Marximum overdrive
Boots Riley's I Love Boosters is a truckload of fun. Gang of shoplifters (The Velvet Gang-- Corvette (Keke Palmer), Mariah (Taylour Paige), Sade (Naomi Ackie)) prey on a chain of fashion stores (Metro Designers) owned by ultrarich Christie Smith (Demi Moore); they're joined by Chinese factory worker Jianhu (Poppy Liu) and her band of laborers: high-style hijinks ensue.
And when I say 'high style' I don't exactly mean 'high style.' Riley does show us the more traditional notion of the image as incarnated by Christie's stores: monochromatic (each branch a different primary color); tasteful (if sleekly elegantly provocative); expensive, with every detail including the employees (who are asked to purchase their own constantly updated uniforms) production-designed within an inch of their lives.
The Velvet Gang give us the alternative, wearing audacious clothes that reflect their personalities: Corvette is an ambitious if not unreflective designer; Sade seeks direction (hence her susceptibility to pyramid schemes) but is warmhearted; and Mariah is a rebel. Their respective outfits when out on prowl are loud to declare their presence, and cheap (day-glo colors and budget-friendly synthetics) to identify their economic status (struggling). Jianhu's clothes tell a more interesting story: having originated from a workplace with mandated identical wear-- the traditional factory jumpsuit-- suddenly being in the United States liberates her, but she still hasn't found her voice so she triesone bizarre ensemble after another, at one point wearing what looks like Kermit the Frog's mutated snake fur wrapped around her upper torso.
Have not been a fan of Demi Moore's humorlessly inexpressive 'look at me I'm gorgeous' style of acting for most of her career but loved her vulnerable turn as fading celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle in Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (even if I didn't love the movie itself) and love her turn here as fashion mogul Christie Smith, where 'humorlessly inexpressive' is the performance. Dressed in handsome understated business suits she radiates Serious As Shit vibes, to the point that her monomania affects the world-- Riley underscores this by locating her executive office in a skyscraper with a decided 17 degree tilt (inspired by San Francisco's Millenium Tower); Christie is hellbent on expansion, and everyone must to struggle to cope with that bias. Call her a female Elon Musk if Musk were actually good looking.
Riley reflects his heroines' haphazard largely hand-assembled aesthetic by resorting to haphazard largely handcrafted effects-- Christie's tilted office is yes actually tilted; a lot of the sudden appearances and disappearances and transformations (holding your breath to appear whiter comes to mind) are achieved through editing; and some of the more bizarre sequences-- a three-vehicle chase down the tilted streets of San Francisco involving skinless prominent media figures-- are created through classic stop-motion photography, in the grand tradition of Ray Harryhausen (an inspiration to Riley) and his sword-wielding skeletons. All this egged on by a music score from the band Tune-Yards, which has the bright toon quality of Danny Elfman on hiccups.
Throughout the film Riley champions the cause of Marx, not Groucho, and through Jianhu's stolen device the principles of dialectical materialism. Leftist coworker Violeta (Eiza Gonzalez) explains all this in the kind of headlong breathless delivery Ken Russell adopted for his actors when shooting Paddy Chayefsky's Altered States, the lines given the treatment and respect they deserve, tossed out for the audience to accept or reject as they like. I can see audiences flinching from this fastpaced maximalist (Marximalist?) approach but it's the rare film that struggles with a surfeit as opposed to a shortage of ideas, and I love that Riley leans into that, makes the flaw an integral part of his style.
Also note that Riley has a curious approach to wrongdoing: Boosters are felons especially when the item being boosted costs over $500 (depending on the local law); but the title pretty much states his position on the crime. Yes he's a leftie but also something of a utilitarian, a 'by any means necessary' sort of guy. Corvette, Mariah, Sade-- and likely Jianhu for her defiance-- are criminals but criminals by necessity, against a system built to keep them oppressed, and must resort to whatever they can for their survival (as opposed to Christie, who just keeps going because-- well what keeps all these billionaires going? "How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?" as a certain naively bitter private investigator once asked), and again Riley's filmmaking reflects this attitude: he may break the laws of commercial or even coherent storytelling but you get something you never saw before, possibly may never see again (hopefully not; hopefully the musician turned filmmaker has a few more films left in him). You accept or reject him as you like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment