Willem Dafoe Can’t Save This Odd, Inert Drama

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The Birthday Party, a new film from director Miguel Ángel Jiménez, is an adaptation of a 2007 novel. I didn’t know that going in, but I could tell. Though feeling literary can of course be a good thing for a movie, these two artforms excel at different things, and not every story that flourishes in one is well-suited for the other. More often than not, if I start to suspect that something I’m watching is an adaptation, it’s because I’m becoming conscious of gaps – not in the narrative, but in the level of detail. It’s like being aware that this particular combination of things once made sense in a way they now do not.

To their credit, Jiménez and his co-writers, Giorgos Karnavas and Nicos Panayotopoulos, try to combat this feeling with atmosphere, and they sometimes get close to succeeding. But aside from Willem Dafoe and a couple of the smaller supporting players, there are few things about this film that consistently hit the right notes. Disjointed where it should be mysterious, The Birthday Party is a mostly inert experience, unable to turn its ideas into a compelling enough drama.

The Birthday Party Needed More Than Just Willem Dafoe

Though Dafoe is never anything but an asset, our relationship to his character is The Birthday Party‘s Achilles heel. He plays Marcos Timoleon, a private and elusive Greek billionaire, who is about to offer a select group a rare glimpse into his world. His daughter, Sofia (Vic Carmen Sonne), is turning 25, and to celebrate her return after years away at college, Marcos is throwing a party on his private island. We’re keyed into more than a few people on the guest list, all of whom have their own agendas, ranging from the personal to the political. But they are also pieces of Marcos’ plan, whether willingly or not.

I could list them, but that would be a longer way of saying there are too many moving pieces with too little ground to cover. There is simply not enough plot to sustain all their interests. Their value, then, must be thematic; Jiménez tries to wring something from the juxtaposition of a venomous family drama with Felliniesque debauchery. But even though the movie works best when brushing up against the true nature of Timoleon’s power, it ultimately doesn’t have enough to say about it. The conflict between Marcos and Sofia is the true focus, and as an emotional story, it just doesn’t work very well.

The reason, I think, is Marcos. The original book (which, worth noting, I have not read) is very much about him, diving deep into the details of his personal history that he’s successfully kept hidden, even from his own family. This version of The Birthday Party tries to have its cake and eat it too, by showing us Marcos’ perspective while also trying to cultivate a sense of enigma around him. It would’ve been better served, I think, by denying us direct access. Allowing us to meet him kaleidoscopically, through the eyes of his various, self-serving party guests, might have created the intrigue around his motivations that the film needed.

Marcos and Sofia looking down at something in The Birthday Party

That said, this one element is not the only problem. Tone is a product of multiple elements working in unison, but most of those elements are out of step with each other here. The Birthday Party‘s quavering synth score is not quite right for what it seems to be targeting. Both the edit and rhythm of dialogue are often awkward, undercutting the immersion that the alluring cinematography invites, and most of the performances lack a greater life.

The clear exceptions, alongside Dafoe, are Antonis Tsiotsiopoulos as Marcos’ right-hand man and Christos Stergioglou as an old friend invited back into Marcos’ orbit for the first time in years. Perhaps they benefit from being dosed out more sparingly, but both manage to inhabit the layers that these characters are otherwise missing on screen, but might’ve once had on the page. More intangibly, they also provoke the clearest emotional responses of the supporting cast. Too often, this movie’s characters left me feeling nothing.

The Birthday Party is not wholly unenjoyable – after all, it does spend some of its runtime letting Willem Dafoe hypnotically sing and dance. But it is certainly unsuccessful, and not a film I can recommend.

The Birthday Party releases in theaters and on VOD on Friday, August 14.