Movie Review: Boogie Woogie

BOOGIE WOOGIE 3/4
IFC Films, Unrated

When Van Gogh got crazed and sliced off his own ear, maybe he was picking up conversations from the future— with avaricious millionaires squabbling over art works as consumer products— and then went to extreme measures to shut it all out. The notion is not that farfetched after viewing Boogie Woogie, a film about cynical art snob fare peering into the pretentious when not cruel machinations transpiring in the world of creative merchandise commerce.

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Directed by Duncan Ward and based on the novel by screenwriter Danny Moynihan, Boogie Woogie engages in a narrative transplant from New York to London, muting much of its casually stinging satire in the process, though there’s plenty of acid-tongued nastiness remaining to shrivel the least faint hearted in those upscale haunts.

Danny Huston is a scheming London high-end art dealer and gallery owner named—what else—Art. His perky assistant Beth Freemantle (Heather Graham) is into much more than just seeking Art’s advice on which plastic model she should select for her new breast implants: Beth is also taking notes on the sly intimating gallery insider trading, in effect to eventually set up her own competing business and lure away her employer’s clients.

Then there’s Elaine (Jaime Winstone), an ambitious lesbian artist surreptitiously filming intimate encounters with assorted lovers, along with tragic moments caught on camera of betrayed friends, which she hopes to eventually display in a gallery as a provocative same sex masterpiece. And while a stubborn elderly invalid (Christopher Lee) refuses to part with the priceless Mondrian Boogie Woogie because he seems to be the only character who can distinguish art from money, socialite collector Jean (Gillian Anderson), with a designer poodle named Picasso, acquires boy toy painter Joe (Jack Huston) to complement her ornaments. And lastly, out of nowhere comes Paige Prideaux (Amanda Seyfried) wearing roller skates —and not much else—as what seems like a tease linked to Graham’s original turn on blades in the similarly titled Boogie Nights.

On a side note, Danny Huston is in real life the uncle of Jack, while Jaime shares DNA with dad Ray Winstone. Seyfried’s unborn twin, who turns up as a questionable bottled work of art in the movie, might be considered a bit off topic here.

Less might have been more, as too many narrative threads nearly clog up the proceedings. But the stuffy elegant veneer of these swells, undercut by their predatory moves on one another when not conning the consumers, is masterfully telegraphed, with a devilishly sinister flair.

Boogie Woogie: A movie that seems to be about anything but the art. Yet at the same time, in deconstructing that conniving inner circle culture that buys and sells one another as well, couldn’t have been more revealing.