Susan Granger’s review of “HUMAN NATURE” (Fine Line Features)
Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”) occupies his own unique and audacious comic universe. He is a total original – as is this hilarious inquiry into the basic instincts and desires that drive us. If biology is destiny, for example, where does that leave Lila (Patricia Arquette), an abnormally hirsute young woman whose copious fur makes her flee from society and live, naked, in nature? Her fanciful idyll ends when she needs a mate, which brings her back into society and straight to an electrolysist (Rosie Perez), who fixes her up with Nathan (Tim Robbins), a mild-mannered behaviorist who teaches table manners to laboratory mice. He has his own bizarre quirks, having been traumatized as a child by his uptight mother (Mary Kay Place) and father (Robert Forster). One day, while hiking in the forest, Lila and Nathan discover a feral man (Rhys Ifans), dubbed Puff, whom Nathan is determined to “civilize” with the help of his duplicitous faux-French assistant (Miranda Otto). “When in doubt, don’t do what you really want to do,” instructs always-repressed Nathan. But that’s not much help when the contemporary Tarzan visits a Hooters-style restaurant and his inner animal urges take over. And so it goes as French music-video director Michel Gondry unravels the convoluted plot, consisting of stylized, surreal flashbacks about why Lila’s in prison, how Nathan wound up dead and what Puff has to tell a congressional committee. Credit Patricia Arquette and Rhys Ifans for the courage to appear au naturel – and everyone else for making this zany concept into a raunchy romp. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Human Nature” is a wacky, whimsical 8. The nature-versus-nurture controversy has never been funnier than in this clever social satire.
