Borrowing mastery to make calamity

Wicker Park (2004)
MGM Pictures presents a Paul McGuigan film, starring Josh Hartnett and Matthew Lillard. Written by Brandon Boyce. Inspired by the film “L’Appartement” by Gilles Mimouni. 115m. Rated PG-13 for sexuality and language.

1.5 stars

If I can be blunt about it, “Wicker Park” is about a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with one phone call. While we forgave films from the 1930s and 40s that thrived in the “simple misunderstanding” sub-genre, audiences nowadays are more frustrated than entertained by such a plot convention.

To add salt to the wound, “Wicker Park” is adept at constantly reminding us of films that are thematically more engaging. The film is a stew of Alfred Hitchcock’s best work - “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo” all apply - along with dashes, I’ve heard, of “Single White Female” and this film’s original source material, the 1996 French effort, “L’Appartement.”

Josh Hartnett plays Matthew, a twenty-something obsessed with a woman he’s only seen on playback at the camcorder store near Chicago’s Wicker Park where he is employed. The tape was supplied, we learn later, by an actress, Alex (Rose Byrne), obsessed about Matthew. In a chance turn of events, Matthew’s obsession is actually Alex’s neighbor, Lisa (Diane Kruger).

Matthew and Lisa have a brief, but serious, relationship that abruptly ends for reasons I won’t reveal here. In a “one-in-a-billion” plot twist that completes this vaguely incestuous pool, Alex is dating Matthew’s friend, Luke (Matthew Lillard), when the camcorder-salesman-turned executive returns from New York two years after his fling with Lisa.

There’s certainly more to discover in “Wicker Park” than I’ve actually told you. But as each plot point unraveled, I felt more frustrated that the movie propagated unthinkable serendipity, but couldn’t convince its characters to do the simplest of actions to clear up misapprehensions.

While some have suggested the movie should have been set in an age before cell phones made contact instantaneous and immediately accessible, I’ll take that notion one step further. Perhaps this movie should have been set in the time before correspondence existed, when guttural chest thumping was first being decoded by the female species.

The near incomprehensible facts are that while Matthew professes love for Lisa, he doesn’t think to track her down when she leaves Chicago. And while Lisa expresses undying admiration for Matthew, she isn’t persistent enough to find him either.

And what do we do with Alex, who the movie unfairly pegs as a “psycho” because of her fixation with Matthew causes her to act selfishly? Isn’t Matthew - who follows Lisa at a short distance for hours at a time - just as deranged as his predator? The movie doesn’t seem to think so, granting Matthew a free pass because he found a way to make obsession cute and stylish.

As an addendum to its blatant hypocrisy, “Wicker Park” contains plot holes as big enough to drive a Mac truck through. I don’t know if the original source material contained the same errors in logic, so I’m not certain where to place the blame. But riddle me this: If Alex were using Luke to meet her desires for Matthew, but didn’t know Luke and Matthew were friends, how was Alex prescient in her motive? Certainly the movie isn’t suggesting she overcame infinite odds in selecting the one friend Matthew has in all of Chicago.

Not all of “Wicker Park” is an absolute waste, as the look of the film - with its split-screens and fragmented frames - nicely accentuates the disjointed feeling of the plot. The movie also shifts in time seamlessly and offers no intertile or lengthy character discourse about the temporal changes from scene to scene. In this way, it respects its audience enough to let it get confused, but then use the puzzle pieces to discover the final mold.

But like standing in the real Wicker Park in the Windy City’s wintertime, the drawbacks of this film far outweigh the potential. “Wicker Park” may have cribbed from the best, but it produced some of the worst plot contrivances seen this year.