Russians, pies and disguises

CANADIAN director David Cronenberg has expressed a fascination for violence, almost from the beginning of his career.

Eastern Promises (R) 4 stars National release Waitress (M) 3½ stars Limited national release The real Dirt on Farmer John (PG) 3½ stars Limited release CANADIAN director David Cronenberg has expressed a fascination for violence, almost from the beginning of his career.

His early low-budget horror films -- Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome -- were almost clinical in their exploration of some of the more macabre aspects of the genre. More recently, Cronenberg has escaped the horror ghetto into a series of nuanced examinations of various forms of madness and aberrant behaviour, culminating in one of his finest works, A History of Violence (2005), in which an ordinary small-town family man, played by Viggo Mortensen, is revealed to have lived a brutal past which, inevitably, catches up with him.

Mortensen is also the star of Cronenberg's new film, Eastern Promises, in which he plays a minor member of a Russian gang based in London. Nikolai Luzhin is a driver, a chauffeur for the ruthless, powerful Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his erratic son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel). Nikolai is not a thinker; he claims not to have a mind of his own. "I go left, I go right, I go straight ahead. That's it," is his mantra. That is until he meets Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts).

Anna is half Russian; after a failed relationship with a black man (a relationship strongly disapproved of by her openly racist Uncle Stepan, Jerzy Skolimowski) and the death of their baby, she has devoted herself to her work as a midwife in a London hospital and has gone back home to live with her widowed mother, Helen (Sinead Cusack). Anna is shocked when a terrified 14-year-old girl dies giving birth to a baby in her hospital. The girl has no identification on her except a card that leads Anna to Trans-Siberia, a high-class Russian restaurant owned by Semyon. The dead girl was, Anna discovers, a sex slave (here Eastern Promises intersects with the excellent Australian film The Jammed) and as Anna, who feels strongly maternal towards the orphaned baby, investigates further she enters dangerous territory.

Even though there's not one genuine Russian actor in the film (Russian characters are played by an American of Danish background, a German, a Frenchman and a Pole), Cronenberg succeeds in entering a hermetic world where old-style civility and even grace mix with the most brutal violence. Semyon is the key character here; Mueller-Stahl is an actor blessed with captivating charm and is adept at portraying the public face of the man (a kindly old traditionalist who loves good food and good music) and the hidden face of a child molester. Watts is excellent, too. An actor who seems incapable of giving a bad performance, she brings a fierce intelligence and luminosity to the character of the conflicted young protagonist, torn between two cultures and drawn towards some very dangerous people.

Beautifully photographed by the director's regular cameraman, Peter Suschitzky, Eastern Promises takes the viewer into a dark, ruthless world that exists within a recognisably rain-swept London. It starts with a creepy scene of violence and maintains considerable suspense until near the end. However, as was the case with A History of Violence, Cronenberg seems uncertain how to bring the drama to a satisfactory conclusion, and the new film, too, ends a little awkwardly.

***IT'S difficult to give objective consideration to Waitress, an independent American film about a pregnant wife who embarks on a torrid relationship with her doctor, given that its writer-director, Adrienne Shelly, who plays a supporting role in the film, was murdered in her New York apartment soon after the filming was completed.

Shelly, who, before this film, had achieved modest success as an actor and as a director of two little-known films, may have been on the verge of a career breakthrough if events had not intervened because, despite its flaws, Waitress presents a very positive portrait of a feisty young woman.

Jenna (Keri Russell) has inherited from her mother an ability to be a successful maker of pies: all kinds of pies (they include some I'd rather not think about, such as marshmallow pie and spaghetti pie). She gives them names, too, such as "I Hate My Husband" pie.

She works in Joe's Pie Shop in a small southern town alongside a couple of female co-workers, hard-boiled Becky (Cheryl Hines), who has an invalid husband and is having an affair with a secret lover, and ditzy Dawn (played by Shelly), who suffers from low self-esteem.

Jenna does, indeed, hate Earl (Jeremy Sisto), her redneck, controlling husband, but one night she got drunk and had sex with him for the first time in ages, and now she's pregnant. There's a new doctor in town: Dr Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) and he's the only one who knows about her pregnancy. Unfortunately, Jenna has the hots for him and he for her, with predictable results.

Shelly manages to bring a sweet, affectionate tone to this sad-funny tale of a woman who is trapped in more ways than one. Russell gives a lovely performance in the leading role and the supporting characters, including Andy Griffith as Joe, the pie-shop owner, are neatly drawn. At times the movie seems indebted to television sitcoms of the past, but overall Shelly succeeds in juggling the bitter and the sweet with precision.

* * *

JOHN Peterson has been known to dress up in women's clothes and parade about his Illinois farm; no wonder the locals think he's gay. Back in the 1960s, he also entertained hippie friends at the farm, another black mark against him. The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a thoroughly engaging documentary by Taggart Siegel. It was filmed through several years and incorporates Peterson family home movies to tell John's unusual story. John took over the farm when his hardworking father died young, but to begin with he couldn't make a go of it. Now things have turned around in unexpected ways. One of the strengths of a film that manages to turn the most unlikely material into something quite charming is the footage of John with his feisty mother, who always supported him through thick and thin. This is an unusual portrait of an ordinary man who proves in the end to be rather extraordinary.