Have you heard the one about Michael Jackson, the Pope and the Three Stooges living together in a Scottish castle? What sounds like the set-up for a bad-taste gag is actually the central scenario of Mister Lonely, a film about celebrity impersonators that is a far gentler work than anyone would have expected from that former enfant terrible, Harmony Korine.
There is still an eccentric streak, which manifests itself here most obviously in a subplot about skydiving nuns led by a mad priest (Werner Herzog). These interludes offer observations on faith and dreams, although they have no literal connection to the main story. But Mister Lonely is otherwise fairly conventional, and not unpleasantly so. Even an implacable screenwriting guru like Robert McKee would applaud its three-act structure, its character arcs and its promise of redemption. How he would feel about those nuns, pedalling BMXs in mid-air at 10,000 feet, I wouldn't care to say.
It may not be a perfect film, but the casting is spot-on. The Mexican actor Diego Luna is a handsome blank as Michael Jackson (none of the impersonators is given a "real" name), who is bringing down the house at an old people's home in Paris, where he assures his baffled, medicated audience that they will live for ever and bizarrely implores them: "Don't die! Don't die!" Into this spectacle sweeps Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton), who requests Michael's presence at a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands.
Before he goes, Michael bids farewell to every item of furniture in his apartment. Luna plays this, his funniest scene, with solemn sincerity. As with most of Korine's work, we are likely to laugh without knowing quite where the joke is.
The picture hits its stride in the commune scenes, where the detached tone keeps self-conscious zaniness at bay, making the weirdest sights - such as Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant) thrashing Michael at ping-pong - feel almost routine. You know you're going to have a blast from the moment James Fox looms into view in white simar and zucchetto and booms in a plummy voice: "Hello, Michael. I'm the Pope." There is also a foul-mouthed Abraham Lincoln (Richard Strange) and a softly spoken Madonna (Melita Morgan) who sticks to the early-Nineties uniform of conical bra, whereas Monroe is Seven-Year Itch Marilyn by day and polo-necked Misfits Marilyn at the dinner table.
Behind the scenes, Marilyn is having trouble with her husband, Charlie. She accuses him of looking like Hitler. He thinks she's got the hots for Michael. You would feel sorry for Marilyn's daughter if she wasn't Shirley Temple.
Such oddball behaviour is made all the more compelling by Korine's decision to shoot largely with a long lens, as if in imitation of a paparazzo's prying eye. When the pseudo-celebs are bathing together, or gathering in the castle grounds to tend to their sheep, the cinematographer, Marcel Zyskind, spies on them eerily from some distance away. Voyeurism has always been an important element in Korine's films - there was a pungent whiff of the circus freak show about his brilliant, innovative Gummo (1997) - but this time the suspicion that we're trespassing on private ground enhances the film's broad commentary on celebrity.
I think Mister Lonely really clicks into place once you take it as a tale of actual celebrities rather than impostors, with the castle as fame itself and the inhabitants allowed out only to reel in more converts (as Marilyn does with Michael), or to rally the interest of the local villagers for their rather pathetic nightly variety show. If you follow this logic to its conclusion, the sheep represent the rest of us - those mortals who don't measure their worth in magazine covers, but comprise instead that vague body, the general public, the wool pulled so easily over our star-struck eyes. Film-makers from Fellini (in La Dolce Vita) to Woody Allen (in Stardust Memories and, less effectively, Celebrity) have taken up the cudgels against the superficial nature of fame. But there is a definite ambivalence to Korine's stance. He seems almost regretful as he pours freezing water on the culture of Heat and says goodbye to Hello!.
Pick of the week
Garage (18)
dir: Lenny Abrahamson
Powerful drama about a petrol station attendant in rural Ireland.
Flight of the Red Balloon (PG)
dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Juliette Binoche in an endearing story about a boy from Paris and his Taiwanese nanny.
Water Lilies (15)
dir: Céline Sciamma
Coming-of-age tale, set against a synchronised-swimming backdrop.
