Harmony Korine's Mister
Lonely
stars Diego Luna as a Mexican Michael Jackson impersonator who toils in
relative obscurity on the streets of Paris until one day, while entertaining at
an old folks' home, he meets "Marilyn Monroe" (played by Samantha Morton).
"Marilyn" invites "Michael" to join her at a Scottish commune where she lives
with her husband "Charlie Chaplin" (played by Denis Lavant) and a host of other
good-hearted celebrity wannabes. Meanwhile, in a Central American
village—and in an entirely unrelated story—a group of skydiving
nuns spreads the Gospel via airborne stunts and the occasional miracle.
Mister Lonely isn't moviemaking in a
conventional sense; it's more tableaux-building. Writer-director Korine
apparently imagined how neat it would be to watch Buckwheat give the Pope a
bath, or Madonna sob into James Dean's shoulder while a bunch of men in blue
jumpsuits fire rifles into a livestock pen. Then he made it so. Although the
movie does have something that could pass for a plot—involving Lavant's
jealousy over Morton's growing attachment to Luna—between the cast's
mumbling improvisations and Korine's self-indulgent digressions, nothing about
the film demands emotional involvement in the characters or what happens to
them. Luna delivers an opening narration about how he's always wanted "to be
someone else… to be less ordinary," but aside from exploiting their images,
Korine doesn't seem to have given much thought to why this particular group of
celebrities belongs in the same frame, or what their juxtaposition is meant to
demonstrate.
Mister Lonely has its moments of wonder
and beauty, but the film is obscure by design, and meant to appeal to those who
favor the alternative canon of directing greats: the one that includes the
likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Crispin Glover, John Cassavetes,
Claire Denis, Abel Ferrara, and Vincent Gallo. Korine clearly wants to be on
that list too—though at the moment, the best he can do is pretend.