The bizarre Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair seems like rich pickings for a documentary-maker like Charles Ferguson, whose Oscar-winning doc Inside Job laid bare some of the sleazier extremes of international high finance. Instead, it’s indie maverick Abel Ferrara who’s picked up the story, with predictably lacerating results. His take on the scandal, Welcome To New York, has a new trailer that you can feast your retinas on below.
Ferrara has assembled old French favourites, Gérard Depardieu as Strauss-Kahn cipher Devereaux, head of the International Monetary Fund, and Jacqueline Bisset as his wife. As Blackadder might say, the pair soon find themselves in a predicament stickier than when Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun.
Head of the IMF, Strauss-Kahn / Devereaux was accused of sexual assault by a maid working at the Sofitel New York Hotel in May 2011. He was subsequently cleared but not before the case did irreparable damage to his career and political ambitions. Cries of conspiracy in his native France have spilt over into hostility towards Ferrara and his backers who, in turn, suggested that the film’s official Cannes snubbing was itself a conspiracy to protect the man from further bad press.
Before you can so much as say “call Oliver Stone”, the story morphed into a debate on the future film distribution channels. French cinemas snubbed it and it's now getting a day-and-date cinema and VOD release in the UK next month.
It’s been a while since a Ferrara film really landed – his last, 2011’s 4:44 - Last Day On Earth, was a so-so 54-per-cent-on-MetaCritic affair – so hopes are high for a return to form for the man who brought us The Addiction, King Of New York, and earned Harvey Keitel about 4.7 bazillion years in purgatory with Bad Lieutenant. Find out if he’s hit the mark when Welcome To New York hits UK cinemas and internets on August 8.