Houston Chronicle
April 21, 2006
By LOUIS B. PARKS
louis.parks@chron.com

Acting, life blend in Iago
Exploring the blurred boundary between life and the stage amuses writer-director Zhenya Kiperman. He does it in several fresh ways in the consistently entertaining, unassuming I Will Avenge You, Iago!.
Helen Brooks (Michi Barall) is the young lead actress in a New York-based touring company. She returns home earlier than expected from a production, eager to surprise her older husband, Jack Bandrowsky (Larry Pine), a famous opera singer. In their flat, she finds a sexy woman, house cleaning in very skimpy lingerie.
Helen interrogates the woman, Eve, who finally confesses that she and Jack have been having an affair for three years, and she is pregnant. Helen is devastated.
Meanwhile, Jack, in his dressing room after playing Iago in Othello, is assaulted by a ring-nosed opera fan, Marvin (Keith Nobbs) who doesn't realize that Iago is just a performance and Desdemona, murdered on stage, is not really dead.
Jack, about to be killed by Marvin to avenge Desdemona, spins a wild tale that sends the gullible youth off looking to kill someone else: "I will avenge you, Iago," he swears.
To tell more would be to reveal too much, but know that not all that is seen is truth.
Both the people in the play and we the audience are often deceived.
Kiperman clearly wants us to think of Woody Allen with the way scenes are filmed, the narration (a weak link that could be dropped), the style of the closing credits and his choice of music. (The tour group's arrival in New York is backed by Rhapsody in Blue!)

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Romantic comedy is well represented. The amusing I Will Avenge You, Iago!, shot in New York, plays sexily with the barrier between what is real on stage and what is acting offstage, as a rising young theater actress discovers her older opera star husband is fooling around. Or is he?

PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

I Will Avenge You, Iago!:
Runtime: 95 min. Unrated: Language, partial nudity, drug use, adult themes. 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Parisian, 3:45 p.m. Tuesday at Mizner.

This loopy, clever comedy opens with Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" passage, a concept the movie takes to heart. Beautiful young actress Helen (Michi Barall) arrives at her Manhattan apartment after being propositioned by her director (Giancarlo Esposito). There, she discovers a barely dressed woman (Kate Hodge) apparently cleaning her house. Helen assumes the intruder is having an affair with her husband, the much-older opera star Bandrowsky (Larry Pine, Melinda and Melinda).

Bandrowsky, meanwhile, has just finished a performance of Othello. He is immediately attacked by an insane young man who took the story to heart. And this is only the first 20 minutes or so of the movie.

First-time writer-director Zhenya Kiperman paints a wild world of off-stage drama and farce that mimics that which the characters experience onstage. The story feels a bit uneven, but it manages to pull off a pretty hilarious twist. And the finale, featuring a rewritten Hamlet performed in a prison, has to be seen to be believed.