‘INTERVIEW” is microcom bat, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a bloody bout. It puts one journalist and one starlet together in a loft like a tarantula and a scorpion in a bottle.
Hollywood stars are going to love this picture, and journalists, being twisted of soul, will probably love it even more. Most others will miss the point, but the latest employment data show that approximately all Americans are celebrities, hacks or their employees. The guy who does your highlights just landed a three-episode arc on “Flight of the Conchords,” and the girl writing him up for Men’s Vogue is reachable only through her publicist.
Steve Buscemi, who also directs, plays Pierre, a serious war correspondent exiled to celebrity profiles. He hasn’t seen the latest slasher flick or prime-time weeper starring Katya (the blond intoxicant Sienna Miller, who ought to be listed as a controlled substance).
Neither of them has the slightest interest in what they’re doing, but Katya is at least willing to fake it – until Pierre’s boredom becomes insulting. She storms out of the interview. He mutters a derogatory nickname that rhymes with Buntya.
But after he gets hurt in a traffic accident caused by her smile – she’s Helen of TriBeCa – they wind up in her loft together. Two characters, one set: Go.
Actors love this kind of job, but it’s the script that’s left hanging its naked giblets in the breeze. Can the words (by Buscemi and David Schecter, adapted from the Dutch movie directed by Theo Van Gogh, who was assassinated by a Muslim extremist) keep our minds focused and happy in this tiny (well, OK, football field-size) space?
They can, with authority. “Interview” is only somewhat convincing in showing these natural enemies warming to each other within minutes, but it’s canny and bitterly funny, and it takes some sharp turns.
Consider the stock of weapons brought to the match. Her beauty is a knockout punch, but maybe Pierre can duck it. Like most girls, Katya has a glass jaw, too. She is a sucker for scars, visible and otherwise, and Pierre has them. Moreover, it turns out that Pierre kinda . . . well, this is too weird, but . . . he just sorta looks like her dad. Pierre has been around long enough to figure out what that means.
Some bits are too stagy, but for the most part this long night feels like an interview that could have actually happened. Miller is so good – dumb, smart, wounded, wounding, a lollipop of sweet poison that you’d buy every day until it killed you – that you feel you not only understand her but all actresses.
“Why don’t you just rape me?” she asks when Pierre employs some sleazy trickery to conjure up the truth about her. Is her outrage just another act? She’s paid to have a face, not a soul. Being able to turn her charm on and off, complains Pierre, isn’t the same thing as talent. Oh, but it is.
INTERVIEW
***
Sweet smell of celeb.Running time: 81 minutes. Rated R (profanity, drug use). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Sunshine.