Lost in translation

Downhill proves not all foreign remakes are equal

There’s something ironic, if not perverse, in the fact that Downhill arrived in theatres just a few days after Parasite won the Oscar for best picture. The latter film, a South Korean comedy-thriller by Bong Joon Ho, was the first foreign-language movie to take Hollywood’s biggest prize. Now Downhill arrives as a reminder that some traditions remain in place.

An observational comedy starring Julia Louis-dreyfus and Will Ferrell as a couple dealing with escalating marital tensions during a ski vacation in the Austrian Alps, Downhill is the American remake of Force Majeure, a 2014 film by Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund that, by any measure, was far superior. Funny, dramatic, tense and tonally unpredictable, Östlund’s commentary on marriage and gender roles won a jury prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival.

Thus continues the dubious practice as old as the movie industry itself, whereby a smart, entertaining and original movie from overseas is adapted for American audiences, leaching most of what made it so good in the first place. A French feel-good movie titled The Intouchables becomes an instant forgettable called The Upside, with Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart. The astonishing vampire thriller Let the Right One In, by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, becomes the Ok-not-great vampire thriller Let Me In, with Chloë Grace Moretz. The taut Argentine political drama The Secret in Their Eyes drops a definite article — and much of its potency — to become Secret in Their Eyes, with Julia Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

But the effect is not always deleterious: After all, Some Like it Hot and 1960’s The Magnificent Seven were remakes, and even the most diehard fans of the classic Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs could admit that Martin Scorsese’s Bostonized version, The Departed, was wicked pissah.

As often as not, the original directors will often gladly cannibalize their own work, eager to work with Hollywood stars, gain entree to Hollywood and attract wider audiences. When director Sebastián Lelio made the delightful Chilean coming-of-middleage romance Gloria in 2013 it received ecstatic reviews and about US$6 million; when Julianne Moore appeared in Lelio’s American and less well-received remake Gloria Bell, it scored nearly twice that. Similarly, Hans Petter Moland’s Cold Pursuit — a nifty remake of his 2014 action comedy In Order of Disappearance — made more than US$75 million as a Liam Neeson vehicle, compared with less than US$1 million when its biggest star was Stellan Skarsgård.

As catholic as audiences are becoming in their viewing habits, it’s the filmmakers themselves who might need to readjust their notions of success: Bong has announced that he will co-produce a limited series based on Parasite for HBO. No word yet on whether the show will be in English or Korean. Sometimes an inch can feel like a mile.