Alfie

Directed by Charles Shyer

Paramount Pictures

Alfie presents a glimpse of the dizzyingly fast-paced social life of a serial womanizer. Jude Law has the clothes, the car, and the looks to get any girl—and he does, with an endless string of paramours ranging wildly from an aging cosmetics empress (Susan Sarandon) to a flighty, semi-psychotic teenager. But the car is borrowed, the suits were on sale, and beneath Law’s charming smirk is a calculating mind. Alfie has no warmth or romanticism, despite his British charm. The movie captures his gradual comprehension of that emptiness surprisingly well.

His self-discovery is aided by the stylistic device of Alfie’s narration directly to the audience; in his self-absorption, Alfie considers his life to be the constant focus of a camera. Alfie’s concise, humanist witticisms reveal a clever, detached assessment of every woman he sees, like “There’s one thing that puts me off marriage—married women.”

But his ostentatious posing for the camera also reveals Alfie as childish and even innocent—he doesn’t think his actions affect anyone. It is often annoying, because his obvious insights intrude on the action. However, this is due to the often clunky writing.

Jude Law’s acting, on the other hand, has just the right touch of joviality and supreme confidence with which Alfie begins the movie; with better writing the narrative would flow more seamlessly. Law is also successful in depicting Alfie’s subtle discontent with his increasingly dispassionate analyses of each girlfriend. This discontent only deepens in the course of Alfie’s misadventures throughout the film.

Alfie’s first trouble is the simplest: he gets caught cheating on his one steady lover (Marisa Tomei). In his normally verbose narrative, Alfie gives no justification for his actions, because it seems obvious to him: one woman is never going to be enough to satisfy his prodigious sexual appetite.

When Alfie faces a medical crisis jeopardizing his ability to sustain that appetite, he must face his own mortality. He discovers that a one-night tryst with his best friend’s girlfriend, Lonette (Nia Long), has resulted in pregnancy. Alfie’s relief and regret when he helps Lonette get an abortion reveal the increasing flaws in his youthful assurance.

Alfie’s realization of the irrevocable harm his actions cause shocks him into change. A very human, very real distress replaces Alfie’s godlike composure, and his brushes with death transform him from a young man with all the answers to a suddenly aged, more uncertain person. In the greatest irony, his newfound gravitas leads to him being dumped by an older woman for a younger man.

Alfie’s is a believable and therefore successful story because all of the attempts Alfie makes to ameliorate the ways in which he’s hurt others ultimately fail. Alfie’s misfortunes are serious enough and occur close enough together to evoke the realization of his discontent. The film is utterly realistic in demonstrating that understanding mistakes is not always enough to rectify them.

—M.A. Brazelton

The Incredibles

Directed by Brad Bird

Walt Disney Pictures

Pixar, the ingenious powerhouses of animation that brought the world personified toys, monsters and phosphorescent fish, has taken on a PG-rated action adventure for its latest premise: the story of an average superhero family.