Movie Review :Mister Lonely

Cast: Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Denis Lavant

Director: Harmony Korine

It's release timed shrewdly to coincide with all the hysteria around Jacko's death, Mister Lonely is an intriguing, fascinating film in which a Michael Jackson impersonator (played by Diego Luna) meets a Marilyn Monroe clone in Paris, and follows her to a Scottish commune of celebrity imitators including Charlie Chaplin, Abraham Lincoln, James Dean, Madonna, The Pope and Sammy Davis Jr among others.

The beauty of this film lies in the dichotomy of its very premise - these quietly obsessive souls grapple with who they are and how they can find their own way of life away from the real world, even as they spend the most part of their lives imitating celebrities from this very world.


There's more than a hint of sadness brimming beneath the surface of this film, and it rears its head occasionally to cause a lump in your throat.

But there's also a bizarre parallel track about a priest and some skydiving nuns who work on an aid mission in South America that is hard to put your finger on. Despite some fine performances, this film is no easy watch because it's often abstract, and expects you to decipher and interpret much for yourself. There's also no apparent link between both narrative tracks, making it hard to understand where it's all leading to.



Still, give it a chance if you have a taste for experimental cinema. I'm going with two out of five and an average rating for Mister Lonely. It's not conventional entertainment, but there is an interesting idea somewhere there.