Review of ivans xtc. (2000) by Ali B — 21 May 2009

Critics have compared this film to Robert Altman's The Player. However, in charting the debauched lifestyle and death of its main character, Ivan, a Hollywood agent, Bernard Rose is not interested in satirizing or giving us an inside look at the power players in Tinseltown.

His approach to the material, in fact, recalls Fellini. As in 'Satyricon', where Fellini approached ancient Rome from the position of one observing the behaviours of "martians", Rose puts the viewer, rather uncomfortably, in the front seat to observe its Hollywood types and their wheelings and dealings, meetings, pretensions, and sex and cocaine filled lives, all of which are completely unrelatable.

Rose, serving as his own cinematographer, shoots in handheld digital. His aesthetic comes across as a twisted version of cinema verite, like a fly on the wall television reality program. He captures some exteriors that, though superficially beautiful and bright, look unhealthy, as if they were lit by a pornographic, diseased sun.

The starkly realistic approach does not engender much sympathy for Ivan, but that may have been Rose's point. Only in severe illness do we see him in a vaguely human light as he is distanced from his environment.