R E V I E W S

Center of the World (2001)

Starring: Molly Parker, Peter Sarsgaard, Carla Gugino and Balthazar Getty
Director: Wayne Wang
Rating: NR

Studio: Artisan Entertainment

Review Posted: 5.11.01

Rating: 2.5/4

By Sara M. Fetters.

"‘Center of the World’ Remains a Mystery"

Richard Longman (Peter Sarsgaard; Boys Don’t Cry), a young and lonely dot.com millionaire, is lost. He knows that, with all the money available to him, all his technology, that he shouldn’t be. He’s at the center of the world, all things available to him with the click of a mouse. All things 
but love, and that’s where Florence (Molly Parker; Sunshine, The Five Senses) comes in.

She’s a local musician for an all-girl punk band that drinks coffee day after day in his favorite coffee shop. But she’s also a stripper in an erotic night club, and Richard finds himself becoming more infatuated with her with each visit. So he invites Florence to spend three days with him in 
Las Vegas for $10,000. At first she refuses, but needing the money she acquiesces but only after being able to set the rules for this liaison herself: no kissing on the mouth, no penetration, no talk about feelings.

What follows in Wang Wang’s (Chinese Box, Smoke, Chan is Missing) new film The Center of the World is the dark side of Pretty Woman only without the Cinderella-like pretensions. Can these two follow the rules? Can there be intimacy without feeling? Is sensation over substance all that matters? What happens when feeling finally does intrude?

Interesting questions all, and Wang keeps us interested, if not necessarily emotionally invested, for the length of the film. He wisely lets the film revolve around his two main characters, leaving most outside influences to the side allowing them only to intrude in breath voice-over or computer message. He also doesn’t shy from the sexual aspects of the film - thus the films semi-controversy – but it is never so much as arousing as it is clinically unsettling. Carla Gugino, a long way from the family friendly Spy Kids, does pop up briefly in two scenes as an old friend of Florence’s and the acting fireworks by all three that erupt during her second visit are impressive. But this is Florence and Richard’s show and just as the film starts to lose that focus Wang deftly pulls out the distractions and returns 
to them.

Of the two actors, Ms. Parker is the standout. One of the most gifted young actresses you’ve probably never heard of, Ms. Parker burst onto the screen in the equally daring, beautifully realized Kissed (playing a young necrophiliac of all things) and grounds the proceedings here with an air of 
poignancy that Center of the World is always hustling to equal. She’s fearless in the role. It’s the kind of acting bravado seldom seen in movies and, for that reason, almost never rewarded.

In the end, however, it’s as if Wang and his team of writers don’t know what to do with this fascinating character. Just as the film should be coming to its emotional apex, it crashes back to Earth. We keep waiting for the moment when all of these sexual and mental gymnastics the film has been thrusting deeper at us will finally result in some sort of payoff that never comes.

Maybe that is Wang’s point. In this age of emotional detachment, physical pleasure no longer has the same resonance that it once held. With everything on demand and available over the internet, with sensation becoming more valuable then feeling, is the death of love and real emotions eminent? Or are they only lost, aching to be found somewhere in between the electronic superhighway and the crotch – the real center of the world still waiting to be found.

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