Product Description

This witty, elegant, graceful and clever film (Los Angeles Reader) stunningly evokes the legendary milieu of Paris café society. Starring Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino, Genevieve Bujold,Geraldine Chaplin, Wallace Shawn and John Lone, The Moderns is 'tantalizing unabashedly romantic [and] a glowing evocation of an era (The Hollywood Reporter)! Paris, 1926. A time whenanything could happen and usually did. At the center of this world is Nick Hart (Carradine), a struggling painter who makes a meager living drawing caricatures at his favorite café. Nick longs for success and even agrees to forge masterpieces for a wealthy divorcée (Chaplin). But what he really desires is Rachel (Fiorentino), the seductive wife of an obsessively jealousand lethally dangerous businessman (Lone).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6489 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-04-01
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dimensions: .30 pounds
• Running time: 126 minutes

Review
Its plot may concern intrigue, greed, and heartache in the world of painting, but the screenplay for this stylish paean to the Lost Generation leans more toward literature than the visual arts. Full of subtle parallels, gentle ironies, and tons of literary and artistic in-jokes, The Moderns unfolds like a highbrow novel, its involved plot merely a framework on which to hang its many additional concerns. The three-way relationship between life, art, and money emerges as the film's primary theme, but the other raison d'�tre of The Moderns is its re-creation of the Paris of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. These and other modernist luminaries appear as bit players, spouting variations of their most famous epigrams, while the fictional lead characters enact a story line that poses questions about the ultimate impact of modernism on our conception of Art. A coy, very young Linda Fiorentino and a sexy, world-weary Keith Carradine lead a cast that also includes John Lone at his imperious best and Genevieve Bujold in an effortlessly captivating cameo that marks her third collaboration with director and co-screenwriter Alan Rudolph. Rudolph never follows a very conventional path, but here he foregrounds the artifice of his picture by mixing real characters with imaginary ones; historical footage with sound-stage re-creations; and sepia-toned black-and-white footage with color. Pretentious and proud of it, The Moderns is a feel-good movie for intellectuals, one whose unapologetic nostalgia for an era of acknowledged artistic greatness is tempered by its recognition of modernism's consumerist legacy. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

On the DVD
ccOriginal theatrical trailer
English: Stereo Surround
English, French & Spanish language subtitles

Synopsis
In the expatriate-littered Paris of the 1920s, painter Nick Hart (Keith Carradine) mingles with Ernest Hemingway (Kevin O'Connor) and other leading lights of the Lost Generation while palling around with gossip columnist Oiseau (Wallace Shawn), whose reportage has helped establish the international reputation of the writers and artists who fled America for France after WWI. Older and less successful than many of his fellow painters, Hart relies on gallery owner Libby Valentin (Genevieve Bujold) to sell what she can of his work while he supports himself drawing cartoons for Oiseau's weekly column. In a caf� one day, Hart spies Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino) on the arm of her husband, Bertram (John Lone), a condom magnate and art patron who's trying to buy his way into society. It seems Hart and Rachel share a romantic past of which Stone is completely unaware. At the salon of writers Gertrude Stein (Elsa Raven) and Alice B. Tolkas (Ali Giron), Hart suffers a nasty run-in with the Stones and meets Nathalie de Ville (Geraldine Chaplin), a rich socialite who wants to steal three paintings from her estranged husband. Nathalie plies Hart with sexual favors and the promise of cash in exchange for his help in forging copies of the paintings. Although he's loath to follow in the footsteps of his father, a gifted forger, Hart acquiesces, and soon his rivalry with Stone and his involvement with the forgeries leads to death, destruction, and scandal in the art world. Bujold, Shawn, Chaplin, and Carradine are all regular collaborators of iconoclastic director Alan Rudolph, who filmed The Moderns in Montr�al and would go on to lens the similarly intellectual Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Fun Film!
This an entertaining, unassuming film, set in Paris of the 1920s. I have always liked films set around this time because they are fun in terms of their music, the style of dress, and their mood. This film loosely follows a struggling young artist (is there any other kind?) as he works on his craft in Paris. Along the way, you have great costumes and great tunes. I love the theme song played at the beginning of the film as well as that short "Da-Da" piece played in the middle. Linda Fiorentino supplies the flapper beauty and oh boy is she pretty! There are some historical figures that pop up in this movie, like a young Hemingway casting about in Paris, and they help to add to the flavour of the film. If you like films such as "Henry and June" or Jennifer Jason Leigh's Dorothy Parker film from the 1990s, then you should give this DVD a spin. You might enjoy it!