Short Schiff

To see or not to see

MOVIES

The Decline of the American Empire: There's only one safe, commercial way to make a movie about intellectuals; have them talk about sex. Or so the rapturous reception for Denys Arcand's Decline of the American Empire would indicate. This entertaining but cracker-thin yapfest pretends to wrestle mighty themes to the ground; at the outset, one of its characters announces that our obsession with personal happiness indicates that the "American empire" is in decline, since concerns about love, marriage, and leisure time historically characterize societies on the brink. Not only is this a glib and questionable notion, but the movie that promises to elaborate on it does no such thing. The men cook and talk about sex while their women pump iron and talk about sex. And though the naughty chat is sometimes funny, when the boys and girls finally meet for dinner, the mood fogs up: a marriage begins to founder, and we're meant to feel sad and rueful about how lightly we've taken the vagaries of amour. But sad for whom? Arcand's people are mere mouths spouting nono's, and the movie grows annoying as it hangs on our coattails, begging a tear.

Therese: Alain Cavalier's ravishing nun's story is also about sex, but sex in which the body is a nuisance, binding the yearning soul to earth. Young Therese Martin (Catherine Mouchet), the nineteenth-century Carmelite nun canonized in 1925, takes the idea of marrying Christ quite literally; the chaste sexual passion she pours into her devotion seems to illuminate her—and indeed the whole film—from within.

STEPHEN SCHIFF

Turning the pages, you rub words and images together and youfeel heat.

-GERALD MARZORATI

This may have been the Year of Whitney Houston, but Anita Baker's comet is showing its tail. This twenty-eightyear-old soul diva from Detroit twirls her voice into the air with the elegant abandon of a rhythmic gymnast brandishing her ribbon. She made her Rapture ours, and this fall sluired stage dates with the great Smokey Robinson, whose voice is cream to her coffee. Solo, Baker can be seen this winter frontrow center in a full-length concert video from Elektra. Watch her physicalize and make pretzels of her fer\'ent emotions.