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kamreadsandrecsProstitution is said to be the world's oldest profession. Its roots date back to ancient Sumer, where temple priestesses were charged with bringing pleasure to the visitors to the temple in honor of the goddess they worshiped. Prostitution's status, and the status of prostitutes themselves, has shifted and changed according to the times and the culture. Some cultures used to (and a very few still do) honor the profession and those who work in it, male and female. Some would even argue that the contemporary world, which has begun to view sex in a significantly more positive light than it did in the intervening eras between today and ancient Sumer, is well on its way to giving prostitution a welcome place in the world. I mean, just look at Amsterdam.
Regardless, most people would agree that 1970s America isn't exactly the friendliest of times when it comes to prostitution. Sure, it was the time of the Sexual Revolution, but it is only in the 21st century that we are truly reaping the fruits of aforementioned Revolution, with many of the ideas from that time finally becoming mainstream. Hence, the idea of legalized prostitution during this period was all but unthinkable - and yet Joe and Sally Conforte opened the first legal brothel in Nevada. The movie Love Ranch, directed by Taylor Hackford, is inspired by their story.
The premise of the movie is pretty simple: Charlie (Joe Pesci) and Grace (Helen Mirren) Bontempo are owners of the Love Ranch, a legal brothel just outside of Reno. They are husband and wife, but there's nothing romantic about their relationship - as a matter of fact, their marriage is more like a business arrangement than anything to do with love. While Grace does the nitty-gritty work of running the brothel, Charlie is doing...well, a whole lot of other things, including the girls at the brothel. Grace simply turns a blind eye to her husband's infidelities as long as he treats her with the respect due a wife in public. What he does in private doesn't bother her much.
Enter Armando "Wild Bull" Bruza (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), a heavyweight boxer from Argentina looking to revive his career. Charlie meets him, decides to train him, and brings him to the Love Ranch where he makes Grace his manager. Grace is lonely, and feels like she's at a dead end in her life. Bruza feels the same way. It's only inevitable that they fall in love. Unfortunately, Charlie belongs to an "old school" class of men who believe that one set of rules applies to them, and another one entirely to everybody else. When he finds out that Grace has been unfaithful, he gets ridiculously jealous, throwing the entire enterprise - and Grace and Bruza's budding relationship - into turmoil.
Taylor Hackford is, by most standards, a pretty good director, with a great touch for portraying drama and emotion. He's capable of coming up with incredibly romantic scenes and making them work, like he did in An Officer and a Gentleman. The concluding scene where Richard Gere's character walks into the factory, picks up his girl, and leaves with her in his arms to the applause and happy cheers of her coworkers has incredible potential to make even a few diehard romantics gag, but Hackford manages the entire thing with great aplomb, and the scene just makes you wish you were the girl in Gere's arms.
Of course, Hackford is capable of managing emotions at a more subtle level. He showed he could do so in The Devil's Advocate, with its blend of tension and horror, and then of course there's Ray, which I consider to be his magnum opus.
Which is why I don't know what got into Hackford's brain that he chose to do Love Ranch. While the concept is absolutely fascinating, with great potential for in-depth thematic and emotional exploration, the script itself just doesn't work. I've always said that a script can make or break a movie, and this is a very good example of that. No matter how good your director is, no matter how great your cast is, no matter how great the basic story is, if your script sucks, then your movie is bound to suck as well. Sometimes a sucky movie can be rescued by the director or the actors or the sheer strength of the story, but in the case of Love Ranch not even Helen Mirren herself could breathe life into it.
And that, I think, is a major flaw of the movie right there: the actors. I don't mean that the actors did a bad job - far from it. It's just that the actors involved are so incredibly good, and the script so incredibly weak, that the actors seem to be in a stranglehold, unable to do their best work because the constraints of the script limit them a great deal.
The best example of this is Helen Mirren. Mirren is one of the most wonderful, most fantastic actors over forty still working today, not to mention one of the most commended. Like fellow British actors Dame Judi Dench and Julie Andrews, she is capable of a remarkable sort of subtlety that allows her to convey emotion without words. When she acts, "Helen Mirren" almost disappears, and we see, for the most part, only the character. To be sure, Mirren the Actor is still there, it's just that she is capable of blending herself seamlessly and cleverly into the character.
Unfortunately, the role of Grace Bontempo does not allow Mirren to exercise her considerable acting chops. Mirren tries to elevate Grace's role, tries to give it a layer of complexity that could have been there, but is unable to because she is hobbled by the script. And that's really saying something about the script, that it can actually hobble someone like Mirren.
Sergio Peris-Mencheta is a relative newcomer to the Hollywood scene, but in Spain he's considered one of the best actors in the business - and for good reason. Although he has a bit of a bad-boy-playboy status due to the characters he's portrayed, he is very, very serious about his job, and has the skills to back it up, too. The only movie of his that I've seen is Los Borgia, but I thought he did an incredible job bringing Cesar Borgia to life in that one, embracing the character's complexities and emotions as his own.
Like Mirren, Peris-Mencheta is hobbled by his role. He tries to make Bruza an interesting, three-dimensional character. He tries to make Bruza a little rough around the edges, but lonely and quite a sweetheart deep down inside. Peris-Mencheta, as far as I can see, is kind of like Mirren in that he can take a character and improve it in ways that might not have occurred to the director or the writers or anyone else. However, the character is written in such a way that, like Mirren, he's limited in what he can do.
The results are as expected. The love story between Grace and Bruza, which could have become the strong emotional heart of the movie (and Hackford has already shown he's capable of doing that well in a movie), comes off awkward and uneasy. The love scene between the two characters, which is supposed to be a key emotional turning point for the both of them, strikes me as unnecessary. There were many other ways that these two characters could have realized they were actually in love with each other; they didn't have to have sex for it to happen. If there had been more emotional buildup, then maybe the scene would have been warranted, but as it stands, it was completely gratuitous.
The movie's powerhouse cast and notable director are great lures to see it, as is the concept behind it. Unfortunately, the script is so incredibly weak that, no matter how carefully the actors and director tread on it, they are unable to do anything but crush it under their feet. What could have been another fascinating movie, with great drama and delicate emotional nuances, falls flat on its face after the first few minutes and does not ever get up.
Regardless, most people would agree that 1970s America isn't exactly the friendliest of times when it comes to prostitution. Sure, it was the time of the Sexual Revolution, but it is only in the 21st century that we are truly reaping the fruits of aforementioned Revolution, with many of the ideas from that time finally becoming mainstream. Hence, the idea of legalized prostitution during this period was all but unthinkable - and yet Joe and Sally Conforte opened the first legal brothel in Nevada. The movie Love Ranch, directed by Taylor Hackford, is inspired by their story.
The premise of the movie is pretty simple: Charlie (Joe Pesci) and Grace (Helen Mirren) Bontempo are owners of the Love Ranch, a legal brothel just outside of Reno. They are husband and wife, but there's nothing romantic about their relationship - as a matter of fact, their marriage is more like a business arrangement than anything to do with love. While Grace does the nitty-gritty work of running the brothel, Charlie is doing...well, a whole lot of other things, including the girls at the brothel. Grace simply turns a blind eye to her husband's infidelities as long as he treats her with the respect due a wife in public. What he does in private doesn't bother her much.
Enter Armando "Wild Bull" Bruza (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), a heavyweight boxer from Argentina looking to revive his career. Charlie meets him, decides to train him, and brings him to the Love Ranch where he makes Grace his manager. Grace is lonely, and feels like she's at a dead end in her life. Bruza feels the same way. It's only inevitable that they fall in love. Unfortunately, Charlie belongs to an "old school" class of men who believe that one set of rules applies to them, and another one entirely to everybody else. When he finds out that Grace has been unfaithful, he gets ridiculously jealous, throwing the entire enterprise - and Grace and Bruza's budding relationship - into turmoil.
Taylor Hackford is, by most standards, a pretty good director, with a great touch for portraying drama and emotion. He's capable of coming up with incredibly romantic scenes and making them work, like he did in An Officer and a Gentleman. The concluding scene where Richard Gere's character walks into the factory, picks up his girl, and leaves with her in his arms to the applause and happy cheers of her coworkers has incredible potential to make even a few diehard romantics gag, but Hackford manages the entire thing with great aplomb, and the scene just makes you wish you were the girl in Gere's arms.
Of course, Hackford is capable of managing emotions at a more subtle level. He showed he could do so in The Devil's Advocate, with its blend of tension and horror, and then of course there's Ray, which I consider to be his magnum opus.
Which is why I don't know what got into Hackford's brain that he chose to do Love Ranch. While the concept is absolutely fascinating, with great potential for in-depth thematic and emotional exploration, the script itself just doesn't work. I've always said that a script can make or break a movie, and this is a very good example of that. No matter how good your director is, no matter how great your cast is, no matter how great the basic story is, if your script sucks, then your movie is bound to suck as well. Sometimes a sucky movie can be rescued by the director or the actors or the sheer strength of the story, but in the case of Love Ranch not even Helen Mirren herself could breathe life into it.
And that, I think, is a major flaw of the movie right there: the actors. I don't mean that the actors did a bad job - far from it. It's just that the actors involved are so incredibly good, and the script so incredibly weak, that the actors seem to be in a stranglehold, unable to do their best work because the constraints of the script limit them a great deal.
The best example of this is Helen Mirren. Mirren is one of the most wonderful, most fantastic actors over forty still working today, not to mention one of the most commended. Like fellow British actors Dame Judi Dench and Julie Andrews, she is capable of a remarkable sort of subtlety that allows her to convey emotion without words. When she acts, "Helen Mirren" almost disappears, and we see, for the most part, only the character. To be sure, Mirren the Actor is still there, it's just that she is capable of blending herself seamlessly and cleverly into the character.
Unfortunately, the role of Grace Bontempo does not allow Mirren to exercise her considerable acting chops. Mirren tries to elevate Grace's role, tries to give it a layer of complexity that could have been there, but is unable to because she is hobbled by the script. And that's really saying something about the script, that it can actually hobble someone like Mirren.
Sergio Peris-Mencheta is a relative newcomer to the Hollywood scene, but in Spain he's considered one of the best actors in the business - and for good reason. Although he has a bit of a bad-boy-playboy status due to the characters he's portrayed, he is very, very serious about his job, and has the skills to back it up, too. The only movie of his that I've seen is Los Borgia, but I thought he did an incredible job bringing Cesar Borgia to life in that one, embracing the character's complexities and emotions as his own.
Like Mirren, Peris-Mencheta is hobbled by his role. He tries to make Bruza an interesting, three-dimensional character. He tries to make Bruza a little rough around the edges, but lonely and quite a sweetheart deep down inside. Peris-Mencheta, as far as I can see, is kind of like Mirren in that he can take a character and improve it in ways that might not have occurred to the director or the writers or anyone else. However, the character is written in such a way that, like Mirren, he's limited in what he can do.
The results are as expected. The love story between Grace and Bruza, which could have become the strong emotional heart of the movie (and Hackford has already shown he's capable of doing that well in a movie), comes off awkward and uneasy. The love scene between the two characters, which is supposed to be a key emotional turning point for the both of them, strikes me as unnecessary. There were many other ways that these two characters could have realized they were actually in love with each other; they didn't have to have sex for it to happen. If there had been more emotional buildup, then maybe the scene would have been warranted, but as it stands, it was completely gratuitous.
The movie's powerhouse cast and notable director are great lures to see it, as is the concept behind it. Unfortunately, the script is so incredibly weak that, no matter how carefully the actors and director tread on it, they are unable to do anything but crush it under their feet. What could have been another fascinating movie, with great drama and delicate emotional nuances, falls flat on its face after the first few minutes and does not ever get up.
