WELCOME TO NEW YORK is stupendous, and it leaves me nearly speechless — I really won’t be able to say anything coherent about it until I have thought about it for a while, and seen it a few more times.
But I will try to make a few scattered observations. The film isn’t really a descent into the depths of depravity in the way BAD LIEUTENANT is; but then, there is no sense of redemption for Depardieu in the way that perhaps there is for Harvey Keitel. The film shifts register several times. The first half hour is basically an orgy sequence. Then it becomes a kind of procedural, with DSK’s arrest and confinement. Then, after he is remanded to house arrest in a $60,000/month Manhattan townhouse, it becomes a venemous melodrama-cum-dark night of the soul (except that latter phrase is not quite right, since Depardieu’s character (called “Devereaux” to avoid the legal problems that might ensue by literally naming him “Dominique Strauss-Kahn”) doesn’t seem to really have a soul.
The orgy sequences struck me as more pathetic than lurid. There’s no sense of condemnation of Devereaux’s antics, but no sense of spectatorial pleasure either (not even pleasure in sleaze). It’s really just Depardieu’s grunting and bellowing, not to mention his evident relish in slapping various hookers’ behinds. When we get to The Incident, we clearly feel the maid’s terror at being assaulted, but Devereaux doesn’t even seem to notice that there is any difference between consensual sex, paid-for sex, and violently imposed sex. It’s all over in a minute, and Ferrara clearly conveys how it scarcely even registers in Devereaux’s mind that anything of any consequence has happened. (Later on, he will indignantly tell his wife that he is absolutely innocent of rape, because “all he did” was rub his penis against the maid’s mouth — which is more or less true of what we previously saw happening, except that, as Devereuax fails to add, this happens as he is pushing her against the wall and grabbing her head, and shei s desperately begging him to stop).
The arrest and confinement are given a documentary or procedural feel. We definitely get a sense of how the prison system is systematically demeaning and humiliating to anyone unfortunate enough to fall into its clutches. At the same time, we remain aware of the difference between the powerful and privileged Devereaux, who is brought down in the world just for a moment, and everyone else (mostly black people) who is caught in this system without Devereaux’s resources for getting out again. The highlight of this part of the movie is undoubtably the scene in which Devereaux is strip searched, which means that Depardieu displays his aging, bloated, no-longer-beautiful nude body to the camera.
The real emotional payoff of the film is in the second hour, in which Devereaux mopes in his expensive town house. There are several terrific scenes of arguments between Devereaux and his wife (played by Jacqueline Bisset), in which he reveals his absolute lack of self-insight, and utter inability to change. Devereaux has no passion, desire, or even self-will, but only a monstrous and utterly compulsive appetite, together with a defensive need for self-justification. We see this in his arguments with his wife, in his voiceover meditation (where he recounts turning from idealism to utter cynicism about the possibilities of justice and alleviating poverty, as he ascended the rungs of power) in his (court-mandated, I think? — but I wasn’t sure) conversation with a shrink, and in flashbacks to past incidents (one of consensual sex, and one of the near-rape of a young woman journalist — this came up in the press at the time — which again reveals how, Devereaux, in his mind, seems incapable of distinguishing between seduction and rape). Even at the very end of the movie, Devereaux is up to his old tricks with the housemaid.
The film leaves us with this sterility of its central character; there is no spiritual struggle like that (as I already mentioned) of Harvey Keitel in BAD LIEUTENANT, or for that matter Forest Whitaker in MARY. Instead, Depardieu gives us an entirely implosive performance (and, as other critics have noted, the film is certainly in the Godardian sense a documentary about Depardieu as much as it is a dramatization of DSK). Around this absent center, the wheels of power and privilege turn in their accustomed way, so that the case is dropped and Devereaux is left free — all off camera (though we are given brief documentary footage, just as a sort of reminder, of protests against the dismissal of the case).
In a way, the film is all over the place, even though at the same time it is galvanized throughout by Depardieu’s performance. I think that Ferrara wanted to leave the film messy, because reality itself is. The film gets its emotional power by being organized around a banality: specifically, we might say (though Ferrara does not, as he resists any sort of moralism) the banality of evil — or maybe better, the inability of the powerful to see the pain they inflict upon those without power as anything more than a banal passing moment of no real import. In a way, DSK’s life was “ruined” by the incident — not only did he fail to become President of France, but his public respect suffered a blow (though, of course, he retained the privileges of wealth and freedom from imprisonment or official sanction; and the way the French press is reacting to the movie shows that he still has powerful support). WELCOME TO NEW YORK conveys, less what actually happened to DSK, than Depardieu-as-Devereaux’s baffled failure to comprehend why any of this should have happened to him, of all people — which perhaps makes the film more farce than tragedy, and none the less devastating for that.