A polymorphic gifted actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt took lately the
big step of Directing and Writing, with “Don Jon’s addiction”.
Jon is a security guard in a
Club.
He is also called DON, for his italian origins and for being the leader of the sexual flirting
camp.
In his well regulated life there are: women, the church, the familly, the
gym and porn.
An impenitent philanderer, Jon
cannot stop masturbating in front of porn, even when he is having sex with a
woman.
And then one night, in da club, arrives
HER : la femme fatale, the siren with a hypnotic song….
Scarlett Johansson is Barbara Sugarman, who becomes even more intriguing when she
refuses intimacy.
But what seemed to be a story
seen and overseen, becomes totally subverted : the gorgeous Barbara is an
infantile and vicious woman…
An arrogant and capricious princess wearing the
mask of a romantic dreamer wearing the mask of a femme fatale…
They will start a game of
reavealing each other, spiced up by the performance of the two actors and by
the continous porno streaming of Jon.
Then enters the scene a very
estranged Julianne Moore as an outsider,
totally out of any stereotypes.
The quadrate
Jon-Barbara-Ester-Porno evolves in a frenetic walz.
Gordon-Levitt is at
his top in building up the American sterotype, middle way between a dickhead
and a metrosexual, with a substantial critique of addiction, virtual world and arrogance.
The scenes are never too long, the frames are
short but directed with a clever eye.
Symmetry measures as a counter the
obsessive return to habits, fixations, addictions.
Don Jon’s addiction provokes
a lot of laughter.
It does not originate so much in its dialogues, but rather
in its editing solutions, in its secondary details or in the sudden appearance
of a face expression, always at the borderline
with the ridicule.
But rather than being a seedy examination of the porn industry, the film
is, actually about intimacy, says Gordon-Levitt.
It is a delightful film that goes
beyond a simple comedy and almost smells of drama.
It is playing with a vivid
irony that doesn’t spare anyone, and with a certain elegance…
It also operates a
powerful critique that follows unconventional modes.
The film of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, just as
his character, has a spontaneity and a lightness that can only inspire
sympathy...
GD
USA 2013, 90 min
English
DIRECTOR
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
CAST
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Scarlett Johansson
Julianne Moore
Scarlett Johansson
Julianne Moore
