The Favor, the Watch and the Very Big Fish

This is one of those seemingly unclassifiable little romantic comedies that nevertheless fits best into the category of Films With More Words in their Title than Necessary. Or not. Set in Paris, Hoskins is Louis Aubinard, an innocently gullible photographer of devotional scenes who finds his life turned upside-down after a chance meeting with an aspiring actress named Sybil (Richardson), who relates to him the tragic story of her pianist love (Goldblum) and his passionate fall from grace and eventual incarceration for crimes of jealousy. Hoskins, meanwhile, is searching the streets and back alleyways of his city hoping to find the perfect person to portray Christ in a series of photographs illustrating the life of the savior. After auditioning a variety of junkies, winos and stringy-haired derelicts, he chances on a mysterious dark-haired fellow outside his studio one night. Unbeknownst to Hoskins, this perfect Christ of his is also Sybil's lost pianist, and because Goldblum's character repeatedly refers to himself via an increasingly hilarious series of composers (“Name?” “Franz Schubert. That's S-C-H-U...Bert.”), the rotund little man never quite catches on to the whirlpool of absurdities that are slowly encircling him. Chance, Fate, and Destiny all play important roles in the development of the story, and it is through just one such random event that Goldblum's character comes to believe that he may actually be Christ come again. Goldblum essays another one of his patented roles, that of the sensitive, impassioned outsider, and does it with a vigor and style that most other actors would kill for. As both the manic, eternally miserable pianist and the confused Christ figure, he fires every onscreen second with, well, honesty. Despite this, though, The Favor... never really satisfies the audience the way romantic comedies of this sort ought to. Director Lewin keeps the pace quick and the story in hand, but the plot twists here are far too obvious to keep anyone guessing for long. The whole mistaken identity bit is becoming cliched through overuse by inexperienced and unoriginal filmmakers, and Lewin just can't seem to pull it off with the sense of rightness necessary for the material. It's one of those films you might want to rent on tape some night, but its theatrical run, I think, will be brief.