Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.17.12
Fresh, provocative concepts are
one of cinema’s great treasures: unexpected delights — often in quiet,
unassuming packages — that catch our fancy because they deserve to.
 |
| Initially, Harry (Chris Messina, right) assumes that his brother Calvin's (Paul Dano) new girlfriend is nothing more than a figment of his unbalanced imagination. But when Harry finally agrees to meet Ruby (Zoe Kazan) — and realizes that she's a genuine, flesh-and-blood woman — he's both captivated and genuinely amazed ... because he knows that she first existed only as a character in Calvin's new novel. |
They’re usually script-driven,
sometimes a debut screenplay by a young actor flying beneath the radar ... but
not for long. Think of Sylvester Stallone, stubbornly shepherding 1976’s Rocky to the big screen as a starring vehicle for himself. Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck, and 1997’s Good Will Hunting. Sofia Coppola, and 2003’s Lost in
Translation (not her first script, but certainly the Academy Award-winning
effort that made her career). Michael Arndt, and 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine.
The latter also marked the
directorial debut of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a filmmaking team who
cut their teeth on music videos and the MTV series The Cutting Edge before
turning their deliciously quirky sensibilities to full-length features. They’re
obviously selective, having waited six years before embarking on their
sophomore effort.
And while Ruby Sparks certainly
benefits from their capable guidance, this wonderfully idiosyncratic charmer
will be immortalized as the film that transformed Zoe Kazan from a little-known
young actress — you might remember her from supporting roles in 2008’s Revolutionary Road and 2009’s It’s Complicated — to a multi-hyphenate:
star, writer and producer.
Until a few short months ago,
Kazan probably was most famous simply because of her family name: She’s the
granddaughter of celebrated director Elia Kazan (Gentlemen’s Agreement, On
the Waterfront, East of Eden and many more), and the daughter of Academy
Award-nominated screenwriters Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune and Bicentennial Man, among others) and Robin Swicord (The Jane Austen Book
Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, among others).
Clearly, talent runs in the
family. By the end of summer, we’ll hear the name Kazan and think of Zoe, not
her parents or grandfather. And deservedly so.
Ruby Sparks is Zoe Kazan’s
tart, unapologetically preposterous update of the ancient Greek Pygmalion myth, which concerned a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he created,
after it came to life. George Bernard Shaw turned this concept into a 1912 play
that eventually begat the acclaimed 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady, which
has remained famous — as a film and stage production — ever since.
In Kazan’s hands, the sculptor
becomes novelist Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano), a former literary wunderkind
who sold his acclaimed first novel while still a teenager. But like other
first-time author celebrities before him — Margaret Mitchell, J.D. Salinger and
Harper Lee come to mind — the subsequent fame has proved stifling and
artistically crippling. Now, a full decade later, Calvin still rides on the
fame of his debut book, but he hasn’t been able to write anything new.
His brother, Harry (Chris
Messina), figures that everything would get better if Calvin could move beyond
the still-festering break-up of a longtime relationship, by dating again.
Calvin’s shrink, Dr. Rosenthal (a nicely understated performance by Elliott
Gould), suggested getting a dog as a means of meeting people during long walks,
but the pooch in question — dubbed Scotty, after F. Scott Fitzgerald — is
afraid of people. And apparently has gender issues.
Lately, though, Calvin’s dreams
have been pleasantly invaded by a personable young woman who first appears,
missing one shoe, as a back-lit apparition on a beach. She continues to pop up
when he sleeps, her presence becoming more tangible. More in self-defense than
anything else, Calvin starts to write about this young woman, both recording
his dreams and layering her with back-story and character traits.
Including a name: Ruby Sparks.
About this time, Scotty — forever
foraging throughout the house — pops up at Calvin’s side with a woman’s shoe in
his mouth. Unwilling to concede the possible significance, he continues to
write, confessing to Dr. Rosenthal that he can’t wait to get up each morning,
in order to spend more time with Ruby, as he types away.
Novelists often discuss this very
phenomenon: the enchanting allure of creating characters who become so real
that they seem to leap off the page. In Calvin’s case, this is precisely what
happens: He descends the stairs of his luxurious Hollywood Hills home one
otherwise ordinary morning, to find Ruby (Kazan) asking if he’d like breakfast.
Thus far, Dano has held our
attention as a bruised, socially inept and mildly idiosyncratic recluse: a guy
with no friends, who’s more comfortable with his books than with the folks next
door. What happens in the next 10 minutes is the make or break point for the
rest of this film, as Calvin struggles with the ludicrous insanity of what
seems to have happened.
Kazan (the writer) doesn’t shy
from the absurdity of it all; she simply plunges forward and demands that we
accept the impossible, just as Calvin insists that Harry do the same. Dano is
note-perfect during this brief transitional stage — his efforts to evade Ruby
in his own home are hilarious — and, rather quickly, we simply go with it. Why
not?
And how could Calvin resist? Ruby
is the epitome of his frustrated, yearning imagination; she can’t help but be
the living, breathing personification of his ideal soul-mate. And, in truth,
Kazan (the actress) imbues Ruby with a giddy, irresistible effervescence: She’s
charismatic, appealingly flawed — bad taste in men, up to this point — and
attuned to Calvin’s every mood.
She’s the same sort of quirky
ideal, to Calvin, that Zooey Deschanel was to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in (500) Days of Summer. Calvin adores her; she, in turn, mirrors that love. Everything
is perfect.
For a time.
Novelists also discuss another
phenomenon: the character who refuses to move in intended directions according
to a pre-planned plot, who exerts a will of her own and behaves the way she
desires, thank you very much. And so it is with Ruby, who eventually begins to
transcend the details Calvin thought to grant her.
What happens next ... ah, but
that would be telling.
Dano and Kazan share marvelous
chemistry: no surprise, since they’ve been an off-camera couple for five years.
And while real-life couples sometimes don’t display the all-essential,
meet-cute spontaneity of fictional on-screen lovers, Dano and Kazan — no doubt
with help from directors Dayton and Faris — obviously worked their way around
that issue. They share the necessary magic and, ah, radiant sparks; their antics
— particularly early on, during montages set to French pop anthems such as “Ça
plane pour moi” — are deliriously, impishly romantic.
Annette Bening charms as Calvin
and Harry’s mother, a counter-culture free spirit living in a Big Sur paradise
that she shares with her woodworking boyfriend (Antonio Banderas, exuding husky
male sexuality). Alia Shawkat has a brief but quite memorable role as a groupie
who’d do anything to get Calvin into bed. Deborah Ann Woll — one of the more
erotic fangsters on True Blood — pops up as Calvin’s ex.
Scotty, memorable in his own
scruffy way, is played by a pooch named Oscar.
Steve Coogan is flawless as
Langdon Tharp, a self-proclaimed literary god who hates the fact that he lacks
Calvin’s natural talent. Langdon, dying of jealousy but refusing to admit it,
is the Salieri to his younger colleague’s Mozart. Calvin unwisely regards him
as a friend and mentor: a dynamic we immediately recognize is fraught with
peril.
Messina successfully navigates a
very difficult and delicate role as Harry, the one person taken into Calvin’s
confidence, who knows about Ruby’s actual origins. Harry becomes our surrogate:
the cynical, dubious guy who initially believes that his brother needs to be
committed, but then is forced to acknowledge the evidence of his own senses.
Messina also delivers his barbed one-liners with panache, as Harry struggles to
re-define his entire understanding of God’s universe.
Progressing through the buoyant
introduction and increasingly unsettling second act, we simply can’t imagine
where Kazan’s script will take us ... although we also can’t shake the
disturbing feeling that events will spiral out of control, and in the worst
possible way. Regardless of such concerns, though, we’re truly, madly and deeply
hooked, probably from the moment we meet Calvin, and certainly from the point
Ruby enters his life.
Kazan’s screenplay is witty,
clever, occasionally snarky and unerringly perceptive in its analysis of
relationships, and how they’re sustained ... or not. On top of which, she
uncorks a final scene — two deft lines of dialogue — that is every bit as
memorably exquisite as Shirley MacLaine’s insistence that Jack Lemmon “Shut up
and deal,” as The Apartment concludes. No small feat, that.
Like Little Miss Sunshine, though, Ruby Sparks — however delightful — is a “small” film that may not
bear the weight of the media tsunami destined to overwhelm it. Do yourself a
favor: See it now, quickly, before the hype raises expectations too high.
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