn’t able to make it bizarro weird like Gummo, nor was it mainstream enough to just be enjoyed, it sort of sits in this weird middle ground. Unfortunately that middle ground is probably best described as awkward, which makes me kind of bummed. If you’re a diehard Korine fan I’m sure you’re going to see it no matter what, and maybe you can more in then I could, but I’m pretty sure Harms lost that loving feelin’.

Bobby