Out of the Water, Onto ‘The Beach’

The crippling search for perfection can affect anyone, a traveler looking for a dreamy retreat from modern life or an actor searching for exactly the right role. In “The Beach,” it afflicts both at the same time.

For Leonardo DiCaprio, as for Richard, the American vagabond in Thailand he plays, dealing with paradise is a tricky dilemma. Think about being both a gifted performer as well as, after “Titanic,” perhaps the hottest acting commodity in the world, and you can see how the role of a young man who doesn’t know how to react when confronted by the perfect leisure opportunity spoke to DiCaprio’s personal dilemma of not knowing what choice to make when literally everything is open to him.

Making “The Beach” even more enticing for an actor who perhaps feels all this success has come out of nowhere is that Richard (like the protagonist in “American Psycho” whom DiCaprio also considered playing) is not exactly a role model. Naive, self-involved, pretentious, he is a character who gets into situations over his head and has the ability to drag everyone else down with him.

But even if starring in “The Beach” was a life lesson for DiCaprio, there’s little in this tedious and unsatisfying film for anyone else. Made by the same British team (director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge, producer Andrew MacDonald) that succeeded with “Trainspotting” and sank with “A Life Less Ordinary,” “The Beach,” like its hero, is nowhere near as wise and accomplished at it would like to pretend.

Adapted from Alex Garland’s successful novel, “The Beach” connects with its protagonist as a new arrival in Bangkok, a good-time city where “the hungry come to feed.” He’s a traveler searching for “experience” and, like many disaffected young people, desperate to be different.

“My name is Richard, so what else do you need to know?” his fake-breezy, self-important voice-over tells us. In Thailand “looking for something more beautiful, more exciting, more dangerous,” Richard wants his motto to be “Keep your mind open. Suck in the experience. If it hurts, it’s probably a good thing.” We’ll see about that.

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Because this is a movie, the people who are going to change Richard’s life just happen to be in the rooms next to him in his bare-bones Bangkok hotel. On one side are Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen, one of France’s top young actresses) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet), a photogenic pair of lovebirds, and on the other side, well, on the other side is Daffy.

Played with his trademark (and at this point a bit threadbare) manic energy by Robert Carlyle, Daffy has been there, done that and, witness his name, fried his brain in the process. In between psychotic rages, he tells Richard about an ultimate paradise, a perfect Thai beach undiscovered by tourists and unspoiled by the ravages of encroaching civilization. Even better, he gives Richard a rough map (we’re not talking Michelin here) indicating how to get there.

Richard first convinces the French pair to make the trip with him, and then, in an act of unconvincing stupidity the film never recovers from, gives a copy of the map to two of the biggest party animal idiots in all of Southeast Asia. As my mother used to say, no good will come of this.

It turns out that Daffy wasn’t lying--a self-sufficient community of dropouts and slackers, “a beach resort for people who don’t like beach resorts,” does in fact exist on a remote Thai island. A true lost world, it’s run by no-nonsense matriarch Sal (Tilda Swinton), whose manner is half den mother, half Captain Bligh.

Part of “The Beach’s” problem is that, Richard’s insistent “this is paradise” voice-over notwithstanding, the island’s community seems slightly weird and sinister almost immediately. Gun-toting marijuana farmers share the island and the settlement resembles the village in “Apocalypse Now” crossed with a rave site.

Making things worse is the air of sexual tension Richard brings with him. “Desire is desire wherever you go,” he puts it with typical pomposity. “The sun will not bleach it, nor the tide wash it away.” Richard is attracted to the seductive Francoise and other people are attracted to him. It’s bad karma all the way around.

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Director Boyle’s quartet of films (“Shallow Grave” was his debut) show him to be a glib and facile filmmaker, but injecting significance into this wearisome story is beyond this crew. Caring about what happens to Richard and his cohorts is not to be, and neither is investing yourself emotionally in any aspect of the proceedings.

As for DiCaprio, his great likability makes him an unrewarding choice to play the murky, ambivalent Richard. (Ewan MacGregor, the star of Boyle’s previous films and under consideration here, would have been better.) As his character heads for “The Beach’s” predictable heart of darkness denouement, only die-hard fans will have the heart to tag along.

* MPAA rating: R, for violence, some strong sexuality, language and drug content. Times guidelines: graphic and bloody wounds from a shark attack.

‘The Beach’

Leonardo DiCaprio: Richard

Tilda Swinton: Sal

Virginie Ledoyen: Francoise

Guillaume Canet: Etienne

Robert Carlyle: Daffy

A Figment Film, released by 20th Century Fox. Director Danny Boyle. Producer Andrew MacDonald. Screenplay John Hodge, based on the book by Alex Garland. Cinematographer Darius Khondji. Editor Mashario Hirakubo. Costumes Rachael Fleming. Music Angelo Badalamenti. Production design Andrew McAlpine. Art director Kuladee Suchatanun. Set decorator Anna Pinnock. Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes.

In general release.