Kristin Scott Thomas at Cannes (photo: en. wikipedia)

Two KST movies this week—one really awful and one quite fun, and aided considerably by the comparison. Bel Ami (trailer) came to attention via a Netflix preview, with many attributes to recommend it: cast (KST, Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci, and Robert Pattinson), 1880’s Parisian costume drama, based on Guy de Maupassant’s second novel. What could go wrong? So much, really. Not a whit of humor in the whole movie, though there certainly were laughable moments. Not all 130-year-old plots are suitable to modern audiences, and this one is not. Worst was putting Pattinson up as the lover of the three women. His character had nothing to recommend him—he was a journalist who couldn’t write, he was acknowledged by one and all as not very bright, and Pattinson, striking his match against these three strong performers, created no fire. Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 28%.

The second movie, missed in the theaters, was Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (trailer), directed by Lasse Hallstrom, and based on a well-received satiric novel by Paul Torday. This has true comedic moments, with every character admitting the unlikelihood of the premise, judging it only “theoretically possible.” Here is a romance of equals, with Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt in the leads, ably supported by Amr Waked. KST plays the press secretary to the British prime minister with gleeful imperiousness. Filmed in Morocco (possibly near their film capital, Ouzazarte, near the southern Atlas Mountains, where I have visited) and glossing over the hydrology challenges of a country with no year-round fresh water, our heroes pluckily plunge ahead to a satisfying, if foreseeable, conclusion. Not enlightening, but entertaining, and never takes itself too seriously. Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 67%.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (trailer and other stuff here)—sold out in the local movie house playing it on two screeens—is an enjoyable romp through the Central European country of Zubrowka, obscure even by fictional standards in the early 1930’s, as an unnamed brutal regime is taking increasing power. It’s best not to fixate on Wes Anderson’s tissue-paper plot and instead enjoy the numerous cameo roles. I have to believe that working on Anderson’s movies is fun; otherwise so many notable actors wouldn’t agree to do it!

Anderson didn’t break the budget on a lot of CGI to achieve verisimilitude—the imaginary vistas fit right into this fable about a generous spirit with impeccable standards. It’s great to see Ralph Fiennes, one of my faves, in an upbeat role for a change as the hotel’s concierge, Gustave H.  The fascist peril is real, nonetheless, and marks the certain end of the world the concierge is trying to desperately to protect.

If you need a break from late winter’s interminable gloom, this movie is a lively breath of spring. Rotten Tomatoes rating: critics and audiences agree (for once): 91%. Says critic Rene Rodriguez, “the pleasure curls your toes.”

The movie is based on the several writings by Austrian novelist, biographer, and playwright Stefan Zweig, a Jew who in real life fled his country upon the rise of Hitler—first to London, then New York, and Brazil.

Such a shame James Gandolfini’s near-last movie had to be the lifeless Enough Said (trailer). The acting is fine, but the dialog is awful. And at the crisis moment, when he asks the heroine why she did what she did, the writer drew a blank, leaving poor Julia Louis Dreyfus to just shrug. So much for motivation. As reviewer Nathan Rabin said, “Enough Said is afflicted with a terminal case of what Roger Ebert dubbed ‘The Idiot Plot,’ in which a single reasonable sentence uttered in a rational tone could easily, diplomatically resolve the film’s core conflict.” Actually painful to watch.

As is so often the case with Hollywood, what these two see in each other is another blank—they laugh a lot, or she does—and she has to be a pretty dumb cluck not to question some of the received opinions about him. Her friends—Toni Collette and Ben Falcone—are a mysterious couple, who stay together because . . . actually, I can’t figure out why. Collette, it turns out, is a therapist, but displays no insight into her friend’s relationship or why she herself keeps rearranging her furniture. Same house, same furniture, same husband.

Rotten Tomatoes rating: an unbelievable 96, which I have to believe reflected the reviewers’ respect for Gandolfini in roles other than this one. Among audience members—generally more forgiving—only 78 percent liked it.

P.S. Maybe in Hollywood, they still call a woman “masseuse,” but everywhere else it’s “massage therapist.”