By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * *)
"Can't Get No Satisfaction" could have been a better title for a movie featuring Mick Jagger as the dissolute owner of an escort service for lonely women, alongside Andy Garcia as the man who turns to turning tricks for a living. But the director, George
Hickenlooper, is intent on creating a comedy of manners from an earlier, wittier age in Hollywood, so he went for a more sophisticated reference from Greek mythology.
Byron Tiller (Garcia) has written a good first novel. But his second is rejected and instead of 'fessing up to his wife, Dena (Julianna Margulies), he decides to solve his financial shortcomings by contacting a man he met in a bar, a man with the satanic name of Luther Fox (Jagger). Fox runs Elysian Fields, the escort service, and Tiller finds himself squiring Andrea Allcott (Olivia Williams), beautiful young wife of an old, diabetic, dying husband.
Fortunately for the storyline, the husband is Tobias Allcott (James Coburn), a prizewinning novelist who knows about his wife's arrangement and enlists Tiller's help with his final novel. But the story will unfold badly, for Tiller and his wife, for Andrea and her husband, for Fox and the woman he wants to love, and for the one-man Greek chorus off to the side, Tiller's colleague, Nigel (Michael Des Barres impersonating Terence Stamp).
The movie, showing at art-house cinemas around the city, has rather more style than substance: strip away the costumes and occasionally clever lines (most offered to Jagger, then thrown away) and you have a soap opera in elegant suits and gowns.
The memorable moments come from Coburn, in one of his last appearances before his death last November, his hands gnarled with arthritis. But this is not the Affliction that he will be remembered for.
DVD, video rental July 23
DVD features: movie (106min); commentary by Hickenlooper, writer Philip Jayson Lasker and Garcia; trailers; interactive features
