If you want a good night out, common consensus suggests that you should run away from anything with the words 'by Darren Aronofsky' in it, since you'll end up either confused or so depressed you'll go and throw yourself off a bridge.
Not content with making Requiem For A Dream, a film so unrelentingly bleak that we can't even so much as look at a double-ended dildo any more, Darren Aronofsky has now made The Fountain, a movie which stars his fiance Rachel Weisz as a woman dying of cancer and trying to be saved by Wolverine. Needless to say, the Venice audience for The Fountain booed the living daylights out of it, already making it the third-least popular Rachel Weisz movie ever, after that one where she has it off with a child that we saw on TV a few years ago and didn't really like. And The Mummy.
For the most part, you'd expect Rachel Weisz to be enjoying the time of her life this year. First she wins an Oscar for her role in The Constant Gardener and then she gives birth to a baby boy. What more could Rachel Weisz ask for? Well, how about a role in a ridiculously turgid and self-important looking movie made by her boyfriend that spans 1,000 years and gets booed by audiences the very first time it's shown anywhere? Guess what? Rachel Weisz did that too.
Rachel Weisz's husband Darren Aronofsky has something of a track record with movies. His last one was Requiem For A Dream, one of the only films to be so apologetically harrowing that the sight of an arm rotten away by heroin use comes as light relief, and his new movie The Fountain looks to be just as controversial; though not because of any disturbing scenes, but because it's crap. A preview screening of The Fountain at the Venice Film Festival was met with a resounding volley of booing by its audience. Why? Well, here's The Independent trying to sum up The Fountain as best it can:
One man, played by Hugh Jackman, goes in search of a cure for the cancer that threatens to kill his wife – Weisz's role. His mercy dash takes him from the conquistadores of South America, via three parallel storylines, into the realms of science fiction as a
26th-century astronaut.
So it's hardly Slam Dunk Ernest, then. The Fountain cost $18 million to make, and was reportedly turned down by all the major studios, so it's unsurprising that Rachel Weisz is standing firmly behind her fiance and The Fountain in the face of this critical drubbing:
"I think it's wonderful that this film is so different. I would love to work with Darren again."
Although, judging by the reception of The Fountain, Rachel Weisz might only be working with Darren Aronofsky again if they both get Saturday jobs at Argos.
Read more:
Barrage Of Boos For Weisz's New Film At Venice Festival – Independent
[story by Stuart Heritage]