Imagine my shock when I got this movie Interview from Netflix and opened it up and saw that Sienna Miller was in it. "Damn," I thought to myself, "Sienna makes movies? I thought she just went around dressing weird, bad-mouthing Rust Belt cities and fucking famous guys for publicity."
Okay, I'm gonna be fair now - I sort of liked Sienna in this movie. Not in a super-enthusiastic "Wow that girl should win an Oscar way," but more of a "Wow that girl isn't the total absolute no-talent I thought she was" way. I mean, yeah - Sienna can act a little. Of course, it helps that she's playing a bitchy little coked-up movie-star who anyone only cares about because she fucks famous guys. That's perfect casting. Like having Keira Knightley play a yappy corpse. Or hiring George Clooney to play a big square-jawed oaf who fucks strippers and pretends he doesn't want to be president.
As far as the movie itself...it's about this cranky old Newsweek hack who used to be a war correspondent and Washington reporter but now he's stuck doing fluff pieces on celebrities like Sienna, whose character is named Katya. The guy's played by Steve Buscemi who is a superb actor but hard for me to watch because he just reminds me so much of my uncle Herb who got thrown in jail for molesting boys. He just has that pervy vibe going, doesn't he? Which is kind of the point of his character here I guess.
Anyway Buscemi has to interview Sienna, and by-and-by they end up in her big loft apartment which has a hammock in it and a sink basin she uses as a planter - cause she's a young, hip city girl. They're not there to fuck or anything by the way - it's more of a deal where he becomes intrigued by her and she strings him along, and he's all crusty and cynical and doesn't want her to know that he wants to fuck her, and we're supposed to be all guessing whether she's jerking his chain.
It's the kind of movie the great German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder used to do really well - these little intimate chamber dramas about incredibly self-absorbed and devious people engaged in horrific psychic warfare. This one ain't on that level. It's more distracting than engrossing. It's the kind of movie where you know what's going on by about five minutes in, so you can get up and make yourself a cake, listening to the dialogue from the kitchen, and come back and pretty much feel like you haven't missed anything. Plus you have a nice cake to eat. It ain't anything prize-worthy but I sort of enjoyed Sienna's spastic little part; although some of her mannerisms grated on me, like her little eternal-child tendency to pull on her hair and the way she's always biting her lip to indicate that she's been chastened. The best thing is that - and I hope I ain't giving away too much here - Sienna and Buscemi never have sex. They do make out though and he starts groping her a bit. That made me throw up in my mouth a little. I give this one 2-and-a-half Chips Ahoy. The film is rated R for cursing, Steve Buscemi's semi-perviness and Sienna snorting blow and throwing some of it at Buscemi's head.
Oh, and Sienna's boots are faaaaaaabulous.
