Hal Hartley's movies are kind of an acquired taste, and Fay Grim is a Hal Hartley movie to test the patience of the biggest Hal Hartley fan.

Fay Grim picks up where the movie Henry Fool left off 10 years ago. Fay (Parker Posey) is living with her only child (Liam Aiken) in Queens. Her poet brother Simon (James Urbaniak) is still in prison and her former lodger and husband, Henry Fool, disappeared years before.

Like Henry Fool, Fay Grim is a story about writing, and this time, Henry's journals are the issue. What everyone had dismissed as really lousy writing turns out to be code -- Henry is mixed up in all kinds of international intrigue and espionage. Fay must travel the world to find the journals and to find out if Henry is even still alive, and so the story goes abroad.

And awry. While Jeff Goldblum is divine as a CIA agent and Saffron Burrows impressive as some kind of Israeli agent, Fay Grim falls apart as a spy spoof. Parker Posey is endearingly daffy as Fay and the off-kilter humour peculiar to Hal Hartley movies carries her along, but once the movie stops being funny and introduces characters from current political events, we were lost. Lost and sleepy and somewhat cranky, to tell the truth.

Fay Grim staggers back and forth. There are, for example, bits with Parker Posey setting broken arms and removing bullets with can-do American spirit that will make you laugh out loud. The story makes no sense, but it's funny.

And then there's that last 30 minutes, when the story makes no sense but isn't funny. It seems to concern the American political capacity for duplicity, but we can't be sure.

Fay Grim is deadpan in every way, in true Hal Hartley style. It's odd, endearing and weirdly funny for an hour, and after that it's a bit of a self-conscious mess. For fans of the filmmaker, it's worth seeing, but all others will likely be lost.

(This film is rated 14-A)
More Movie Reviews