Review of 360 (2012) by Clarisesamuels — 18 Nov 2012

Like the film Eyes Wide Shut, which was based on Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, 360 is another weird adaptation of an Arthur Schnitzler work. Schnitzler's play, La Ronde (also known as Reigen in German) is set in 1890's Vienna and focuses on the bizarre hypocrisy necessary to maintain the proper veneer required by polite society in regard to the rules of marriage, fidelity, and sexual propriety.

Schnitzler's work comprises a full circle, like the children's ring-around-the-rosie dance for which the play is named. In the original play, a prostitute has sex with a soldier; the soldier has sex with a maid, the maid with a young gentleman, the gentleman with a young wife, and then the young wife with her husband.

The liaisons are empty and devoid of any commitment or romantic attachment, except for the husband who tries to explain to his wife how going through periods of "friendship" keeps the relationship fresh so that they keep revisiting the honeymoon stage.

Then the husband takes up with a young girl, the girl with a poet, the poet with an actress, the actress with a count , and the count comes full circle and has sex with the prostitute. The pairings are absurd, they cross class boundaries and are strictly based on animalistic sexual needs, which somehow justify lies and hypocrisy.

La Ronde makes a perfect circle; 360, set in modern times in Vienna, Bratislava, and Denver should make a perfect circle mathematically speaking, but in this film it's more like a rectangle missing one side.

The top of the hierarchy is the husband and wife played by Rachel Weisz and Jude Law, two famous British actors who barely make their presence felt in this film. Each one of them starts a chain of sexual deceit--the husband (Jude Law) almost hires a prostitute but bolts at the last minute, the prostitute mates with a Russian mafia-style boss, her sister falls in love with the boss's driver, whose wife is enjoying a flirtation with her boss, a dentist.

The wife and the dentist never get together and the chain ends with them. Back at the top of the hierarchy, the wife, played by Rachel Weisz, is having an affair with a Brazilian photographer, whose girlfriend finds out and leaves him to go back to Brazil.

En route, she befriends a grieving father of a missing child (Anthony Hopkins) and nearly goes to bed with a rehabilitated sex convict, just out of jail and a little shaky about his self-control. Nothing happens and the chain ends there.

The stories are disconnected and rambling. The high point is Hopkins pouring his heart out at an AA meeting, effective but entirely out of place. 360 claims to be based on La Ronde, but the connection is so vague that I don't think they should reference Schnitzler's work--there's no resemblance whatsoever.

This modern version is completely lacking in the absurdity, spontaneity, and the revolutionary zeal needed to thoroughly rebel against society's expectations. There is a hint of a philosophical theme in the form of the Kierkegaardian crowd as seen at bus terminals and airports in the film, perhaps denoting that the sexual defiance is a desperate attempt to be an individual and avoid the conformity and anonymity that the crowd imposes.

The acting is so-so all around (save Hopkins), but the cinematography is impressive and creates an artsy, European ambience.