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ROUGH MAGIC
Rating: 
USA. 1995.
Director – Clara Peploe, Screenplay – Clara Peploe, William Brookfield & Robert Mundi, Based on the Novel Miss Shumway Waves a Wand by James Hadley, Producers – Declan Baldwin & Laurie Parker, Photography – John J. Campbell, Music – Richard Hartley, Special Effects – Laurencio ’Chovy’ Cordero & Andre G. Ellington, Production Design – Waldemar Kalinowsky. Production Company – UGC Images.
Cast:
Bridget Fonda (Myra Shumway), Russell Crowe (Alex Ross), Jim Broadbent (Doc Ansell), D.W. Moffett (Cliff Wyatt), Paul Rodrigurez (Diego), Kenneth Mars (Ivan the Terrific), Andy Romano (Clayton), Euva Anderson (Tojola/Diego’s
wife)
Plot: Myra Shumway is an assistant to the stage magician Ivan the Terrific. But when her fiancee, wealthy senatorial candidate Cliff Wyatt, accidentally kills Ivan with a prop gun she flees to Mexico with a photo that can incriminate Wyatt. But on the other side of the border she is pursued by a host of people including Cliff; Diego, a Mexican thug seeking revenge on her for humiliating him; Doc Ansell, a wily conman seeking to exploit her talents; and Alex Ross, a burned-out journalist that she starts to fall for. Ansell persuades her to undergo a native ceremony to obtain a potion of reputed healing power and Myra is alarmed to emerge with real magical powers.
This venture into the Latino Magical Realist tradition is an amusing and unusual film. It’s an extremely wild plot that the film stirs up including:– a magician’s assistant on the run from a murder, a corrupt senatorial fiancee, petty Hispanic hoods, a burned-out journalist haunted by the specter of Nagasaki, a likeably roguish snake-oil salesman, a magician who is killed but doesn’t quite die, and a talking dog. One never knows where the plot is going to turn next. Certainly the film’s turns into outright fantasy – one character accidentally transformed into a sausage, the accidental killing of the love interest and the disappearance of Bridget Fonda’s heart – are among some of its more outrageous moments. It proves rather enjoyable even if in the end director Clara Peploe (aka Mrs Bernardo Bertolucci) is far too kind-hearted to be cruel to any of her characters, allowing even the villains to be redeemed and returned to normal for the all-round happy ending.
Peploe makes good use of a strong cast. Bridget Fonda is one of the most cold-blooded and unwelcoming actresses in the business but Peploe actually works with her to create a forceful and interesting character. The show is stolen though by Jim Broadbent in an appealing performance as the drunken petty conman. Russell Crowe, some years before A-list stardom and Academy Awards, is the only one in the lineup who appears to be on auto-pilot.
Clara Peploe had written several films for her husband Bernardo Bertolucci – La Luna (1979) and Besieged (1998) – although her best known work was probably as co-writer of the counter-culture cult classic Zabriskie Point (1971). Her other directorial outings have been High Season (1987), a romantic comedy set on the Greek islands, and the subsequent period romantic fantasy The Triumph of Love (2001).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2011
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