July 11, 2022
English author Coe (Middle England) offers a witty elegy for the last gasp of old Hollywood. While backpacking across America in 1976, 21-year-old Greek musician Calista Frangopoulou has a chance encounter with real-life 70-year-old film director Billy Wilder at a Beverly Hills restaurant. So charmed is Wilder with Calista that he invites her to work as his interpreter on the production of his next movie, Fedora, on Corfu. After proving herself invaluable to the director, Calista travels with Wilder to Munich for further filming. There, Wilder, a Viennese Jew who fled Germany before WWII, is forced once again to confront his country’s Nazi past. Meanwhile, Calista stumbles into a romance with a young English film student. A lengthy flashback to Wilder’s life as a German émigré is affectingly rendered in screenplay format. Coe’s fictionalized account of the real-life filming of Fedora—which Wilder’s inability to finance in Hollywood his writing partner incisively attributes to the business’s youth-obsessed preference for “kids with beards,” such as Spielberg and Scorsese—is filled with hilarious anecdotes and some hard-won wisdom. As Wilder embarks on what will turn out to be his penultimate picture, Coe brings great sympathy to his touching depiction of an older artist fighting to remain relevant. Coe’s fans will fall for this one.
March 1, 2023
Coe (Middle England) reveals the mind of a legendary director at the sunset of his career, witnessed by his fictional narrator at the dawn of hers. Calista "Cal" Frangopoulou hasn't written a film score in over a decade, and as her own life transitions from active motherhood to empty nest, she remembers her part in bringing Billy Wilder's 1978 film Fedora to the screen. Though the real-life Cal never existed, Wilder and cowriter I.A.L. Diamond did shoot that film on location in Greece. Inserting naive Cal as their interpreter creates a credible, frequently funny perspective on the collaborators' relationship and penultimate project. Narrator Kristen Atherton inhabits Cal's character as both 50- and 20-something, rallying in middle age against personal stagnation and feeling her way through youthful meetings and partings, always inspired by "Mr. Wilder's" genius. Atherton uses accent and affect to distinguish the Austrian American director and his international circle of friends, cast, and crew across multiple time periods for an overall easy-to-follow, immersive performance that leaves listeners ready for a watch (or rewatch) of Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, or any of Wilder's masterpieces. VERDICT Coe's fans will be delighted; a perfect choice for all cinephiles.--Lauren Kage
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