Abel
Ferrara is no stranger to sleazy portraits of illicit monsters, King of New York and Bad Lieutenant among his most
infamous. With his latest film Welcome to New York, he gives viewers
the humorless and ugly version of The
Wolf of Wall Street, uncomfortably close to the real thing concerning an
evil human being utterly consumed by id. Loosely based on the scandal surrounding French politician Dominque
Strauss-Kahn, the film stars an overweight Gerard Depardieu as Devereaux,
President of a wealthy bank whose carefree debauched existence of drugs and
womanizing is threatened when he is incarcerated for sexually assaulting a
hotel maid. As the drama plays out in
the court of public opinion with Devereaux’s lawyers negotiating house arrest,
the film becomes a blistering indictment of American capitalism and the ease
with which criminals guilty as sin can pay off their infractions instead of for
them.
Casting
the controversial veteran Depardieu as the amoral sex addict, with no bridge
between his impulses and better judgment, proves crucial as imagining anyone else playing him is impossible. Much
like Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant, Depardieu
lets it all hang out without fear of portraying a man rife with demons. Where Marlon Brando asked Francis Ford
Coppola to hide his obesity in shadow, Depardieu allows his fat protruding
belly to be open for all to see in full frontal nudity. This is a man gorging himself on power and
carnality with little concern for all whose lives are ruined in his wake. A powerful anchor and counterpoint to
Depardieu is Jaqueline Bisset as Devereaux’s wife, trying desperately to sort
out the disaster on her hands while barely able to contain her rage towards her
husband for destroying her reputation by association. In a way, her scenes upstage her character’s
boorish husband as she wears a straight face in public before unleashing her
fury on Devereaux behind closed doors.
Undoubtedly
the subject of grudging admiration and outright derision, Welcome to New York quickly brewed a scandal in France with
Strauss-Kahn’s wife threatening a lawsuit against the project, calling it
“filth”. Ferrara’s, at times, cold
condemnation of wealthy organized crime is far from easy viewing, both highly
graphic in its drawn out scenes of Cognac and ice-cream orgies and unblinking
gaze at rape. The longer we spend time
with the film’s morally bereft antagonist, the less he changes or learns from
his mistakes. When Jordan Belfort asks
why the FBI is after him given how many more vile snakes are roaming Wall
Street, he must have been thinking of Devereaux. Why view such an uncompromisingly raw take on
an unrepentant monster? Welcome to New York doesn’t pull any
punches and doesn’t aim for us to empathize with Devereaux, but to point a
spotlight on capitalist corruption in microcosm. In Deveraux’s world, crime doesn’t pay unless
you have the almighty dollar on your side.