What an interesting film The Lovers turned out to be (directed by Azazel Jacobs). It's being marketed as a middle-age Cousin, Cousine, and while it has comic elements (a laugh out loud moment), it's going to disappoint folks who attend thinking that the two films are similar.
It has received a high rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (86%; by way of comparison, Wonder Woman got 93%), and it's easy for me to see why. It's fresh and original and features wonderful acting. Aiden Gillen's performance was especially fascinating to me. At first, I had trouble taking it in. It felt like viewing a cubist painting without being able to resolve the different points of view. I imagine that his performance in Game of Thrones made such an indelible impression on me that it was hard for me to see him as someone else. (Even though I'd also seen his performance in The Wire, which I also thought wonderful.) But I felt that I was able to see him as someone else, and his performance, as well as the others, all seemed to be very real, to be imitative of reality in a way that's unusual for a Hollywood film.
I loved all the performances. Tracy Letts and Debra Winger were wonderful. Melora Walters, who played the husband's lover, Lucy, was also wonderful. Winger and Letts were the cheating spouses, with so much vitality that it was easy to see how they could be loved despite their cheating ways.
After I thought I'd caught the tenor of the film, I kept thinking Ernst Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, he would have done something different with this material. I think I was troubled by the gap in expectation that this would be a funny film and its somber tone. Then I thought We can't have Little Shop Around the Corner, we've seen too much. Perhaps that's true, given that domestic violence made an appearance in Eleanor & Park, a cozy culinary mystery by Diane Mott Davidson and even Debbie Macomber. Does an escapist film have to deny reality? Can there not be an admixture of truthful comfort in the humor of a what is clearly a ridiculous (as well as sad) situation?
I did not like the music or the set design, and while both served to underscore the unsentimentality of the film I found them alienating. I imagine the set design was partly meant to underscore the idea that the wife was emotionally absent and had no emotional investment in her home, no motivation to make it beautiful or personal or full of sentimental touches like a ceramic napkinholder from Key West (not beautiful, sophisticated or elegant, nor even very personal but not anonymous).
Towards the end of the film Debra Winger's character is trying to grapple with the inherent deceit of cheating, and she says, "We're not bad people." At that moment, I wasn't convinced of that statement and I'm not sure that her character was, either. Contrast that with the last line of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot: "Nobody's perfect." The last line of this film is funny, and it has a happy ending.
If you're interested in Billy Wilder, you might enjoy the episode of the Austin Film Festival's On Story series, entitled Deconstructing Billy Wilder (Episode 709) in which Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot are discussed.
It has received a high rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (86%; by way of comparison, Wonder Woman got 93%), and it's easy for me to see why. It's fresh and original and features wonderful acting. Aiden Gillen's performance was especially fascinating to me. At first, I had trouble taking it in. It felt like viewing a cubist painting without being able to resolve the different points of view. I imagine that his performance in Game of Thrones made such an indelible impression on me that it was hard for me to see him as someone else. (Even though I'd also seen his performance in The Wire, which I also thought wonderful.) But I felt that I was able to see him as someone else, and his performance, as well as the others, all seemed to be very real, to be imitative of reality in a way that's unusual for a Hollywood film.
I loved all the performances. Tracy Letts and Debra Winger were wonderful. Melora Walters, who played the husband's lover, Lucy, was also wonderful. Winger and Letts were the cheating spouses, with so much vitality that it was easy to see how they could be loved despite their cheating ways.
After I thought I'd caught the tenor of the film, I kept thinking Ernst Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, he would have done something different with this material. I think I was troubled by the gap in expectation that this would be a funny film and its somber tone. Then I thought We can't have Little Shop Around the Corner, we've seen too much. Perhaps that's true, given that domestic violence made an appearance in Eleanor & Park, a cozy culinary mystery by Diane Mott Davidson and even Debbie Macomber. Does an escapist film have to deny reality? Can there not be an admixture of truthful comfort in the humor of a what is clearly a ridiculous (as well as sad) situation?
I did not like the music or the set design, and while both served to underscore the unsentimentality of the film I found them alienating. I imagine the set design was partly meant to underscore the idea that the wife was emotionally absent and had no emotional investment in her home, no motivation to make it beautiful or personal or full of sentimental touches like a ceramic napkinholder from Key West (not beautiful, sophisticated or elegant, nor even very personal but not anonymous).
Towards the end of the film Debra Winger's character is trying to grapple with the inherent deceit of cheating, and she says, "We're not bad people." At that moment, I wasn't convinced of that statement and I'm not sure that her character was, either. Contrast that with the last line of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot: "Nobody's perfect." The last line of this film is funny, and it has a happy ending.
If you're interested in Billy Wilder, you might enjoy the episode of the Austin Film Festival's On Story series, entitled Deconstructing Billy Wilder (Episode 709) in which Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot are discussed.
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