House of Games: 1987, dir. David Mamet. Seen on DVD (Oct. 6).
My boyfriend rented this one, and watched it alone, but advised me to see it because I like heist films and caper films and con films. I thought it looked interesting but I really had to talk myself into watching it. It is difficult to get in the right mood to deal with Mamet’s particular style of dialogue.
It was worth the effort, though. I liked House of Games a lot, more than my boyfriend did. It was a little cold and distant, in the way some noir films are, but without the morality of noir (arguably dictated less by the genre than by the Production Code of the 1940s).
House of Games is about a psychiatrist who, in trying to help a client who is a compulsive gambler, gets sucked into a world of gambling and confidence tricks and sexual attraction to Joe Mantegna.
The dialogue does take some getting used to. At times it is much too stilted, but at other times one imagines these particular characters might well speak to each other in such an artificial way. And once in awhile, a character breaks through this style of dialogue to shout something that sounds even more real and heartfelt when contrasted with the rest of the film.
It also took time for me to get used to Lindsay Crouse’s character, the psychiatrist, who is extremely detached at the beginning of the movie. At first I thought it might be the acting, but no, this is intentional. Things change (no, that wasn’t an intentional Mamet reference, but you can pretend it is) once she meets Joe Mantegna’s character, who was more charming than I would have suspected.
It was a little difficult for me to believe that Crouse’s character didn’t realize she was being conned, because I knew as soon as she offered to give the guys the money that, yeah, it had to be a con. There were too many holes in the story for it not to be, but then the character was caught in the moment and thought she’d just seen a murder and surely wasn’t thinking clearly.
I liked the end, I have to say. Maybe there should have been a different resolution, one involving punishment for everyone without death. But I liked the idea that the detached, overworked woman from the beginning of the film had become something entirely different at the end.
If you watch a lot of con-man movies, you might not be very surprised by the plot, but it’s still suspenseful and very good. Even if you’re not fond of Mamet, it’s still worth watching.
Ooh, I’m glad you liked the film. I don’t know too many people who’ve seen it, and fewer who were willing to join me in saying “I liked that!” I saw this movie when I was a teenager, and it just blew me away. Returning to it in later years, I could see the plot holes, and the setup for the con was obvious. But Lindsay Crouse really pulled me in, and I reveled in her transformation. And then there was that crush on Joe Mantegna (??), which I’ve finally set quietly aside. The pattern of speech is … well, it’s Mamet, which means it’s strange. But somehow I like that stilted speech best in his con/caper movies (e.g. this movie and the Spanish Prisoner). It somehow creates another dimension to the film, another step away from ‘reality.’ I have to admit I don’t like it as much in his other flicks.