Pollack's 'Sabrina': A fluffy remake that falls flat
By Parvathi Nayar Narayan
JAKARTA (JP) Once upon a time, Billy Wilder made a film with Audrey Hepburn called Sabrina, a delightful piece of fluff but hardly one of his classics. Somewhat surprisingly therefore, it has been remade, and with the seriously heavy weight team of Harrison Ford and Sydney Pollack.
Sabrina is a romantic comedy about the brothers Larrabee, who were not just rich, but obscenely rich. The older brother, Linus Larrabee (Harrison Ford), works at being the self-absorbed workaholic, which leaves the younger brother, David (Greg Kinnear), to fill in the requisite counterpoint role of the careless playboy. Madly in love with the latter, but largely unnoticed by him, is the ugly duckling Sabrina (Julia Ormond), the daughter of the Larrabees' chauffeur (John Wood).
To cure her of this not-quite-magnificent obsession, she's sent off to work in Paris, and there she "gets a life". She discovers Paris chic, photography, and eventually herself.
Transformed into the proverbial swan, she comes home armed with, among other things, a stylish haircut and a Parisian wardrobe, and predictably catches David's eye.
Except that David is now engaged to Lauren Holly, whose father and Linus are engaged in putting the finishing touches to a billion dollar deal between their two companies. Something which Linus is not about to see mowed down under by way of the chauffeur's daughter.
With an adept manipulation of events, Linus has David winding up in bed nursing a backside -- savaged by, er, champagne flutes -- rendered conversationally challenged with sleeping pills. Thus allowing Linus to pursue his cynical, temporary and somewhat egoistic plan of getting Sabrina to fall for him instead.
The egoism is justified seeing that Ford's screen presence and aura, to say the very least, are considerable. Despite the crooked nose and equally crooked smile, or perhaps because of them, he does make for a reserved but attractive Linus. Still, you can't shake off the sneaky feeling that he'd be a whole lot more comfortable saving galaxies or countries, or hunting for treasure or even a one armed man. Romantic passion is not Ford's strong suit. He and Ormond fail to reach ignition point, and actually, few sparks fly at all.
It is unfair but inevitable to compare Ormond to Hepburn. While Ormond is a spunky Sabrina, fresh and easy on the eye, she lacks the sparkle that Hepburn seemed to evoke so effortlessly and that essential touch of magic that a fairy tale like this needs. For fairy tale it is, even without the pointer at the beginning, the opening "Once upon a time...".
Efforts have been made to modernize the fairy tale, bringing it forward from 1954 to 1995. In the original movie, Sabrina studies cooking in France with an old baron (Marcel Dalio) as her mentor. The contemporary version has her working as an assistant at Vogue, discovering life in the company of a hip, very French, photographer (Patrick Bruel). Ford talks of fiber optics and flat-screen TVs, while in the original, the proposed Larrabee merger was with a sugar cane firm.
Still, Sabrina seems stuck in a time warp. It's not that fairy tales have gotten unfashionable, just that this one doesn't seem quite of our time. Apart from which, the movie's chief problem is that it's a tad too predictable.
Sabrina's dialog though, is full of humor that is urbane and wry; take Sabrina's description of Linus, "the world's only living heart donor". Though in the repartee department, Linus' battle axe of a secretary is probably the winner. There are low- key, often quirky little observations on life. Sabrina's realization, for instance, that she was actually "taking" photographs long before she ever owned a camera.
Sydney Pollack may have acted in the odd disaster, like Death Becomes Her, but his body of work as director includes masterpieces Out Of Africa and Tootsie. With films like these, not to mention The Way We Were, he was the favorite choice to direct what needed to be a romance with class.
His initial reaction was that, "... it was the dumbest idea I'd ever heard in my life...". After thinking about it and talking to Ford, whom he admires deeply, Pollack got sold on the idea and became intensely involved with the film.
One of Pollack's risky moves was casting Greg Kinnear as David Larrabee. One can be forgiven for asking "Greg who?" Greg Kinnear is something of a newcomer to the big screen but is fairly well known in the States as an NBC talk show host. He puts in a competent performance, as do Nancy Marchand, as the Larrabee matriarch, and John Wood, as the dependable driver.
La Vie en Rose is Sabrina's favorite piece of music in Paris, and is actually the appropriate attitude with which to see the film; put on them rose-tinted glasses and get into the mood for some gentle romance. Indeed, after the steady cinematic diet of serial killers, crime and killing, a movie as unabashedly romantic as Sabrina is a breath of fresh air. It's like a fluffy meringue, light as air and sweet, but which also dissolves in the mouth too quickly to leave a lasting impact or a lingering aftertaste.