Themes: Bohemian Life, Infidelity, Life in the Arts
Main Cast: Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino, John Lone, Wallace Shawn, Geneviève Bujold
Release Year: 1988
Country: US
Run Time: 126 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
In the expatriate-littered Paris of the 1920s, painter Nick Hart (Keith Carradine) mingles with Ernest Hemingway (Kevin O'Connor) and other leading lights of the Lost Generation while palling around with gossip columnist Oiseau (Wallace Shawn), whose reportage has helped establish the international reputation of the writers and artists who fled America for France after WWI. Older and less successful than many of his fellow painters, Hart relies on gallery owner Libby Valentin (Genevieve Bujold) to sell what she can of his work while he supports himself drawing cartoons for Oiseau's weekly column. In a café one day, Hart spies Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino) on the arm of her husband, Bertram (John Lone), a condom magnate and art patron who's trying to buy his way into society. It seems Hart and Rachel share a romantic past of which Stone is completely unaware. At the salon of writers Gertrude Stein (Elsa Raven) and Alice B. Tolkas (Ali Giron), Hart suffers a nasty run-in with the Stones and meets Nathalie de Ville (Geraldine Chaplin), a rich socialite who wants to steal three paintings from her estranged husband. Nathalie plies Hart with sexual favors and the promise of cash in exchange for his help in forging copies of the paintings. Although he's loath to follow in the footsteps of his father, a gifted forger, Hart acquiesces, and soon his rivalry with Stone and his involvement with the forgeries leads to death, destruction, and scandal in the art world. Bujold, Shawn, Chaplin, and Carradine are all regular collaborators of iconoclastic director Alan Rudolph, who filmed The Moderns in Montréal and would go on to lens the similarly intellectual Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
Its plot may concern intrigue, greed, and heartache in the world of painting, but the screenplay for this stylish paean to the Lost Generation leans more toward literature than the visual arts. Full of subtle parallels, gentle ironies, and tons of literary and artistic in-jokes, The Moderns unfolds like a highbrow novel, its involved plot merely a framework on which to hang its many additional concerns. The three-way relationship between life, art, and money emerges as the film's primary theme, but the other raison d'être of The Moderns is its re-creation of the Paris of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. These and other modernist luminaries appear as bit players, spouting variations of their most famous epigrams, while the fictional lead characters enact a story line that poses questions about the ultimate impact of modernism on our conception of Art. A coy, very young Linda Fiorentino and a sexy, world-weary Keith Carradine lead a cast that also includes John Lone at his imperious best and Genevieve Bujold in an effortlessly captivating cameo that marks her third collaboration with director and co-screenwriter Alan Rudolph. Rudolph never follows a very conventional path, but here he foregrounds the artifice of his picture by mixing real characters with imaginary ones; historical footage with sound-stage re-creations; and sepia-toned black-and-white footage with color. Pretentious and proud of it, The Moderns is a feel-good movie for intellectuals, one whose unapologetic nostalgia for an era of acknowledged artistic greatness is tempered by its recognition of modernism's consumerist legacy. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Geraldine Chaplin - Nathalie de Ville; Kevin J. O'Connor - Ernest Hemingway; Charlie Couture - Charley; Elsa Raven - Gertrude Stein; Ali Giron - Alice B. Toklas; Gailard Sartain - New York Critic; Michael Wilson - Surrealist Poet; Antonia Dauphin - Babette; Harry Hill - Mr. Brown; Didier Hoffman - Priest; Ranee Lee - Black Chanteuse; Beverley Murray - Eve (Group Montparno); Meegan Lee Ochs - Francis; Michael Rudder - Buffy Buckley; Brooke Smith - Abigail; Marthe Turgeon - Rose Selavy; Timothy Webber - Stone's Business Associate; Bob Gould - Blackie; Pierre Chagnon - Stone's Bodyguard #1; Reynald Bouchard - Chapelle; Danielle Schneider - Fille de Nuit; Paul Buissonneau - Alexandre (Group Montparno); Hubert Loiselle - Art Critic; David Stein - Art Critic
Credit
Stuart M. Besser - Associate Producer, Pam Dixon - Casting, Ginette D'Amico - Casting, David Blocker - Co-producer, Carolyn Pfeiffer - Co-producer, Renee April - Costume Designer, Michael Williams - First Assistant Director, Alan Rudolph - Director, Scott Brock - Editor, Debra T. Smith - Editor, Shep Gordon - Executive Producer, Mark Isham - Composer (Music Score), Steven G. Legler - Production Designer, Jan Kiesser - Cinematographer, Toyomichi Kurita - Cinematographer, Shep Gordon - Producer, Charlie Couture - Singer, Jean Baptiste Tard - Set Designer, Ronald Judkins - Sound/Sound Designer, Robert C. Jackson - Sound/Sound Designer, John Bradshaw - Screenwriter, Alan Rudolph - Screenwriter
Nick is torn between his wife Rachel (Linda Fiorentino) and Nathalie de Ville (Geraldine Chaplin) who hires him to forge her paintings. He must also contend with Rachel's current husband, Bertram Stone (John Lone).
