JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The reviews of The Tourist are so scornful, its nomination for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy, neither of which it is) so preposterous even by the aesthetic. . .standards of the Hollywood Foreign Press that Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais (Did you know he was in that New Wave outfit Seona Dancing whose single More To Lose was a hit in Manila and nowhere else?) would’ve lost all credibility if he didn’t use it as a running joke at the ceremonies, the plaudits for the big-budget Hollywood debut of director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (whose previous film was the universally-admired The Lives Of Others; the sound of his name should cause everyone to snap to attention each time he enters a room, plus he is 6’8″) so nonexistent that I had to rouse myself from my pleasant cold medicine-induced stupor on my comfortable cat-festooned bed to watch it at the theatre.

I enjoyed writing that sentence more than I did the movie. The Tourist is no more preposterous than the typical Hollywood mediocrity, but one expects Depp, Jolie, and von Donnersmarck to have higher aspirations. This is the kind of movie Alfred Hitchcock could’ve directed in his sleep, and appeared in just long enough to sink a gondola. The more filmmakers attempt the kind of breezy, deceptively light thriller Hitch used to make, the more miserably they fail. And old Hitch didn’t blather on about Art, he made films the audience actually wanted to see. (Did you know that the directors of the French New Wave Truffaut, Godard et al thought of themselves as Hitchcocko-Hawkians?)

In the end these are the reasons to see The Tourist: Johnny is beautiful (though the Jesus look is not flattering), Angelina is beautiful (and the camera keeps zooming in on her derriere), and Venice is beautiful (though she has been photographed much, much better). Do not believe people who say that beauty does not matter. Over the years I’ve had to unlearn the clunky motto my second grade teacher had written on the blackboard: “Beauty is useless, Character is the best.” The second part is true, the first part surely perpetrated by the resentful.

Beauty is hard currency in this world: you have to recognize it, create it, or sell it. Or be it, but do it quickly because it does not last. People will turn themselves inside out for beauty; they will kill or die for beauty. Shallow maybe, but that’s our species.