Under the Cherry Moon Directed by Prince Starring Prince, Jerome Benton and Kristin Scott Thomas A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Vampires vs. bats: "Buffy" season opener, baseball playoff Now Showing New video releases for Sept. 29 Y E S T E R D A Y Escape from the planet of the tapes By Joyce Millman After being inundated with Lewinsky scandal, it's a relief to get back to TV that doesn't matter (09/28/98) R E C E N T_. M O V I E S Peckerhead By Laura Miller Gleeful depravity: An interview with John Waters (09/24/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor Paul Schrader's "Patty Hearst" tells the story Americans didn't want to hear (09/22/98) One True Thing Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir Renée Zellweger buckles under the emotional weight of a six-hankie weeper (09/18/98) A Merry War Reviewed by Charles Taylor Richard E. Grant and Helena Bonham Carter shun middle-class mediocrity in the film adaptation of George Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" (09/18/98) Rush Hour Reviewed by Charles Taylor A pale imitation of Jackie Chan's Hong Kong hits (09/18/98) BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

[ H O M E_.M O V I E S_.B Y C H A R L E S_.T A Y L O R ]___ ________- - - - - - - A.F.R.O.-.Deco ________- - - - - - - Prince's unfairly maligned second film mixes swank screwball comedy with uptown sass. ________- - - - - - - The luxurious settings of 1930s movies were less the province of the characters who could afford them than the ones who knew how to have the most fun. For all their art-deco elegance, the comedies and musicals of the era were populated by the sort of earthy performers you wouldn't expect to find on the social register. Cruising through the plush, satiny settings with an air of cheerful disrespect, Mae West, Jean Harlow, Ginger Rogers and others kept all the wealth on display from seeming like just cold cash. In contrast to stiff swells determined to be tastefully discreet about their bucks, the wisecracking stars most popular with Depression audiences acted out an unabashed fantasy of finding yourself in the chips. A gloss on '30s movies that combines lowdown comedy with high-fashion style, Prince's "Under the Cherry Moon" (1986) was not what anybody expected as a follow-up to the hit "Purple Rain," although it's a much more enjoyable movie. "Under the Cherry Moon" isn't in the same class as "Top Hat," "She Done Him Wrong" or "Dinner at Eight," but Prince captures the essence of '30s comedies better than any of the directors (from Peter Bogdanovich to Woody Allen) who have slavishly imitated them. The movie has a casual, tossed-off approach and an air of impudent swank. If Becky Johnston's script proceeds more by flourishes than plot development, she still includes plenty of snappy repartee. And Prince was lucky enough to have the benefit of Richard Sylbert's production design and Michael Ballhaus' cinematography, which bring the lush, silvery look of '30s movies into the age of Versace and rock 'n' roll. When Prince appeared in the early '80s, the essence of his appeal lay in the way his outrageously sexual image flouted the new conservatism of American society (it was a Prince song that prompted a shocked Tipper Gore to found the Parents Music Resource Center). Every enjoyable movie fantasy is rooted in some emotional or cultural reality, and here that reality is the Reagan era, with its agenda of relegating wealth and privilege to a chosen few. But, in place of speechifying, the movie's cultural nose-thumbing expresses itself as a dedication to the principle of fun. "Under the Cherry Moon" is a fantasia of what might have happened if blacks in classic Hollywood comedy hadn't been relegated to playing maids and bellhops. Prince and the gifted and debonair Jerome Benton (he was Morris Day's sidekick in "Purple Rain") play a pair of gigolos loose on the French Riviera and insinuating themselves into the playground of rich whites. The sassiness of Mae West and Jean Harlow here translates into the jivey put-ons of a pair of slick black hustlers. As Christopher and his partner Tricky, Prince and Benton are something like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby doing Amos and Andy. (And if you know Amos and Andy only in disrepute, you probably don't know about the program's clever, punning verbal humor, like the great line "I not only denies the allegation, but I resents the allegator!") The difference is, Prince and Benton are nobody's patsies. Everyone who deals with them winds up feeling three steps behind, just as the poor straights who tried to have a conversation with Groucho or Chico did. When their landlady (the comely Emannuelle Sallet) tells them that Tricky's charms will no longer suffice to pay the rent, the two of them sink to their knees and become a pair of po' little orphan boys, begging not to get thrown out in the cold, mean streets. Prince and Benton's antics are a form of subversive blackface. In the '20s and '30s, rich New York whites headed to Harlem for what they regarded as chic slumming. In "Under the Cherry Moon," the slums make house calls on the Vanity Fair set. Throughout the movie, whenever Prince wants to bait stuffy white people (or just have a little fun), he abandons his natural sexy speaking voice for a high-pitched black dialect. In one scene Christopher and Tricky, dining in a fancy restaurant with a tycoon's daughter (Kristin Scott Thomas, in her movie debut) they've set their sights on, make her read a phrase they've written out: "Wrecka Stow." To the pair's whooping delight, Thomas (who, with her tart comic delivery is as game as she is beautiful) pronounces it in her flawless English accent, and when she demands to know what it means, they tell her, "If you wanted to buy a Sam Cooke album, where would you go?" Maybe because his sexuality had been the subject of speculation, Prince makes a grand joke out of his doe-eyed swanning. Wittily costumed in a series of ensembles that includes high-heeled boots, cut-to-the-waist jackets, beaded bandannas and skin-tight sequined pants, he asks the camera to drink in every primped and pomaded inch. At one point he sits in the bathtub wearing a bolero hat while Benton showers rose petals on him. The two of them conduct their partnership as an endless round of flirtations and flare-ups (too good-spirited to be homophobic), even falling into a couple of eye-flashing clinches. (The real drama queen here is Steven Berkoff, in one of his reliably disgraceful performances, as Scott Thomas' father. He makes his entrance in a white suit leading a big trophy dog on a leash and greets his daughter with a mincing, "Hello Kitten, how's the prettiest girl on the Côte d'Azur?" Oh, Mary!) But when he wants to be, Prince is an ace seducer. The movie's sexiest scene comes when he and Scott Thomas are talking on the phone, lying on their respective beds, not doing much more than listening to each other's breathing. And when he takes her to his seaside grotto, there's a lovely superimposed shot where the two of them appear to be making love inside her outstretched hand. The bad buzz about "Under the Cherry Moon" began a week into the shoot when Prince fired director Mary Lambert (who had made a name directing videos for Madonna) and took over. His direction is a little all over the place. At times he seems to have gotten swept up in the movie's party escapades and the parade of scenemakers floating by the camera. The big set piece, Scott Thomas' birthday garden party, captures the slightly tipsy feel that pervades the film. But sometimes it's as important for a director to provide the right spirit as it is to be precise, and the most important thing to Prince here seems to be to keep us entertained. The stylish, slightly unsteady whirl of "Under the Cherry Moon" is like watching a '30s movie while slipping into an afternoon nap and having it become part of your dreams. It doesn't even wreck the fun when Prince moves from comedy to romantic melodrama in the last half-hour: His dreams just seem to have led him into another movie. And the comic tone is restored in the number ("Mountains") that ends the picture: Prince and the Revolution performing the song direct from heaven. Life is a parade, Christopher says. So's the movie. Prince wants to ride atop the float, receiving the crowd's adulation, but he's also larking about down in the street, happy to be one of the clowns. SALON | Sept. 29, 1998 Starting next week, Charles Taylor's Home Movies video column will appear every other Monday in Salon. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N O W_S H O W I N G [ New releases available Sept. 29 ] Chinese Box The Object of My Affection Twilight Two Girls and a Guy Johns Paulie Mrs. Dalloway Tieta of Agreste