DRAMA; 1hr 23min
STARRING: Sienna Miller, Steve Buscemi
Face time: Buscemi and Miller
As an actor and a film-maker, Steve Buscemi (Delirious) makes bold and interesting choices. In Interview — a remake of murdered Dutch director Theo van Gogh’s 2003 original and the first of a planned English-language van Gogh trilogy — Buscemi sinks his teeth into New York journalist Pierre Peders. Pierre is a political animal; war and Washington have been his beats. He is unamused and — cardinal journalistic sin — insultingly unprepared when sent to interview B-movie and TV soap star Katya (Miller), whom he mistakenly dismisses as fluff. As the dialogue spins off into a protracted cat–mouse encounter, the reporter and the performer spar their way to an alcohol-injected, erotically charged allegiance. Or they seem to.
Like their characters, Buscemi — who is also directing — and Miller are smartly matched. As a director, Buscemi marries theatrical European sensibility with charged American style, while as an actor, he can’t seem to put a foot wrong. In the left corner, Miller’s beauty and vitality are correspondingly magnetic, as the wordplay and mood swings keep the wires humming to a twisty end.
