Good Girl !

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2001)

Let me remind you first that the story and the characters are all true. Erin Brockovich exists and did reveal PG & E' scandal. I'll add that, according to witnesses, the real Erin also used to work dressed in very... revealing clothes ! That is for those who would think that Julia Roberts's incredible uplift cleavage is shown here for no other reason than arousing and holding the viewer's interest... Steven Soderbergh is remembered having won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1989, at the age of 26 years old and for his very first film: "Sex, Lies and Videotape". The hardest was just starting for him: he had now to prove that he deserved it... He had to be seen as a talented director ("Kafka" or "The Limey"), never hesitating to experiment new film genre. With "Erin Brockovich", he fits into the current trend of US "campaigner films". Are 60's and 70's best hours of US political cinema back to the screen ? Let's wait and see a little more before answering (hopefully) "yes"... In the meantime, I have no choice but to call "Erin Brockovich" a real success. Of course, the story alone (true, then) couldn't be enough. It needed an appropriate direction to make the most of it. Soderbergh's one is precise, sober, fluent and well-paced, all rolled into one. He has succeeded in turning a story with no action strictly speaking, at least in hollywoodian sense of the word (no car chase, no guns, no various violence, etc.), into a... sustained action film the viewer never gets bored with. As in front of a film noir or a thriller. The director's work's best parts can be found in the rythm he gave to his film (and who says rythm does not obligatory means high speed...), in an excellent editing, with no particular effects, without any trick. I would even venture to say that Soderbergh tried to make his direction as invisible as glass, in the same way than George Orwell tried to do with his prose. And let's give thanks to Soderbergh for having spared us the recurrent sequences in US cinema: the "trial ones" ! A powerful story, an adequate direction and, of course, great acting. The whole film rests with pretty Julia Roberts. Of course she didn't wait for this film to show her real talents or acting. Hollywood's most expensive star ($20 millions for this film...) had already seduced wild world viewers with various comedies, such as Pretty Woman, Everybody says "I love you", My Best Friend's Wedding or Notting Hill. More seldom she had been seen in good drama, Mary Reilly being almost an exception... In the role of Erin, Julia Roberts glows with her dynamism, her obstinacy and, naturally (well, she's Julia Roberts, after all !) her stunning smile. The clothes she wears (tiny-mini-skirts and high-heeled shoes that make her legs looking endless but also lead to a funny walk, all in addition to her cleavage), the way she talks (more vulgar than glamour) could have done a disservice to her. But, by making her more "human" and closer to the "ordinary people" she defends, by exposing an outward appearance in contrast to the character's pyschology, the result is quite the reverse. At her side, great Albert Finney is perfect and Aaron Eckard brings humanity to his role... A worth seeing film !