Producers: Lije Sarki and Evan Jonigkeit   Director: David Mamet   Screenplay: David Mamet   Cast: Evan Jonigkeit, Chris Bauer, Shia LaBeouf and Dominic Hoffman   Distributor: 1993

Grade: B-

David Mamet’s play, first performed in Los Angeles in 2023 (though when he actually wrote it is unclear), is about manipulation—those who practice it and those who allow themselves to be victims of it.  That L.A. staging has been transferred to the screen by the author with the original cast, though it’s been given a bare-bones but effective visual makeover by production designer Gabrael Wilson, cinematographer Sing Howe Yam and editor Banner Gwin, as well as composer Jay Wadley, who contributes a modest, spare score.  (Justin M. Davey’s sound design is actually more important, especially in the last of the four scenes.)

The title character, played by Evan Jonigkeit, is a guy who might be described as a perennial schmuck.  In the first scene, he’s introduced in a conversation with Barnes (Chris Bauer), his boss at a law firm, whom he’s asked to consider hiring a college acquaintance of his, an ex-con whose release he helped secure.  Barnes questions Henry brusquely, pointing to the brutality of the crime of which his friend was convicted and Johnson’s weak grounds for supporting him.  Docile Henry’s led by Barnes into a trap as it’s revealed that to help the man who’d persuaded him to take up his case, Henry broke the law himself.

The second scene finds Johnson a new prison inmate, forced to share a cell with hardened, cynical Gene (Shia LaBeouf), who introduces himself with a harangue about how the hard realities of prison life reflect the basic rules of human relationships outside as well.  Again Henry is essentially a passive recipient, convinced by Gene’s gruff certitude to submit to his lead.  Gene exhibits his skills by suggesting, successfully as it turns out, to a guard named Jerry (Dominic Hoffman) that Henry should be assigned to a plum job in the prison library.

That carries over into the third scene, set in the library, where Henry has told Gene about how the counselor, a woman, has offered to help him deal with a decision to prolong his sentence.  Gene’s response is to suggest she’s coming on to him and that he should use that to his advantage.  Henry is doubtful but once again goes along.

The final scene is set in the library as a prison break is occurring.  Henry has a gun and a prisoner—Jerry.  As sirens blare outside and occasional gunfire is heard, Henry tries to blockade the door.  Jerry is the virtual monologist here, rambling on about his past and urging Henry to do the smart thing and surrender in a way that will convince the approaching guards not to shoot him.

Mamet has always been interested in power games, and in his best work (like 1975’s “American Buffalo” or 1983’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” brilliantly filmed by James Foley in 1992) he’s portrayed them through dialogue that has a singularly raw, brusquely theatrical edge.  Those early plays emphasized the back-and-forth between predators and prey in a way that “Henry Johnson” doesn’t: Johnson is a patsy from first to last, his rare interjections to those shrewdly dominating him registering nothing but his weakness.  The result is that the film is just an account of a fellow going from bad to worse, helpless to resist falling further; he’s merely the hapless pawn in other people’s machinations.

But despite that rather dull downward trajectory (as well as a lack of connective explanations between the scenes), Mamet has contrived dialogue that sometimes crackles in his old style, particularly when delivered with such brisk sharpness as it is by Bauer.  LaBeouf is even more impressive with his rough growl and menacing mien, and while Hoffman’s attitude is completely different—he’s desperately trying to survive, after all, and has to defer, however insincerely, to Johnson—he captures the “Mamet speak” too.  Jonigkeit has far less to work with, but his meekness fits the character.  All are bolstered by the efforts of Wilson, Yam and Gwin, and the precision of their work is, of course, helped by the fact that Mamet is directing, and knows exactly the points in the dialogue he wants emphasized, both verbally and visually.

If pressed, one might discern a political element to Mamet’s play, seeing dopey Johnson as the symbol of wimpy do-gooder idealism as opposed to macho realism.  But it’s certainly not necessary to read things in that fashion. In the end, “Henry Johnson” isn’t first-rate Mamet.  But it retains a tinge of the power his work once reliably delivered, diluted perhaps but still distinctive.

“Henry Johnson” is available for rental directly from its official site (https://henryjohnsonmovie.com).  

Producer: Gabrielle Dumon   Director: Laura Piani   Screenplay: Laura Piani   Cast: Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbairn, Lola Peploe, Alice Butaud, Roman Angel, Laurence Pierre, Alyzée Soudet, Rodrigue Pouvin, Nina Hédin, Pierre-François Garel and Frederick Wiseman   Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade: B-

The title suggests that Laura Piani’s feature debut might be designed to upend the conventions—some might say clichés—in Jane Austen’s novels, but in fact “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” which earns its double-language title from the fact that its characters slip back and forth between French and English, winds up basically conforming to them.  That’s okay, of course, though one might wish it did so a bit more cleverly.

The life in question is that of Agathe Robinson (engaging Camille Rutherford), who works at Paris’ famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company.  She’s an aspiring writer, though unable to finish any of her stories, and is criticized by her writing teacher for concentrating on producing cheap romance novels.  As to her life, she’s single, living in a small apartment with her sister Mona (Alice Butaud) and Mona’s young son Tom (Roman Angel).  Mona’s a free-spirited sort: she can’t even be bothered to remember the name of the fellow (Pierre-François Garel) she’s shared her bed with the previous night with and brings to the breakfast table—it’s not Gabriel but Raphael, or is it the other way around?

Agathe’s personal life, on the other hand, is more staid.   Frisky Félix (Pablo Pauly), her fellow clerk, flirts with her, but he’s a compulsive womanizer, and she adheres to a higher idea of romance.  But she realizes that, as with her writing hopes, her opportunities might be fading.  When Félix asks her which Austen heroine she identifies with, she says Anne Elliot from “Persuasion,” who, to paraphrase Oscar Hammerstein, let her golden chances pass her by when she broke off her engagement to Captain Wentworth.  She’s also, we’ll eventually learn, hobbled by trauma: her parents were killed in a car accident in which she was only injured, and she bears both grief and a measure of undeserved guilt.

Both she and Félix soldier on in their own ways, however; she’s suddenly inspired to begin a novel in English about a sultry dream she had while eating alone in a Chinese restaurant, and when Félix surreptitiously reads the beginning chapter, he secretly puts in an application for her at a Jane Austen Writers’ Residency in England, where she’d have the opportunity to devote herself to the book.  Naturally she’s accepted, and after some hemming and hawing is induced to go.

There she meets Oliver (Charlie Anson), Austen’s great-great-great-grandnephew, who’s reluctantly assumed responsibility for running the program started by his father Todd (Alan Fairbairn) and mother Beth (Liz Crowther); Todd is showing signs of dementia, and Beth, while utterly committed, is getting on.  So Oliver has stepped into the breach, though his heart isn’t in it.

At first Agathe and Oliver don’t hit it off at all; indeed, stepping off the ferry she almost immediately throws up on his shoes when she sees his car (she has a phobia about riding in them).   It doesn’t help that she loves Austen and he’s a university professor specializing in modern literature who disparages his ancestor’s books.  But of course the chilliness dissipates over time, even after Agathe blunders naked into his room in a scene worthy of a French bedroom farce, and they find themselves falling in love—until Félix shows up unexpectedly, announces he’s a changed man in love with Agathe, and takes her home.  Of course, if you know your Austen, you know that resolution won’t stand.

There are plenty of good things in the film.  Rutherford, pretty in an unconventional way, makes a heroine who’s easy to root for, often awkward but obviously intelligent, even if her writer’s block persists through the whole residency (it will finally be broken only after she returns to her parents’ house and faces her grief).  Pauly can be irritatingly pushy but shows he has a good heart after all, and Anson makes a likable Darcy surrogate, his pomposity gradually giving way to doe-eyed devotion.  Fairbairn and Crowther are delightful, though his wide-eyed eccentricities become a bit much.  And a couple of the other writers-in-residence—Annabelle Lengronne as Chéryl, who has a knack for fortune-telling that proves prophetic, and Lola Peploe as Olympia, an opinionated woman whom Agathe comforts at a crucial moment—have moments in the sun.  Young Angel does as well.  And it’s a nice touch to feature documentarian Frederick Wiseman in a cameo at the close.

The picture is attractive to look at, too.  The locations, both in France and in the “English” settings (recreated on the continent, it seems) are quite lovely, and Agnès Sery’s production design makes the Austen house a place one might like to visit. Costumer Flore Vauville’s work is overall fine, but especially impressive in a “ballroom” scene toward the close, where Piani stages a cheeky pas de trois.  Cinematographer Pierre Mazoyer makes even the more claustrophobic sets work fairly well (the opening scenes, notably, were actually shot at Shakespeare & Company), while editor Floriane Allier has kept the running-time under a hundred minutes.  Peter Von Poehl’s original music evinces a suitably longing tone, but it might be time for French filmmakers to stop resorting to Schubert piano music whenever they’re after soulful melancholy.  It’s become rather a cliché.

Piani’s debut reflects the spirit of an Austen novel without simply resorting to clumsy mimicry.  The result is pleasantly familiar but with a distinctive spin.