DTH Omnibus Pae 13
Thursday November 9, 1989
C 11 INI IE M A
mmmmsmm
'Worth Winning' isn't even
Worth Winning
Mark Harmon, Leslie Ann Warren,
Marie Halboe, Madeline Stowe
directed by Adam Greenberg
Closes tonight at Ram Triple
967-8284
00
w:
hat could be more perfect
than three gorgeous women
surrendering to your every
wish and oblivious to the competi
tion? This is the fate of Taylor Worth
(Mark Harmon) in Worth Winning, a
not-so-worthy comedy directed by
Adam Greenberg. Taylor is so in love
Miller's 'Thief enchants, but lacks Truffaut's energy
The Little Thief
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Didier Berace,
Simon de la Brosse
directed by Claude Miller
Varsity
967-8665
OOP 12
The Little Thief was originally
written by Claude de Givray
and the late Francois Truffaut,
and although Truffaut did not have
the chance to direct the movie him
self before his death two years ago
Claude Miller's film resonates with
Truffaut's sympathies and his spirit.
Janine Castang (Charlotte Gains
bourg) is an adolescent girl living in
a provincial town in France. She has
never known her father, and her
mother has abandoned her to go live
with a lover in Italy. Janine is left in
the care of her aunt and uncle. She
is stifled by her surroundings. School
is a bore, and although her aunt and
uncle are kind, they have no sense of
anything beyond their day-to-day
lives. She finds them crude and un
imaginative and yearns for something
more than just basic subsistence.
To escape her mundane life, Jan
ine steals. She steals cigarettes, so
she can smoke and seem sophisti
cated. She steals money, so she can
go to the movies and see how glam
orous people live. She steals silk lin
gerie, so she can have a luxurious
secret under her rough clothes and
next to her skin. In short, she steals
so she can have a secret some
thing that is all her own, something
beautiful which makes her existence
bearable.
However, Janine's secret is discov
ered when she is arrested for stealing
money from the local church's col
lection box. Her horrified aunt and
uncle have no idea what to do with
her, and taking advantage of this,
Janine suggests that she leave school
Donald Beck
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t.AX-.
with himself that even the most de
voted Mark Harmon follower would
gag. Viewers often had to ask them
selves, "Worth winning what?" An
Academy Award? An Oscar? A
Golden Globe? No, and definitely
not worth watching again.
The plot, as hackneyed as it is, is
centered around Taylor Worth and
his buddy Max. Max bets Taylor that
he can't get three women to say "I
do" within two months. The twist is
that Max gets to pick the three and
Taylor has to capture the lovely la
Zandy Hartig
and go to another town to work.
She finds a position as a house
maid to a nice, wealthy young couple.
Since they let her off in the eve
nings, she continues to go see mov
ies in search of excitement.
One night she accidentally falls
asleep in the movie theater on a
stranger's shoulder. To relieve her
embarrassment, he takes her out for
coffee. Janine is enchanted by the
gentleman, Michele, because he is
kind, protective and mature.
Michele works at City Hall and
supplements the regularity of his life
by leading a choir after work. Al
though he is reluctant to marry her,
Janine convinces Michele to enter
into an affair.
Despite their difference in age, both
Michele and Janine provide some
thing special for each other. Michele
finds Janine's innocence and enthu
siasm for life invigorating. He ad
mires her intolerance for monotony,
her brutal honesty and tempestuous
emotions. He is charmed by the fact
that she is a mass of contradictions.
She admits she tells lies, yet she is
completely honest in her feelings. She
is innocent in love, yet furiously pur
suing experience. She is gentle in
spirit and tough in practice. In an
older person, all these contradictions
would seem hypocritical, yet in Jan
ine they mesh pleasingly.
For Janine, Michele provides sta
bility and culture. He is the father
she never had. He takes care of her
and tries to steer her in some defi
nite direction. He is her teacher. He
stimulates her to read, listen to mu
sic and love. Michele also tries to
provide her with some sense of re
sponsibility. He is the first person
who has ever shown an active inter
est in her, and Janine, who desper
dies on video camera (no Rob Lowe
jokes, please) saying the magic words.
Needless to say, Taylor takes the bet.
The only question asked without
a predictable answer in this movie is
whether Taylor will find "Mrs. Right"
among his conquests. His choices are
(1) a gorgeous dumb blond named
Erin (Marie Halboe) who is protected
by most of the Eagles football team,
(2) a nymphomaniacal millionaire
housewife named Eleanor (Lesilie
Ann Warren) and (3) a prim con
cert pianist named Veronica (Made
line Stowe).
Taylor is a popular meteorologist
with a six-figure income and all the
charm and luck in the world. Unfor
tunately, his charm doesn't show
through on the screen.
Mark Harmon fills the role of the
ately wants to be an adult, loves the
idea of having a 43-year-old, married
man as a lover.
However, Michele cannot provide
spontaneity and excitement for her,
and when Janine joins with another
young thief, Raoul, he fulfills these
needs.
Raoul is basically a loser. He is
not bright, and is not too good at
anything, not even stealing. His blus
ter is more impressive than his real
performance. But to Janine, who
concentrates more on appearances
than on inner qualities, Raoul's per-
She steals so she can
have a secret
something that is all
her own, something
beautiful that makes
her existence bearable
formance is captivating. He is hand
some and contains a certain youth
fulness and enthusiasm which is un
fettered by responsibility. He con
vinces her that the life she is lead
ing, her affair with Michele and her
job, is just another dead end.
Raoul offers her adventure and
vitality, and she grabs at it with both
hands. She steals from her employers
and runs away with Raoul, leaving
bourgeois society behind.
However, society catches up with
Janine and intrudes into her carefree
life. The police arrest her, while
Raoul, who has always been a cow
ard, runs away and gets off scot-free.
Janine is thrown into a reform school.
This marks a turning point in her
life. For the first time, she realizes
her whole purpose in life has been to
worth seeing
perfectionist yuppie playboy well, but
offers no commendable performance.
His previous roles in TV's St. Eise
uhere and a mini-series about the life
of Ted Bundy were attributes to his
career, but Worth Winning lacks that
quality. Harmon's asides to the audi
ence offer some humor but become
so overworked that they lose their
effect in the first 30 minutes of the
film.
Madeline Stowe (Stakeout) does
an adequate job as the hard-to-get
pianist Veronica. Her scenes with
Harmon are the most humorous of
the three women. The conflict lies
in their lifestyles which are totally
opposite, and since both make their
characters convincing, they are funny.
As for the others, Erin's blatant
naivete and Eleanor's stupid antics
steal beauty whenever she can find
it, in order to make herself "excep
tional." What Janine does not realize is
that beauty is not merely a material
quality, such as money, that one can
appropriate, but it is a spiritual at
tribute to keep inside one's heart. It
is this spiritual beauty that enhances
life, making it exceptional, and the
rest of the movie deals with Janine's
development of the spiritual beauty
within her, instead of stealing mate
rial beauty from others.
The cast of The Little Thief is won
derful. In particular, Charlotte Gains
bourg is lovely as Janine. She em
bodies the gamin quality of a teen
aged girl aching to be sophisticated
in a small, rural town. Her face and
her body, although she is tall, are
still a child's; and even when she
tries to act seductive, there is a charm
ing look of a little girl playing grown
up. She is not beautiful, yet when
she smiles, her face is pure sweetness
and her voice is soft and silvery. She
is enchanting, and this is essential
otherwise all her. thieving and
insensitivity to others would make
her completely inaccessible to the
viewer.
Claude Miller, in his sympathetic
treatment of youth's frustrations with
everyday life and its conventions, is
Truffaut's compatriot. He is also like
Truffaut in that he does not dictate .
morality to the moviegoer, the way
most American film makers do. A
judgment on Janine's thieving is left
to the viewer. Is she a corrupt, disre
spectful and disturbed child, is she a
carefree and vital spirit, or perhaps a
combination of both? Moral decisions
are left to the viewer, which lends
The Ratings
O miserable
OO mediocre
OOO enjoyable
000 quite good
OGOOO unmissable
are simply foolish and don't contrib
ute much to the laughs.
Director Adam Greenberg does a
nice job keeping Worth Winning flow
ing without. any severely boring,
moments. I suppose anyone trying to
keep three women satisfied at one
time wouldn't be bored either. How
ever, this doesn't do much for the
overall quality of the comedy.
Somewhere underlying this movie
is the belief that opposites attract.
Viewers can expect some laughs, but
the success of this film will have to
rely solely on Mark Harmon's popu
larity, because the not-so-spectacular
script can't help much.
My advice to people who want to
see the movie is to go buy a Mark
Harmon poster, because Worth Win'
ning just isn't worth it.
another level of complexity and in
telligence to the film.
Yet Miller's style is not as lively or
well-defined as Truffaut's. There is
something missing from this movie
"energy." The Little Thief is never
boring, but I never felt as if I were
caught up in the story as I was in
Small Change. And the ending to the
film was absolutely bizarre in its
abruptness.
Perhaps Miller was trying for a
deliberate sense of ihcompletion,
because as Janine states, "Beginnings
I prefer, endings are always sad." But
Truffaut, even in his unresolved
endings, such as Breathless, always
maintained a certain tightness of style
that made the viewer feel satisfied in
their suspension. The Little Thief does
not do this. Instead the viewer feels
as if the movie is unfinished.
Because of this lack of finesse, The
Little Thief did not steal my heart,
although many aspects of this film
are very fine indeed.
Top Ten Films
Figures indicate total gross
1. Look Who's Talking
$59.6 million
2. The Bear
$9.9 million
3. Shocker
$9.3 million
4. Crimes and Misdemeanors
$6.2 million
5. Second Sight
$2.2 million
6. - Phantom of the Opera
$2.1 million
7. Next of Kin
$11.6 million
8. Sea of Love
... $51.3 million
9. Gross Anatomy
$7.5 million
10. The Fabulous Baker Boys
$12 million . ,
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