THE LEADING
MAN
Cast: Jon Bon Jovi, Lambert Wilson, Anna Galiena, Thandie Newton, Barry Humphries, David Warner, Patricia Hodge, Diana Quick, Tam Dean Burn, Harriet Walters, Clare Cox, Kevin McKidd, Laura Austin Little, Daniel Worters, Camilla Ohlsson.
Credits: Directed by John Duigan. Produced by Bertil Ohlsson, Paul Raphael. Screenplay by Virginia Duigan. Director of photography: Jean Francois Robin. Edited by Humphrey Dixon. Production designer: Caroline Hanania. Costume designer: Rachel Fleming. Presented in association with Northern Arts Entertainment.
Backstage theatre comedy from Australian director John Duigan is intricately plotted, nicely acted, and occasionally unsettling.
Movies set in the world of the legitimate theatre often benefit from the built-in dramatic resonance of the rehearsal and performance environment, wherein the contrivances of a play can mirror or contrast with the behavior of the company members. Such is the case with The Leading Man, a dark but frequently delightful comedy of manners, directed by John Duigan of Flirting and Sirens repute.
In the imagined view of the contemporary West End provided by screenwriter Virginia Duiganshe is the director's sister playwright Felix Webb (Lambert Wilson) is a formidable figure. Indeed, we are told, he is celebrated as "England's greatest living playwright." But, as one might guess, all is not serene in Felix's personal life. Although he is blithely having an affair with his lead actress Hilary (Thandie Newton), Felix worries about the likely breakup of his longtime marriage to Elena (Anna Galiena) she has given him an ultimatum regarding his infidelity and the impact that will have on their three children.
Enter Robin Grange (Jon Bon Jovi), a brash American movie star self exiled to London after an indiscreet dalliance with a Hollywood producer's wife. Vain, sexy and cunning, Robin offers to "help" Felix by seducing the increasingly insecure Elenashe recently resorted to scissoring dozens of her husband's ties and has graduated to clipping off locks of his hair while he is sleeping, to give him a bizarre, unkempt look so as to make Elena feel better about herself in light of her marital woes.
That Robin's scheme will not exactly succeed as planned is almost a given, but the effect it will have on all four principals provides the bittersweet, ironic humor which sustains The Leading Man during its accelerated second half. Not content with a conventional backstage comedy, director Duigan also borrows liberally from French farce and Noises Off style free for alls, to amusing effect. Yet, throughout, there is a persistent moral gravity which balances the film's sometimes boisterous style.
Surrounded by a company of skilled actors including Barry Humphries, Patricia Hodge, Diana Quick and David Warner, the real surprise of The Leading Man is Bon Jovi, who brings an artful charm to the title role. "I've never seen a Stoppard play before," Robin notes breezily at one point, and it's a measure of how well this rocker turned actor has meshed with his cinematic company that this line doesn't draw an unintentional audience laugh. In the cad's role, Wilson is properly conflicted, while Newton is winning as the ingenue who finds herself the playwright's love interest. But it is Galiena, perhaps best known as the voluptuous object of desire in The Hairdresser's Husband, who genuinely engages our sympathies, as Elena struggles first with her husband's betrayal and then with the flattering interest of Robin.
Despite its sometimes earnest subject, The Leading Man has an agreeably light tone, what with the early 1960s pop group Gerry and the Pacemakers incongruously turning up on the soundtrack singing "I Like It." (And when is the last time you heard Peter Sarstedt's smug '60s anthem, "Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?") Duigan's film also has fun with The Hit Man, the play within the movie a symbolic tale of a troubled assassin, which is being rehearsed at a theatre occupied by a doomed flop called Immaculate Deception. There's even a homage to Chekhov, who coined the theatrical maxim that if you show the audience a gun during a play's first act, you must fire it by the last act. But, for all its theatrical fun, The Leading Man sidesteps the trap of turning into an insider comedy. Indeed, it leaves one with the unsettling conviction that in the wake of all this emotional game-playing, no real happiness can result. But then, as one of the characters points out, the British are suspicious of happy endings.
March 20, 1998
'The Leading Man,': Watchable but Not Gripping
Felix Webb, arguably Britain's foremost living playwright, has three beautiful children, a fine home and Elena, a lovely wife at the breaking point.
With a gleaming pair of scissors, she angrily snips his neckties; she snips his hair while he sleeps, and heaven knows what she intends to snip next.
The cause of her fury? Felix (Lambert Wilson) has a comely young mistress, Hilary Rule (Thandie Newton), pressing him for marriage while he is advancing her career by arguing her case for a role in his latest play, "Hit Man," a drama of politics and morality, which is about to enter rehearsals in London.
Between the tortured women in his life, his sensitive children and the demands of production, Felix is a man under stress. Enter Robin Grange (Jon Bon Jovi), the handsome young devil from Hollywood who is to play the title role in "Hit Man." Robin causes teen-age girls to drop their jaws, while their bold, leggy older sisters drop by his spacious apartment after he has accepted their invitations to inscribe their taut thighs with his phone number.
Robin, a self-described mercenary, makes Felix an offer: In exchange for expenses and perhaps the return of the favor in the future, Robin will seduce Elena (Anna Galiena), thereby leveling the playing field in the Webb household, lowering tensions and clearing the way for divorce.
So begins "The Leading Man," a densely plotted drama of domestic and backstage duplicity, directed by John Duigan ("Flirting," "Sirens") and written by Virginia Duigan, his sister, in her screenwriting debut under a grant from the Women's Film Fund in Sydney, Australia.
Unfortunately, the delicate chemistry of success eludes "The Leading Man," which is watchable without being gripping. The London locations beckon; the sets, backstage and in various homes and pubs, catch the eye; the supporting cast, with such accomplished performers as David Warner, Barry Humphries and Patricia Hodge, provides mischievously good company.
Ms. Galiena and Ms. Newton give convincing performances, but Bon Jovi, the rock star, seems more smug than seductive in the crucial role of Robin, who has an agenda of his own as he presses his favors on both Elena and Hilary. And the conflicted Felix seems a bit too bright and a little too short on passion to let matters proceed as far as they do before he realizes the full toll of his pact with the handsome young devil.
From Rock 'n' Roll Hero to Leading Man
He's good-looking, down to earth and a rock sensation. And now he's made it on the big screen.
Mary Colbert jumps the queue of fans to meet the real Jon Bon Jovi.That face has set millions of hearts aflutter. That voice has launched soundtrack sales of about 80 million albums. As I make my way to Jon Bon Jovi's hotel suite two desperate fans plead, even offer money, to swap places with me.
They know everything about him, they assure me. Why should a non-convert, philistine like me have all the luck?
So intensely hysterical is the effect that this leader of the Bon Jovi rock band - now also an actor - has on women that encountering the idol in the flesh turns out to be an unsettling experience.
There is no mistaking the charismatic good looks (the tanned face, blond-streaked hair that frames the oh-so-white teeth), wholesomely healthy for a rock star, the friendly smile that, probe as one will, reveals no trace of self-concious narcissism or conceit.
In the flesh, Jon Bon Jovi is incredibly focused, matter of fact and down to earth.
The only give-away sign of rock super stardom is a semi-husky, mesmerising voice. Either in the music world he's a rarity who doesn't believe his own press or, if there is a super ego, it's well concealed
. As Australian director John Duigan has discovered, Bon Jovi's a convincing actor.
In his leading role in Duigan's The Leading Man, Bon Jovi calls on much of his good-looking innate charm to play Robin Grange, a charismatic young Hollywood actor making his London theatre debut.
Attractive, charming, obliging and manipulative, he soon inveigles his way into everyone's life and, to help out the playwright (Lambert Wilson) who is involved in an adulterous affair (with Thandie Newton), offers to seduce his wife (Anna Galiena) as a distraction.
For Bon Jovi the role offered several attractions. After his screen debut in Moonlight and Valentino (opposite Kathleen Turner, Whoopi Goldberg, Gwenyth Paltrow and Elizabeth Perkins), it was an ideal dramatic vehicle for the next stage of his screen career - a much bigger tole in a relatively small independent film - before tackling a Hollywood picture, Joe Esterahus' Original Sin.
Another source of appeal was the stretch of character, the emotional enigma.
"This guy has a dark side; he has no qualms about taking over every bit of someone else's life, and holding him to ransom, but it's all done by charm," Bon Jovi says.
Add to that the bonus of using his songwriting for the film, the original source of inspiration for his acting bug.
. "I'd written some music for Young Guns and was on the set for the first time in my life, watching the actors learn all these great activities - riding horses, shooting guns, jumping out of aeroplanes," he says.
"And I thought: 'This is interesting: how would I go about doing that?' I never imagined as a singer in a band that I could (do that)."
Six years ago he started taking acting lessons to inspire his lyrics. He thought the classic plays would help with great storylines and that the lessons would "help me come out of my shell as a person".
A stunning hunk adored by millions - trapped in a shell of introversion?
I ask, incredulous. "Oh, I could perform in front of an audience but that didn't mean I was a conversationalist," he says seriously. "As an entertainer your life is so isolated.
"There's 40 feet between me and the front row, a hundred yards away from any audience. You have an interaction with them as a mass, only though sometimes I really enjoy looking at someone's eyes and seeing if I'm getting across. I don't know their lives; but we have this moment together.
"The rest of the time you're with the band; they're great guys but it's a cocooned existence - in hotel rooms, spendig days off together, travelling by a private plane so you're thrown together again and on the road touring, with little time to relate to other people; it really can be isolating."
The camaraderie of collaborating on a film, being part of a new ensemble interacting with other cast and crew appealed - especially working with someone as creative and intuitive as director John Duigan.
More than anything he wanted to lose himself in acting, relinquishing the control that comes as part and parcel of a very successful rock career.
"Everything I've accomplished is collective and everything the group has accomplished has been my whole life, which involves total control of what we do; managing, directing, producing, writing," he says.
Bon Jovi reminds me it is 13 years since the first album.
We do everything in a rock band from talking lyrics to deciding when and where we'll perform and for what type of audience," he says.
"This is completely different and it was quite hip to relinquish that control."
Bon Jovi nearly didn't take The Leading Man role. Initially, he turned it down because of band touring commitments.
"I begrudgingly got on a plane to Bombay and told the band I couldn't do it," he says. "Richie (Sambora) tried to encourage me to take it on. 'Cut the tour short and do the film', he urged. I felt I couldn't; it was a conflict of interests."
Duigan tried - unsuccessfully - to cast the role elsewhere but soon returned with another offer: "You really are the best actor for the part. When can we do it?"
It took another 100 shows before Bon Jovi could commit - taking a break from the world tour - before completing the last 30 shows.
It's been at times a tough juggling act, and acting was not an overnight sensation. He choked at his first major audition before, with more experience, he won the role in Moonlight and Valentino.
After that he was hooked. "I thought it was a way to branch and not leave my music career which is thriving and to do something else," he says.
"That's just where I am in my life at the moment," he says.
- Since the film Bon Jovi has released a solo album, Destination Anywhere.
With an established dynamic music career and the movie world keen to capitalise on his name and talent, it's an apt title ... for a world of awaiting opportunities.
Rocker Jon Bon Jovi takes center stage in this tale of romantic duplicity and backstage intrigue in the London theater. The Leading Man, written by former theater critic Virginia Duigan and directed by her brother John Duigan (Sirens), is an amusing diversion, but is ultimately predictable and underdeveloped. A Hollywood screen idol (Bon Jovi) offers to seduce the gorgeous Italian wife (The Hairdresser's Husband's Anna Galiena) of the esteemed playwright (Lambert Wilson) who's having a not-so-secret affair with the play's young leading lady (Thandie Newton, who starred in Duigan's Flirting). As expected, things get even more complicated until that final curtain call. Bon Jovi isn't horrible, but he's not enough of an actor to sufficiently explore his character, leaving us with more questions about his motives than answers.The female leads and the supporting cast are wonderful, particularly scene-stealer David Warner.
The Leading Man
Jon Bon Jovi as Robin and Thandie Newton as Hilary in "The Leading Man"
Anyone who paid attention to issue 98's rap star vs rockers chart will realise that purveyors of the screaming, 'axe'-based popular music entertainment fare considerably worse on celluloid than their verbose, 'gangsta' counterparts. So, after a reasonable debut (if you don't count Young Guns II theme tune cameo) as Moonlight And Valentino's scruffily sexy house painter, this starring role in Sirens' director Duigan's offbeat drama-thriller provides the first real pointer as to Bon Jovi's talents, or lack thereof.
And the verdict is, well, okay. Toiling through years of thespian tuition, and apparently holding off for The Right Part, has turned up the charming but ambiguous Robin Grange, a young, American movie star arriving in London to headline Felix Webb's (Lambert Wilson) new play and satiate his theatrical muse. There's further drama in the wings though, for Webb is set to go AWOL from wife and three kids over Hilary (Newton), a spirited young performer recently cast opposite Grange.
The film works best in an effectively taut and unpredictable finale. The only doubt is whether you'll still be interested, with Duigan's uneven and often meandering pace. Bon Jovi is fine, though not outstanding, Newton and Galiena acquit themselves well, and there's decent support from Barry Humphries as the play's director, but - like the characters' imminent theatre - there's a pervading sense of unreality which makes full connection with the movie rather difficult.
The Leading Man
[The Boston Phoenix]
John Duigan, the Aussie auteur of such quirky bits as Sirens, Flirting, and The Wide Sargasso Sea, adds to his eclectic r?sum? with this pouty drama about a theater troupe and its emotional entanglements off stage. Felix Webb (Lambert Wilson), "England's greatest living playwright," has immersed himself in the casting process of his latest piece in order to be near his mistress (the sensuous Thandie Newton), a relatively unknown actress in contention for a leading role. Meanwhile his wife (Anna Galiena), a once aspiring playwright, simmers in emotional and physical neglect. Robin Grange (rocker Jon Bon Jovi), a brash American movie star cast in the title role of Felix's play, offers to free Felix of his marital obligations by seducing his wife. But after Felix reluctantly agrees, the dubious agenda of his "leading man" tears at the heartstrings of all involved.Virginia Duigan's script lays a provocative foundation; unfortunately Bon Jovi lacks the requisite range and physical emotion to propel the plot. He's stiff in a fluid role, and the situation is exacerbated by the full-bodied performances of his counterparts. Yet The Leading Man finds a degree of redemption in its camp factor, even if that's unintentional.
- The Leading Man Jon Bon Jovi, quondam purveyor of simian rock music, manages to beguile us...
by Shawn Levy of The Oregonian staffThe Leading Man is a sneakily clever film, part romantic roundelay, part backstage comedy, part Hitchcock Lite - a nearly perfectly realized gem with modest ambitions that it almost entirely fulfills.
Directed by John Duigan (Flirting, Sirens, The Wide Sargasso Sea) and written by his sister Virginia Duigan, it's an almost subliminally complex story of love, betrayal, artifice and art set against the ironic backdrop of a London play-in-the-making.
The film is built around the restless mind and heart of Felix Webb, an acclaimed British playwright who is overseeing the premiere of his latest production while undermining his long-standing marriage to Elena, a writer who long ago gave up her own creative ambitions to raise a family.
The object of Felix's errant affections is Hilary, a fetching young ingénue just out of school who has secured a part in the new play. Also on hand, and creating quite a buzz, is Robin Grange, a scruffy, sexy American movie actor who has, to the surprise of most observers, taken a role in a play far more intellectual than the lurid fare he's known for.
Robin has the lead role in the new play, The Hit Man, in which he plays an assassin bent on murdering a world-renowned man of letters whose daughter he unexpectedly falls in love with. As an adjunct to his acting work, Robin offers Felix a way out of his marital dilemma: For a fee, he will seduce Elena and give her the self-confidence to leave her marriage. Guilt-ridden Felix accepts the deal, and then worries himself sick that Robin is really after Hilary, which would leave the playwright without any partner at all.
Beside its snaky pace and quietly scabrous dialogue, the film works because it's populated with a cast of relatively unfamiliar faces: Elena is played by Anna Galiena, who may be recognized by some filmgoers from her work in "The Hairdresser's Husband," and Thandie Newton, as Hilary, might be a little more familiar from "Flirting" and "Jefferson in Paris." But Lambert Wilson, as Felix, is almost unknown to American audiences.In fact, the one truly familiar face that Duigan has cast belongs to a fellow so famous in such a distinctly noncinematic context that his appearance is an ironic joke that actually lends credence to his presence. self in stage work or, as rumor has it, to flee a sticky situation involving a Hollywood producer's wife.
Such is the delicate poise achieved by Bon Jovi in his surprisingly subtle work here that we never can tell if Robin is earnest or sinister. And such is the droll archness of the direction and writing direction and Duigan soeur's writing that we're never really sure which emotions are feigned and which real, what's been written for the play-within-the-play and what's coming spontaneously to the awfully theatrical people the film depicts.
In its light, agreeable way, The Leading Man is five times as engaging and tricky as last fall's lumbering Michael Douglas picture, "The Game." It may not have the same ad budget, but it's got the goods.
Just try to hate Jon Bon Jovi. Sure, his dreadful long- form music video Destination Anywhere, in which he
starred as a forlorn N.Y.C. dude estranged from his wife (played by Demi Moore), gave new meaning to the term "vanity project." And no one's going to compare his power ballads to Springsteen's or Dylan's; but the truth is, he's not a bad actor. In The Leading Man, a sly, witty romantic comedy
about backstage theater life in London, he actually steals the show.Directed by John Duigan, who has made such charming art-
house fare as the unabashedly erotic Sirens and the coming-
of-age counterparts The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting,
this is a deftly written tale about new passions that arise from
extramarital affairs. Felix (Lambert Wilson) is a stressed-out
playwright with a classically bad situation on his hands: He's
romancing his play's lovely leading lady, Virginia (Thandie
Newton), but he's still married to his beautiful Italian wife, Elena
(Anna Galiena), with whom he has three adorable, perceptive
children. As much as Felix wants to end his marriage, he can't
bear to break Elena's heart. Enter Robin Grange (Jon Bon
Jovi), a smooth, cocky American movie star who's playing
Felix's leading man. Robin offers to seduce Elena and take
her off Felix's hands for a while. Though he thinks it's crazy,
Felix goes along with the idea and tries to focus on his play.
But tensions rise offstage as Robin gets a little too into his
mercenary character and starts wooing his co-star Virginia as
well. Meantime, Felix is starting to lose it.A tongue-in-cheek homage to romantic thrillers, The Leading
Man succeeds in its modest ambitions, but slips into
contrivance in the third act. (There's a gun in the first act, and
the old theater rule dictates that it must go off before the film's
end.) But regardless, the movie stays afloat thanks to a quartet
of charismatic performers relishing the glamour and intrigue of
their West End lives. Lambert Wilson is appropriately
befuddled in his Hugh Grant-ish role; as his mistress, Thandie
Newton (a Duigan film veteran) is slinky and beautiful, but,
most importantly, she's also sympathetic. Anna Galiena gives
a rich, full-bodied performance; we really believe she's falling
in love with life for the second time. Best of all is Bon Jovi,
whose character cunningly maneuvers these lonelyhearts for
his own gain, and yet never comes off as hateful-just breezily
amoral. Twirling his prop gun as he readies for a scene, he
tells a shocked Felix that he gets off on his hitman character. "It
makes me feel butch," he says. In The Leading Man, Duigan
says spades about the difference between American and
British temperaments dressed up in the guise of a thoroughly
enjoyable romance. --Kevin MaynardRated R for some language and sexuality.
The Leading
Man (MA)
John Duigan's latest
film,
The Leading Man, is a
British production set
in
London's theatre world.
Lambert Wilson plays
Felix Webb, a successful playwright who is
cheating on his wife, Elena
(Anna Galiena), with Hilary Rule (Thandie
Newton), the actress cast in
the lead of his latest play, "The Hit
Man", which is now in rehearsal.
The eponymous leading man is Robin Grange
(Jon Bon Jovi), a
Hollywood star who's going legit for a while
in his role as an assassin.
When Elena becomes increasingly, obviously
frustrated by her
husband's behaviour, Grange, who sees
himself as "a mercenary",
offers, almost as a joke, to seduce her -
just to keep her happy - and
he goes about his task with businesslike
efficiency, even providing
Webb with copies of his expenses "for
services rendered".
Most of The Leading Man, which is scripted
by Duigan's sister,
Virginia, with assistance from the
Australian Film Commission's
Womens' Fund, works well as a sardonic,
behind-the-scenes look at
West End intrigues, a kind of All About Eve
for the 90s.
Apart from the principals, there are a good
number of richly detailed
and accurately portrayed characters here,
notably Barry Humphries,
very good as Humphrey Beal, the play's
witty, world-weary director;
David Warner as a veteran actor more
interested in what's happening
in the Test match than with what's happening
on stage; and Patricia
Hodge and Diana Quick as equally bored
thespians.
The leads are effective too, with Bon Jovi
proving his acting ability in a
role in which he's required to be ruthlessly
charming and duplicitous.
Thandie Newton, first seen in Duigan's
Flirting, gives a subtle and
finely nuanced performance as Hilary, which
makes it the more
regrettable that her other collaboration
with Duigan, The Journey of
August King (1995), didn't make it into
cinemas in this country.
Towards the end, plot contrivances threaten
to undo the good work of
all concerned, and the last act does seem
unduly melodramatic. But
the film ends with an amusing awards
ceremony and a guest
performance from that other alumnus of
Flirting, Nicole Kidman.
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