Dinklage offers captivating portrait of ‘Herve’
Peter Dinklage, the Emmy Award-winning actor behind the most fascinating character on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” delivers another triumph in “My Dinner with Herve.”
In the HBO film debuting Saturday, he re-creates with unnerving physicality actor Herve Villechaize, best known for his role in the ’70s Aaron Spelling hit “Fantasy Island,” where he yelled “De plane! De plane!” at the top of every episode.
There was much more to Herve: He was an accomplished artist, a lover to many women, a man who lived to wild excess and someone who suffered greatly at the hands of those who should have nurtured him most.
All that and more is explored in the telefilm inspired by writer/director Sacha Gervasi’s unlikely friendship with Herve.
In 1993, Danny Tate (Jamie Dornan, “50 Shades of Grey”) is a London reporter thisclose to losing his job. Now a month sober — and clutching that 30day chip — he returns to the office. His editor assigns him a hatchet job of author Gore Vidal in Los Angeles. Oh, and while he’s there, she wants a profile of Herve — “the most famous dwarf in the world.”
“I thought he was dead,” Danny replies.
Make it funny, she warns him.
Over a long dinner, Herve shares, “A life without risk is not worth discussing.”
But when the interview ends, Herve is loath to let Danny go. He strings him along with promises of a big story, and as their night turns into day, Danny learns more than he ever bargained for.
“My mother always said I was Hitler’s fault. As if he didn’t have enough to answer for,” Herve says, recounting his difficult birth in 1943 Paris.
In flashbacks, we see how his mother shunned him after he was diagnosed with dwarfism. His father adored him but forced him into nightmarish medical treatments in a vain attempt to boost his height.
As an adult, Herve moved to New York and learned English by watching old John Wayne films on television.
He got his big break in the 1974 James Bond film, “The Man with the Golden Gun,” and didn’t work again for four more years, until “Fantasy Island” — a dream gig he turned into a nightmare with his outrageous tantrums. Andy Garcia (“Ocean’s Eleven”) plays Ricardo Montalban, worn down by his co-star.
But the film is mostly a dance between Dinklage (also an executive producer here) and Dornan, who rises to the occasion and gives the best performance of his career as a man struggling to hang on to his sobriety even as he’s dragged through a hell of Los Angeles.
The film’s climax, even if you are familiar with the arc of Herve’s life, remains shocking and saddening.
“Just because a man is small doesn’t mean he has to act it,” Herve says.
“My Dinner with Herve” serves up a larger-than-life tale.