State And Main: [UK IMPORT]

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"A sleepy Vermont town", notes writer-director David Mamet, outlining the plot of State and Main, "gets invaded by a movie company and... everyone in the town is suborned, polluted, saddened and ruined. So it's a comedy." And indeed it is--despite his typically acerbic summary--one of Mamet's most light-hearted films. At times, as in the shyly blossoming romance between screenwriter Philip Seymour Hoffman (playing Mr Nice Guy for once) and bookstore-owner Rebecca Pidgeon, it turns almost sentimental. Mamet's views on Hollywood are notoriously jaundiced ("Hell with valet parking" he once called it), but State and Main never really sticks the knife in. Many of the characters--the single-minded, manipulative director, the nympho actress who won't bare her breasts for the camera, the seemingly naïïve locals who prove no less devious than the incomers--are strictly from stock, and much of the film covers similar ground to Alan Alda's underrated Sweet Liberty (1985). Some of the plot feels over-contrived too. Since they're planning to shoot a movie called The Old Mill, the film-makers are disconcerted to find on arrival that said mill burned down 40 years ago; as if the location scouts wouldn't have noticed. Still, Mamet's dialogue is as crisp and literate as ever and the cast turn in diverting performances--especially the ever-excellent William H Macy as the director and Alec Baldwin, spoofing his own image, as a predatory star with a taste for underage skirt. Altogether State and Main serves up a diverting satire on the lunacies of showbiz though lacking the last degree of bite.
On the DVD: Extras don't amount to much apart from a batch of cast-and-director interviews. Of these, Mamet and Macy (who share a dry sense of humour) offer the best value. Baldwin sounds oddly star-struck over his fellow-actors; "I'm a fan more than anything", he gushes. With Dolby 5.1 sound and widescreen (1.85:1) the picture sounds and looks handsome, though in such a dialogue-driven movie visual spectacle's hardly a key priority. --Philip Kemp
A film crew move into a small town where they find the locals difficult to con. The director is placed in a difficult position when each member of the cast and crew seem to be at odds with his plans for the film...