Overall, 'Chop Suey' leaves an empty feeling

Overall, 'Chop Suey' leaves an empty feeling

Friday, April 5, 2002

By PAULA NECHAK
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

The fashion photographer, director and author Bruce Weber may have reinvented the face of modern-day advertising with homerotic, beefy ads for Calvin Klein and others. But as a filmmaker he's strictly lightweight.

MOVIE REVIEW

CHOP SUEY

DIRECTOR: Bruce Weber

CAST: Peter Johnson, Frances Faye, Teri Shepherd, Robert Mitchum, Jan-Michael Vincent, Diana Vreeland

RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes

RATING: Not rated but with nudity, language, sexual content

WHERE: Varsity

GRADE: C

Sure, his Oscar-nominated documentary, "Let's Get Lost," had atmosphere and tone, but it also focused on a fascinating and darkly tragic figure, the troubled jazz great Chet Baker.

Unfortunately with "Chop Suey," which should have been called "Choppy Suey" and is Weber's first feature-length work in more than a decade, he's looking intimately inward instead of commenting upon another's life. This semi-autobiographical film diary lurches and cuts back and forth and without much rhyme or reason, touching on people, places and photographic influences that have shaped Weber's eye and artistic vision.

Cabaret singer Frances Faye, adventurer Peter Beard, photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Weston and Vogue editor Diana Vreeland are just a few of the personalities and artists Weber cites. When he fills the screen with memories and tales about this talented troupe (which includes Robert Mitchum and, oddly enough, Jan-Michael Vincent) "Chop Suey" is a fascinating, full-meal deal.

Yet Weber opts to glimpse the people who have most moved him through the eyes of young model Peter Johnson. Weber "discovered" the youth at a high school wrestling tournament and turned him into one of the fashion industry's top male models.

Weber's camera nearly drools over his young find and his obvious adoration for Johnson is more than a little tiresome. There are endless long pans and lingering shots on Johnson, naked and clothed. He's utterly beautiful but he's about as compelling as a Pet Rock; when he's shown photos of equally gorgeous actress Ava Gardner, he vacantly states he "doesn't know who she is."

By making a blank slate the focus and centerpiece of the film, Weber loses his sense of purpose. As the final frames again feature Johnson's nude body cavorting with an elephant on the beach, we're struck by how simplistic and obscure form without content can be when set beside far more complex, creative and brilliant folks. We leave hungry for more of the film's substantial, if less physically perfect, subjects.