Thursday, May 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: About face

By Jeannette Catsoulis

An expert in refined maleficence, Neil LaBute claims to make movies about "well-rounded, dysfunctional people," like those in In the Company of Men (1997) and Your Friends and Neighbors (1998). The Shape of Things continues this ambition; what's new is the acrid commentary on our obsession with standards of appearance more rigid than we care to admit.

At the start of the movie, Adam (Paul Rudd) is a flabby, myopic, socially inept museum guard who falls for Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a frisky artist. He's flattered and surprised; she sees a fixer-upper with great boyfriend potential. Under her tutelage, Adam loses weight, gains a pair of contacts and acquires a fashionable wardrobe. He even has nose surgery. Now cool and confident, he's confronted by his friends (Frederick Weller and Gretchen Mol), who mistrust his sudden personality change and are suspicious of Evelyn's motives. They should be.

Misanthropic as ever, LaBute's vision plays somewhat defensively here, using Evelyn to justify the amorality of the artistic process. Though the overall atmosphere feels more restrictive than his previous films, and is by far the most playlike (it's based on LaBute's own play and retains the same cast), The Shape of Things moves with the oiled smoothness of a machine LaBute has long ago mastered. Instead of visually fleshing out the action, he strings discrete scenes on a thread of Elvis Costello music and limits himself to just one location--a strategy that retains the theatricality of his work and places the necessary distance between his vicious observations and the tender sensibilities of an audience.

Like Company of Men, The Shape of Things builds to a startlingly effective, and cruel, climax. As always with LaBute, the love is hard to find.