Claire Dolan
France/USA 1997
Reviewed by Ken Hollings
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York, the present. Calling herself Lucy, Claire Dolan works the hotels as a call girl but gives most of her money to Roland Cain, an old family friend to whom she owes money and who acts as her pimp. When Claire's mother dies in a nursing home, she doesn't inform Cain (although he is paying for the old woman's treatment) and flees to Newark, New Jersey, shortly after the funeral.
Finding work as a beautician, she meets Elton, a divorced cab driver, and they embark on an affair. Cain shows up in Newark and forces Claire back to New York, where he supplies her to his friends for free. Elton follows her and learns the truth about her existence. He gives Claire money to help settle the debt to Cain, but knowing she is a prostitute unsettles him. Elton agrees to her having their baby, but the relationship collapses. Claire, now pregnant, pays off Cain and leaves for Chicago to have the baby and start anew. Several months later, Cain meets Elton on the street, accompanied by his new wife who is happily expecting their first child. They talk as if they were old friends but neither mentions Claire.
Review
Throughout this stylishly austere follow-up to writer/director Lodge Kerrigan's 1993 debut Clean, Shaven, the Manhattan skyline dominates the action with an intrusive, enigmatic presence. Never have its towers and facades looked sexier or more forbidding. From the cool formalism of the title sequence, in which grids of concrete and reflective glass fill the screen, through to the last sidewalk confrontation framed against blocks of impassive concrete, the architecture of New York organises and isolates the human protagonists, arranging them as if they were on display in the panels of some joyless adult comic strip.
The first time we see call girl Claire (played with twitchy wariness by Katrin Cartlidge) she is encased in a rectangular glass phone booth, trading fake intimacies with her clients as she arranges her schedule. Immediately afterwards, she contemplates her image in the interior of a mirror-lined hotel elevator on her way up to an assignation. In the ensuing sex scene, DP Teodoro Maniaci brings echoes of the lush erotic fantasies Helmut Newton created in the late 70s but without their mock-heroic celebration of power and passion. The room's ceiling is oppressively low, while the skyscrapers outside form mute voyeuristic panoramas.
Although Cartlidge manages to signal a great deal from behind Claire's hunted exterior, everything around her is featureless and numb. Sometimes she seems as detached from the film as she is from her nameless succession of partners. Adept at swallowing her fear and facing men down when the need arises, Claire remains visibly intimidated by her pimp Cain, who seems disturbingly aware of everything happening inside her. With the nature of her debt to him and his connection to her family left unexplained, Cain becomes an external manifestation of Claire's inner loathing. That both their names are near anagrams of each other indicates some unspoken link, especially since Clean, Shaven featured a protagonist who heard voices.
Colm Meaney's performance lends a bluff, pinched quality to the mysterious Cain, suggesting a man uninclined to waste his energy on violence when a little gentle persuasion will do. "I've known Claire since she was 12 years old," he hisses at Elton after punching him in the gut, "and I knew then what I know now, that deep inside she's a whore. She was born a whore and she'll die a whore." If the fumbling, unfortunate Elton has little to counter this assertion with, it's because the film's sparse dialogue, fleeting visual clues and Claire's displays of counterfeit emotion for strangers hardly give much more away.
As the curious outsider, Elton acts as a cipher for both the director and the audience, prying into cupboards, flicking through photographs and watching from a distance. Vincent D'Onofrio has less of a character than a series of reactions to work with. This gives the film one voyeur too many, resulting in a loss of narrative focus towards the end. However, it's the lean and eloquent camerawork, capturing a blow job reflected in a television screen or the dark swirl of lights in a road tunnel at night, from which Claire Dolan ultimately derives its taut inner life. With a carefully sculpted soundtrack that blends a haunting, minimalist score with the raw sounds of high-rise city life, Kerrigan's second feature maintains an impressively restrained assault upon the senses.
Credits
- Director
- Lodge Kerrigan
- Producer
- Ann Ruark
- Screenplay
- Lodge Kerrigan
- Director of Photography
- Teodoro Maniaci
- Editor
- Kristina Boden
- Production Designer
- Sharon Lomofsky
- Music
- Ahrin Mishan
- Simon Fisher Turner
- ©MK2 Productions/
Serene Films, Inc.- Production Companies
- Marin Karmitz presents a MK2/Serene production
- Production Co-ordinator
- Libby Richman
- Production Manager
- Blair Breard
- Location Co-ordinator
- Christine Welker
- Assistant Directors
- John Tyson
- Chip Signore
- Chris Savage
- Script Supervisor
- Jessica Lichtner
- Casting
- Avy Kaufman
- Associate:
- Julie Lichter
- Set Decorator
- Susan Ogu
- Costume Designer
- Laura Jean Shannon
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Pamela Kezal
- Hair/Make-up
- Jorge Nelson
- Title Design
- Alison Andoos Moving Images
- Title Opticals
- The Effects House
- Optical Effects
- Moving Images
- Easy Listening Songs
- James Bauer
- Musicians
- Cello:
- Dave Eggar0
- Piano:
- Ahrin Mishan
- Oboe:
- Matt Sullivan
- Music Editor
- Daniel Evans Farkas
- Music Mixer
- Tony Volante
- Music Mix Technician
- Evan Benjamin
- Music Recording Engineer
- Peter Robbins
- Soundtrack
- "I'll Never Be the Same" by Gus Kahn, Matty Malneck, Frank Signorelli, performed by Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), Ernie Royal (trumpet), Eddie Bert (trombone), Joe 'Earl' Knight (piano), Sidney Gross (guitar), Wendell Marshall (bass), Osie Johnson (drums); "A Hundred Years from Today" by Victor Young, Joseph Young, Ned Washington, performed by Jack Teagarden (trombone), Rudy Braff (trumpet), Lucky Thompson (tenor sax), Sol Yaged (clarinet), Sidney Gross (guitar), Kenny Kersey (piano), Milt Hinton (bass), Denzil Best (drums); "Don't Say Nothing at All" by Dinah Washington, Juanita Hill, performed by Dinah Washington; "The Inevitable" by Ari Roland, performed by Ari Roland (bass), Sacha Perry (piano), Chris Byars (tenor sax), Jimmy Lovelace (drums)
- Production Sound
- Peter Schneider
- Kelly Neese
- Re-recording Mixer
- Skip Lievsay
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Tom Paul
- Foley
- Artist:
- Marko Costanzo
- Engineer:
- Clete Ritta
- Editor:
- Chris Todd
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Blaise Corrigan
- Douglas Crosby
- Cat Wrangler
- Dawn Animal Agency
- Cast
- Katrin Cartlidge
- Claire Dolan
- Vincent D'Onofrio
- Elton Garrett
- Colm Meaney
- Roland Cain
- John Doman
- Cain's friend
- Maryann Plunkett
- Mary Egan
- Miranda Stuart Rhyne
- Angela, Elton's daughter
- Kate Skinner
- Madeleine Garrett
- David Little
- man in Chicago café
- Lola Pashalinski
- salon client 2
- Jim Frangione
- man in bar
- Ed Hodson
- driver
- Tom Gilroy
- $1000 trick
- John Ventimiglia
- Newark cab driver
- Patrick Husted
- George
- Muriel Maida
- Claire's mum
- Lizabeth Mackay
- administrator
- Svetlana Jovanivich
- Eva
- Madison Arnold
- priest
- Brenda Thomas Denmark
- woman at book stand
- Sean Powers
- driver's friend
- Sally Stark
- waitress at Newark diner
- Sarah Rose Hendrickson
- Siobhan, Mary's daughter
- Candy Buckley
- salon client 1
- Babo Harrison
- salon owner
- Marian Quinn
- woman in park
- Missy Yager
- Cathy
- Henry Morales-Ballet
- Gary Warner
- tricks
- Alan Davidson
- man in diner
- Dominic Marcus
- Newark cab driver
- Adrianna Sevan
- woman at cab stand
- Michael Laurence
- Elton's fare
- Blaise Corrigan
- gunman
- Mark Zimmerman
- Jonathan Smit
- Joan Buddenhagen
- tricks
- Bruce MacVittie
- obstetrician
- Certificate
- not submitted
- Distributor
- ICA
- 8,550 feet
- 95 minutes
- Dolby
- Colour by
- DuArt Film and Video