"The Shape of Things"
Focus Films
Written and directed by Neil LaBute, based on his play
Produced by Neil LaBute, Rachel Weisz, Gail Mutrux and Philip Steuer
Starring Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol and Fred Weller
Rated R
Opens at the Broadway Theatre
(out of four)

Imagine a relationship that starts with this scene: A man is working on the museum on his college campus. He sees a woman walk over the ropes to take Polaroids of a sculpture. He asks her to step back, but she refuses. He doesn’t know what to do—each of the four times he’s had to ask someone to step back, they’ve done it. Then she pulls out a can of spray paint, and explains her plan to paint a penis on the plaster fig leaf, which square townsfolk added to the sculpture years after its creation. After some discussion, the shift ends. She tells him he’s cute, although she doesn’t know about his hair or his glasses. He asks for her number.

Now, guess who’s going to be pushed around in this relationship?

So begins Neil LaBute’s "The Shape of Things," a satirical, surprising and unflinching look at the dark side of relationships. LaBute’s first film was "The Company of Men," which looked at cruel men stringing along women as part of a bet. Here, the woman is in the more negative light (although, by the end neither character looks particularly good), using her power in the relationship to make the man into the ideal mate.

(Note of local interest: LaBute, now an internationally acclaimed director, started off at the BYU theater program—it’s true, even though most of his films are rated R.)

Rachel Weisz, who co-produced the film, plays Evelyn, who bewitches the aptly named Adam (Paul Rudd). Rudd and Weisz don’t try to create a traditional film romance chemistry, and instead rely on limited methods of expression, resulting in conversations like "You’re amazing," "You are." This method makes more and more sense as the film progresses and by the end the film generates feelings of dread. This is almost infuriating, but without a doubt genuine.

Evelyn immediately clashes with Adam’s friend and former roommate, Philip (Fred Weller), the kind of guy who feels the urge to say something obnoxious because the conversation isn’t focused on him. His fiancée, Jenny (Gretchen Mol), says that she had a crush on Adam, but he never asked her out, but Philip did the first time he saw her. Evelyn urges Adam to spend less time with them so that she won’t have to see them.

These characters aren’t necessarily likeable, but they certainly have more feelings and ideas than the average romantic characters who spend their time breaking up for no reason and then getting back together with even less cause. "The Shape of Things" takes a more realistic and disturbing approach.

The film isn’t misogynistic, but an examination of the powers that the suggestion of love can have on the human mind. It might make you more confident, yes, but it also might make you do things that you wouldn’t want your friends to know that you did.

While the dialogue in many films serves as a reflection of the screenwriter’s wit (or lack thereof), LaBute’s work here uses the dialogue as representative of the character. The jokes aren’t the jokes of laboriously extended brainstorms, but the jokes of people who are making an effort to alter the mood of a conversation or bring attention to themselves. The authenticity might make you a little uneasy at times, but you have to admire it.

Throughout the film, the dialogue reaches out to a variety of subjects, remaining focused on its theme, but willing to expand on it. And the conversations lead to new ideas, instead of simply progressing the plot. In the final scenes, when a character responds sarcastically to a call to be a better person, the response is perfect.

The work was originally a play, and the remnants can be seen in the film’s structure, which consists of several expanded vignettes that feature a bit more in-depth conversation than you’d find in the average film. But LaBute also uses his cinematic flair to make the staginess work in the film, and it most of the time it feels like a film, albeit an unconventionally structured one. The scenes are linked with music from various Elvis Costello songs and some clever camera work. The panning around without pulling focus is particularly effective in the closing shot.

The result is a film that has quality both in its filmmaking and its ideas in order to remind us that, as Costello sings over the closing credits, "You can make somebody a pretty little wife, but don’t let anybody tell you how to live your life."
jeremy@red-mag.com