Ana de Armas carries action comedy romance Ghosted
Ana de Armas has a surprising excuse for not texting back in action comedy Ghosted, an Apple TV film about a spy and a civilian forced to join forces to stop the baddies.
Ghosted (MA15+)
Apple TV+
★★★
It’s interesting to see what superhero movie stars do when they are able to step free of the uniform. Christopher Reeve, for one, proved he could leap tall buildings, in an acting sense, in non-Superman films such as Deathtrap (1982), The Bostonians (1984) and The Remains of the Day (1993).
Chris Evans has chosen the antihero path in his post-Captain America career. He steals scenes as the inheritance-seeking baddie in Knives Out (2019) and is convincing as the sociopathic ex-CIA agent in The Gray Man (2022).
In the thriller-comedy-romance Ghosted he is a different character altogether. Cole Turner lives on his parents’ farm. He has never left the US. His romances fail because, as his younger sister puts it, he is “needy, smothering and pathetic”.
She does not mention that he is handsome, a “six-foot honeypot”, as a woman running a polygraph machine describes him later on when uncovering lies becomes important.
So when he meets the gorgeous Sadie Rhodes (Ana de Armas) it’s hardly a bolt from the blue that they hit it off. She tells him she’s an international arts curator. He tells her he’s a farmer. Only one of them is telling the truth.
After their first date, he texts “the woman of my dreams” repeatedly but receives no response. His sister tells him he’s been “ghosted” – dumped without any communication – because he came on too strong.
Yet the real ghost here is Sadie. She’s not an international arts curator but a CIA agent and she’s dealing with some bad people, particularly a former French intelligence agent named Leveque (Oscar winner Adrien Brody).
Before Cole knows this, he leaves the US for the first time, travelling to London, where he knows Sadie is, to surprise her with a romantic gesture. Yes, his sister has a point.
They meet, he soon finds out what she does for a living – the gunshots being a clue – the dream becomes a nightmare and from here we have the movie: a spy and a civilian forced to join forces to stop the baddies.
What follows is a standard action adventure with splashes of comedy and romance. It has its moments, including a few decent plot twists, and its laughs.
De Armas, so good as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s Blonde (2022), carries the film, which is directed by Dexter Fletcher, whose previous feature was the 2019 Elton John movie Rocketman.
Some of the action scenes are spectacular, especially a shootout in a revolving restaurant and a car-bus chase through Pakistan’s Khyber Pass.
And when Leveque puts a million dollar price on Cole’s head, what ensues is like an Avengers after-party. Sebastian “Winter Soldier” Stan and Anthony “Falcon” Mackie pop up as bounty hunters and though he’s not in this scene, Ryan “Deadpool” Reynolds’ cameo is worth waiting for.
For whatever reason, the on-screen chemistry between de Armas and Evans is low wattage. Overall this is a set and forget entertainment that is easy enough on the eye but does not quite add up to the sum of its impressive parts.
Sisi & I (CTC)
In cinemas as part of the German Film Festival www.germanfilmfestival.com.au
★★★★
“I don’t care for expressions like, ‘I hate’ ... unless spoken by me.”
That line sums up the outward life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Susanne Wolff), who reigned from 1854 to 1898. She is queen of all she surveys.
Her inner life is the intriguing centre of Sisi & I (Sisi & Ich), directed by German filmmaker Frauke Finsterwalder.
Sisi is the empress’s nickname. The titular I is her lady-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sztaray (Sandra Huller), who has her own peculiarities.
A bit like the classic 1987 British comedy Withnail & I, the story is told mainly, though not entirely, from the I’s point of view.
It opens with Irma, who is 42, auditioning for the job. She is assessed by the lady-in-waiting she will replace.
They meet in a cold marble anteroom. She is checked over – weight, posture, hearing, hair, teeth – like she is livestock, or a slave. It is a riveting scene.
Then a male courtier takes her outside and puts her through her paces, literally. “The empress would like to know how fast you run.” She obeys, struggling to breathe in her corset. Then he puts up a row of hurdles.
Finally she meets the empress, who is older than she is but does not look it. She warns, “I am strict about who lives with me. No fat people or men”. Later, when they are closer, Irma confides, “I have always felt a loathing for men. They are so – if you will forgive me – hairy.”
This 132-minute film is a historical drama and a dark comedy. It touches on issues such as class distinction – “Shame is for the bourgeoisie,” the empress tells Irma – patriarchal rule, arranged marriages, feminism, same sex attraction, eating disorders and drug use.
“Hysteria is a male term for unsubmissive women,’’ the empress says.
Irma, on nightly doses of cocaine, writes to her mother: “I suddenly see more clearly”.
The leads, each German actors, are superb. Huller won international notice for her leading role in Maren Ade’s 2016 film Toni Erdmann.
The script, by the director and her Swiss author husband Christian Kracht, is sharply observant and caustically funny. The couple collaborated on Finsterwalder’s previous film, her award-winning 2013 debut Finsterworld.
The timeline is towards the end of the empress’s reign. As I knew nothing about her, the plot unfolded like a blackly humorous thriller. There is a history-tweaking twist towards the end.
Having read a bit about the empress since seeing the film, I think this a historical drama that stands adjacent to the facts, which is not uncommon in the cinematic world.
The settings are Corfu, where the empress prefers to live because her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph I, is not there; Algiers, where she and Irma travel; and, briefly, London.
Annette Badland, whose TV credits include EastEnders, Bergerac and Midsomer Murders, has fun as Queen Victoria. She mentions Australia.
While this is a fascinating examination of two women who are divided by class but united – to a degree – by other factors, when the men turn up there are some wonderful moments.
Archduke Ludwig Viktor (Austrian actor Georg Friedrich), the emperor’s younger brother, romps in and has a gay old time. “If I ever had to marry a woman,’’ he tells the empress, “it would be you.” It put me in mind of Nickolas Grace’s once-in-a-lifetime performance as Anthony Blanche in the 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited.
Sisi & I, in German with English subtitles, is part of the German Film Festival, which opens on May 2. The opening night film is another real life drama, Michael Herbig’s A Thousand Li(n)es, centred on a scandal at German newspaper Der Spiegel. And speaking of women in power, Merkel, a documentary on the German chancellor from 2005-2021, looks well worth watching.
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