Irina Palm
Stars: Marianne Faithfull, Miki Mranojlovic, Jenny Agutter
Director: Sam Garbarski
*** (out of five)
This seems to be the season, in the art house circuit, for ex-girlfriends of the Rolling Stones. A few weeks ago it was Anita Pallenberg impersonating the Queen in Mister Lonely. Now it�s Marianne Faithfull starring in Irina Palm, a pleasingly sentimental British domestic drama.
Faithfull has grown stout over the years, but unlike Pallenberg, who looks like a wreck in Mister Lonely, she has retained something of the doe-eyed look of her youth. Such a sensitive appearance is appropriate to her character, Maggie, a penniless widow who dotes on her grandson.
Unfortunately the boy has an illness that will prove terminal unless he undergoes a rare procedure in Australia. His parents have no money, and neither does Maggie. In desperation she wanders into a sex club in SoHo one day, meets the proprietor Miki (Miki Manojlovic) and asks for a job advertised as a �hostess.� She thinks it means somebody who makes tea.
Actually the hostess sits in a cubicle beside a hole in the wall through which she provides an anonymous sexual service for male clients. Rest assured these scenes are filmed discreetly.)
Somewhat improbably Maggie proves a wizard at this humble task, and is even given a nom de main, Irina Palm.
Manojlovic�s world-weary performance, paired against Faithfull�s sincerity, keeps this movie afloat, a movie that generally asks the viewer not to think too hard about it.
See Also
