A question: what does I Love You Phillip Morris, an “improbable but true” story of an ex-con’s quest for true love, have in common with art-house hits like An Education, (500) Days of Summer, and Adventureland? A couple of things, actually. All four films focus on some kind of romantic relationship, teasing out those lessons both big and little that life is so fond of teaching through heartbreak. And all four, it turns out, were featured at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, almost two years ago to the day.
So why, one might ask, has I Love You Phillip Morris—the only one of those four films helmed by bona fide stars in Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor—taken so long to come to the screen, while its festival brethren have long since come and gone? (Not that star power is necessary: a film as good as An Education needs no help beyond the word of mouth of an energized film crowd.) The likely answer can be summed up in two words: anal sex. Or three, if you count “enthusiastic.”
It turns out that the Phillip Morris of the title is not, as many might assume, the similarly spelled tobacco conglomerate, but a blond Southerner and convict, played by McGregor, who captures the heart of Stephen Russell (Carrey). Once a husband and family man—he even played the organ at church—Russell was involved in a near-death accident that changed him forever: he realized that he was a gay man, and resolved to spend the rest of his life making up for lost time.
That epiphany leads Russell—at one point a police officer—to Miami, where he finds a boyfriend and begins living the high life before quickly realizing that his newfound extravagance will require a bigger income. To make ends meet, he turns to con games, eventually getting snared and sent to prison, where he meets the love of his life.
But surprisingly, Russell’s real story is just beginning. Yearning to be with Morris, he first engineers his own release by impersonating a judge; later he poses as a lawyer to get his lover transferred. He escapes prison no fewer than four times, usually with nothing more than a simple disguise and an unshakeable confidence. Like Frank Abagnale, the flim-flam man of Catch Me If You Can, Russell’s cons rely more on his wits and charisma than any contrived Hollywood triple-cross, and however wrong you know him to be, you can’t help but marvel at his ability.
But back to why the film languished for so long. It would be nice to imagine that it was simply a matter of financing, of getting some needed clearances, of anything, really, that holds up dozens of films every year. The nagging suspicion, though, is that just a few years ago nobody was ready to finance a film that featured major stars as a happy gay couple. Instead, martyrdom ruled the roost; like Sean Penn’s character in Milk or Colin Firth’s in A Single Man, being gay in a major motion picture usually meant you were dead when the credits rolled. Phillip Morris director Glenn Ficarra summed it up well in an interview with ION Magazine: “Well, yeah, I mean you had Brokeback Mountain, which I think is an excellent movie. But it was still like things hadn’t moved. It’s like being gay is a disease that we have to suffer and [then we] tragically die. Well, aren’t we beyond that?”
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Also this week: two special screenings take place within a one-block walk in Northampton. First is South Of The Border, a film from Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali that screens Friday night at the Media Education Foundation on Masonic Street. (For more information, visit northamptoncommittee.org.) Stone roams across five countries in an attempt to shed light on cultures often misunderstood or worse by their neighbors to the north (us). Along the way he interviews President Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, and others.
And on Sunday, the black comedy classic Fargo brings a bit of snowy hilarity to town. The story of a botched kidnapping in a deep Midwestern winter stars Frances McDormand as the pregnant police chief on the trail of a bumbling cadre of crooks. It screens at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Academy of Music.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
