This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Drama, E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Lajos Koltai
Starring: Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close
This is Lajos Koltai’s first English language film and I can’t imagine how grim life is in Hungary to motivate him create such a dreary film, that, unless I completely missed the point (which I often do) just drives home the idea that we all settle into love, rather than marrying who we really love. Many of us do, perhaps, but that’s why we watch bright shiny movies, not depressing self-indulgent crap that has less giggles than an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. No one is happy here, and if they are, just wait and soon they won’t be. It is based on a Susan Minot novel and she also wrote the screenplay. I hope her novel isn’t indicative of her own inner pain, or I’ll expect to be hearing about her self-induced demise on the news any day now. The story has a promising opening and moves smoothly and competently towards its conclusion. The dialog is fine and the acting is spot on from the entire talent-laden cast, though the characters are a little bland.
Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) is on her deathbed, pumped up with painkillers, and is talking with her two daughters (Collette and Richardson) and drifting in and out of sleep, where she dreams about her days before marriage. Claire Danes plays young Ann and the story revolves around her best friend, Lila’s (Mamie Gummer) wedding at some seaside New England mansion. Lila is clearly marrying this man, because she can’t have Harris (Patrick Wilson), her first and only true love it seems. Her drunk younger brother is there and follows Anne around with a wine bottle in his hand for most of the movie, while she too falls for the apparently irresistible Harris, who stands like a statue with little to say about all this commotion he’s causing. Look for Meryl Streep in a small role and Glenn Close in an even smaller one.
This film compares most closely to The Notebook, which I enjoyed, and may appeal to the same people who sang its praises, as long as they don’t mind the oppressive mood. This is no smile and popcorn movie. Couldn’t they have a happy character or two? Write in a couple laughs here and there? Not for me. I’ll never watch it again and I hope I don’t have to see clips of it at the Academy Awards, where they often go by the mantra of ‘the more depressing it is, the better it must be’.
