Also this issue:

The Underneath
In The Dancer Upstairs, revolution happens in secret.
-Sam Adams

Screen Picks
-Sam Adams

New

Continuing

Repertory Film

Showtimes

May 8-14, 2003

movies

Remade/ Remodeled

INFERIORITY COMPLEX: Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) shows Adam (Paul Rudd) a new perspective.

An art student molds an impressionable nebbish, and Neil LaBute has clay on his hands.

by Cindy Fuchs

Adam (Paul Rudd) first spots Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) as she steps over the rope around a Renaissance statue. He’s a rules-abiding English major, working security at the museum, and so, he asks her what she’s doing. She pulls out a spray-paint can and shakes it. "Truthfully," Evelyn says, "I’m gonna deface the statue." Adam looks stricken. "Is that paint?"

Adam's unkempt hair and tendency to peer through his glasses make him appear Evelyn's precise opposite; she's an outspoken art student who favors funky thrift-store outfits and chopsticks in her hair. She declares that he's "cute," even though she doesn't like his hair, and they embark on an unlikely relationship, in which she essentially remakes him. Adam starts jogging and wearing contacts, cuts his hair, trades his corduroy jacket for a preppy windbreaker, even allows a little PDA. It's sweet and tedious business, and Adam's transformation looks to be all to the good. But this is a Neil LaBute movie, based on his 2001 play, which means that it's not what it looks like.

Your first clue that Evelyn's willfulness might lead to trouble for Adam comes early. As they're waiting to go see Medea (her choice, of course), he frets that he doesn't know anything about her. She's less than forthcoming and he's increasingly frustrated. "Why do you like me?" he asks. "I'm not anything." This seems, oddly and sadly, true, but Evelyn takes the opportunity to take Adam down, chastising his "fucking insecurities," which she reframes as his lack of faith in her judgment.

Tables turned, Adam now feels badly for Evelyn. He takes her at her word (never a good idea in a LaBute movie), and vows to view himself differently, essentially, through her eyes. From here, their relationship turns curiouser, in increments. They double date with Adam's best friend, Philip (Fred Weller), and his fiancee, Jenny (Gretchen Mol), an evening that quickly devolves into name-calling when they begin arguing over distinctions and correlations between art and politics. When Evelyn stomps off, Adam has to make a choice.

You'll have to make one too -- or rather, several. Initially, you might think your choice has to do with identification -- with the progressively pushy Evelyn or the increasingly self-possessed Adam. But your choices are repeatedly shaped and reshaped, as you're confronted with the film's unsubtle manipulations, pointed observations and high contrasts. This sort of challenge is familiar ground for LaBute, whose films famously undermine romantic, comedic and dramatic conventions even as they appear to offer them up, the ostensibly lush Possession no less than the obviously mordant Your Friends & Neighbors. The Shape of Things is crisp and aggressive, occasionally alienating or annoying, that is, effectively unlike other movies. That it is, in the end, so difficult to sympathize with any character is disturbing, but also appropriate for a movie that's more about how you come to your expectations than cozying up to them.

The Shape of Things

Written and directed by Neil LaBute A Focus Features release Opens Friday at Ritz Five

recommended