The Follow (2001)
The Driver is hired by a nervous movie manager to spy on a paranoid actor's wife. During his tailing of the wife, the Driver describes the right way to tail someone. As he follows her he begins to fear what he might learn of her apparently tragic life. He discovers the wife is fleeing the country and returning to her mother's, and that she's been given a black eye, likely by her husband. He returns the money for the job, refusing to tell where the wife is, and drives off telling the manager never to call him again.
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I was surprised to find that the director of the second film in the BMW series The Hire was Ang Lee, so imagine how I felt when this one was directed by Kar Wai Wong, he of In the Mood for Love and other films where car chases do not feature particularly highly; to say the least I was curious as to what he would deliver here. The plot this time is a tailing job – a movie star's agent hires the Driver to follow the star's wife to confirm she isn't cheating on him; a simple job but then perhaps not.What Wong delivers is actually a really nice short film that delivers substance in a way the previous two had not while also giving the guys paying for the film plenty of slick shots of their cars in motion. The film opens with some shots with an artistic slant and it continues as such throughout. In the previous films the Driver had been mostly silent however here his narration is key and it is pretty well written to be about the art of The Follow while also filling in the story as we go along. OK, it is a flaw of the film that his technique looks awful (he seems far too obvious to me!) but the narration and the style help cover this minor quibble.The film has a great style to it and Wong really does a good job with the following sequences. Unable to work with the thrill of a chase, he instead captures moments of slick beauty as the two cars move around cities and landscapes – it had a real flow to it and looked beautiful; the shots after stopping at the bank were particularly memorable. The cast do well here, Owen is better with some character to talk about while the quality of Whittaker, Rourke and the looks of Lima all help the feel of the film as slick and polished.The Follow may lack the action chase sequence of the other films thus far, but it produces something I enjoyed much more as a short film (as opposed to an action clip). The story is good, the narration adds a layer to the film and yet Wong still manages to make the central product look good. Very good little short that rises above its commercial heart.
Although this is an oasis of calm and beauty in the midst of the BMW-series of mostly violent car chases, it is not particularly good as a Wong Kar-Wai film. It's the first time he worked from somebody else's script, and one of the few times he worked from a script at all. The supposedly strict production frame of BMW did not allow for his usual approach of improvisation and intuition. Although Andrew Kevin Walker tailormade his script to fit Wong - taking inspiration from his other movies, mostly CHUNGKING EXPRESS - Wong does not manage to deliver more than a weak clone of himself. The vibrant energy and subtle emotion of his other work is mostly absent here. No wonder he only has himself credited as WKW...
I am not sure what the one thing is that attracts me so much to this film. The pacing, the montage, the editing. Whatever it is, I found myself drawn to it from the first 30 seconds. I found myself watching the opening over and over again.
By far the best short in the BMW Films series, this piece by director Wong Kar-wei pays homage to the Los Angeles noir films of past, with a mesmerizing soundtrack by Silvio Rodriguez Dominguez that makes you wish this was 120 minute feature. With a welcome cameo by Forrest Whittaker and a luscious, mesmerizing monologue by Clive Owen as the reluctant hired-gun, "The Follow" indeed follows the noir mantra that all is not what they appear to be.