Snake eyes

Grim and almost claustrophobic film sketching a tarnished portrait of a film director in Hollywood, immaculately acted by Harvey Keitel.Keitel drags himself through the difficult shooting schedule of a star vehicle about the crisis in the marriage of a weal¡thy New York couple. Crisis and jealousy also dominate the film set. The celebrity Sarah Jennings (played by Madonna, who basically just plays herself) is not popular with the male lead, but that is not the director's biggest worry. He may appear to be an old hand, but he is torn by inner conflict. For years, film-making was a series of burn-outs for him: working under high pressure, with plenty of booze and sexual encounters. The unannounced visit by his wife and kid to the film studio marks the start of a process which reveals his personality to be no more than a rickety house of cards. The scenes in which Ferrara shows work on the set are more than just background for the story; the acted fragments of the film-within-the-film show what is hidden behind the tight-lipped face of the director. Ferrara works here with a narrative technique and adds effective video fragments of the so-called rehearsals and discussions on the set. Film and film-within-the-film are seamlessly juxtaposed. Ferrara's style is always tangible in the aggression which is locked in every scene and can burst out at any moment.