What's Wrong With This Picture?

Though One Hour Photo's surreal shock-cut to Sy bleeding from his eyes is closer to "Closer" than "Criminal" (and more a sign of the filmmaker's mounting desperation than the photo guy's), it's the latter video that resonates strongest in the feature. Which isn't to say that Sy (or Romanek) ever pushes in for an extreme close-up of a half-dressed young Jake: The store clerk's nervous offer of a supercool action figure at a deep discount is about as racy as it gets, thank God. Rather, it's the aesthetic kinship between Apple's jailbait shutterbug and Jake -- both of whom reveal an avant-garde knack for framing the plastic-bag variety of American beauty -- that pegs Romanek as an auteur in more ways than one. "Criminal" takes pains to place Apple's routine rec-room subjects -- a faux-wood chair, a stray plastic shoe -- just slightly off-center so as to make them worthy of inclusion at, say, MoMA. Similarly, One Hour Photo turns on Sy's recognition that Jake's work with a disposable camera is indispensable for its canted angle on the ordinary. And what do you know? The real revelation of the movie's final shots is that both Sy and Romanek share that same gift. They're artists.

In this way, One Hour Photo means to show solidarity with both the child and the workingman. Don't underestimate the dude behind the counter, it says. Underneath that blue polyester vest may lie the heart of a virtuoso. Still, Romanek doesn't appear quite ready to turn the photo guy loose on the latest Beck clip. Like Max Cady in Cape Fear, the prototypical prole-stalks-bourgeois thriller, Sy is employed simply to scare the family members silly and, in so doing, make them stronger. Call it an exercise in threat management, free with the purchase of a photo album -- or a movie ticket. Indeed, no one seeing One Hour Photowill continue to consider 35mm a safe choice for the family. It's a full-service movie.

ONE HOUR PHOTO | Written and directed by MARK ROMANEK Produced by CHRISTINE VACHON, PAMELA KOFFLER and STAN WLODKOWSKI | Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures At ArcLight Hollywood and Cinerama Dome, Landmark's Regent