The Lovers: Not quite together

The Lovers (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

Quite a few sharply perceptive observations about human nature are contained within this modest dramedy from writer/director Azazel Jacobs, which manages to be droll and forlorn in equal measure.

Too bad it’s so s-l-o-w.

At home, although relieved to be away from their respective lovers, Mary (Debra Winger)
and Michael (Tracy Letts) lack the energy — or willingness — to engage with each other.

The film opens cleverly, as Michael (Tracy Letts) has what we immediately sense is another in a symphony of tiffs with his hot-tempered lover, Lucy (Melora Walters); elsewhere, Mary (Debra Winger) works hard to allay the bubbling insecurity that afflicts her lover, Robert (Aidan Gillen). One scene later, Michael and Mary slide silently — resignedly — into bed next to each other, and we abruptly realize that they’re the married couple in this roundelay.

This scenario’s arch humor derives from the resignation with which Michael and Mary are conducting their lives, and our certainty that they’ve been doing so for years. We assume that this ennui results from their disenchantment with each other, but that’s not quite right.

No, it’s the exhaustion that results from maintaining the marital charade while essentially leading double lives elsewhere, and the utter chaos into which their lives have been plunged: friends long abandoned; lunches with co-workers forever put off; unpersuasive lies fabricated clumsily; extended work hours, just to keep up, due to the time-consuming nooners and afternoon assignations. It’s all exhausting.

And apparently not much fun. It would seem that one of the reasons to have an affair would be the excitement and novelty of the new: the enthusiasm with which the lover is greeted each day. But if that ever motivated Michael and/or Mary, it’s long past.

Michael has Lucy tagged as “Work” on his smart phone, and we get the joke: It’s not merely to conceal her identity from his wife, but a sly reference to the fact that this extra-marital relationship is work. A lot of work. It seems understandable self-defense when he lies to get out of an evening with the woman about whom he constantly lies to his wife.

Mary, if asked, undoubtedly would admit to being equally frustrated.

Lola Versus: Undone by a bogus script

Lola Versus (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Lola (Greta Gerwig) wanders aimlessly during the year following her 29th birthday, her fickle and frequently self-destructive behavior often destroying any good will she establishes during brief flashes of actual maturity.

When best friend Alice (Zoe Lister-Jones, left) encourages Lola (Greta
Gerwig) to jump back into the dating pool, the waters suddenly seem
full of sharks and minnows ... neither of which is good news for a
mildly desperate woman on the rebound.

The same can be said of the film she inhabits.

Lola Versus opens with promise, but rapidly devolves into an overly talky quagmire that feels (and sounds) like a bad Woody Allen film. Co-scripters Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein introduce Lola as a self-assured and obviously intelligent woman — not everybody has the smarts to be inches away from a Ph.D. — but then subject her to an escalating series of bad decisions and stupid choices, not to mention enough drug and alcohol binging to send the next half-dozen people into rehab.

In short, it becomes impossible to retain our sympathy for Lola, despite Gerwig’s heroic effort to showcase her character’s quirky charm.

Then, too, the dialogue exchanges concocted by Lister-Jones and Wein are too arch, too contrived, too knowingly earthy and too faux trendy. Granted, nobody in real life talks like the folks on the big screen, but — best-case scenario — we viewers at least can delight in witty, sophisticated banter when it’s delivered with well-timed snap. Too much of the conversational chatter here is ostentatiously smutty, as if Lister-Jones and Wein are taking their cues from the gals in Sex and the City.

Sorry, but talking like Kim Cattrall’s Samantha is not the height of chic refinement. Not even close.

We meet Lola on her aforementioned 29th birthday, an event celebrated in the arms of longtime boyfriend Luke (Joel Kinnaman), who climaxes the milestone by proposing. Cue several weeks (months?) of excited wedding planning, with some decisions second-guessed by Lola’s fashionably cool parents, Robin and Lenny (Debra Winger and Bill Pullman).

Pullman is a hoot: one of the film’s stronger elements, actually, and I wish we could have spent more time with him. Lenny is recently retired and loving this opportunity to hang loose and embrace social media and all the other “with it” joys of the early 21st century; he and Lola also enjoy a frank and loving relationship.

Winger’s Robin is perhaps somewhat controlling, but Lola is strong enough — and savvy enough — to maintain the necessary barriers.

Rachel Getting Married: Toxic guest

Rachel Getting Married (2008) • View trailer for Rachel Getting Married
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, dramatic intensity, brief sensuality and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.08
Buy DVD: Rachel Getting Married • Buy Blu-Ray: Rachel Getting Married [Blu-ray]


I survived Robert Mitchum's psychopathic preacher from Night of the Hunter, albeit while peeking between my 9-year-old fingers.

I made it through the final scene in Carrie, back in the day before "gotcha epilogues" became a cliché. I marched into the night on wobbly legs after John Carpenter's first Halloween, but nonetheless moved under my own power. I weathered both the first Alien and Anthony Hopkins' debut performance as Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs.

As the tumultuous weekend proceeds, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt, right)
becomes increasingly irritated by the behavior of her dysfunctional sister, Kym
(Anne Hathaway), who can't seem to survive without being the center of
attention. Rarely has sibling rivalry been more pregnant with unspoken
complaints and buried hostility ... and this is merely the beginning.

I also recall, at a young age when my parents should have known better, cowering behind an armchair as a giant spider — no doubt so hokey that I'd laugh at it today — menaced the jungle lord in one of Johnny Weissmuller's numerous grade-Z Tarzan entries. (Indiana Jones doesn't do snakes. I don't do spiders.)

But nothing has ever, ever scared me as much as Anne Hathaway's fumble for the microphone during the rehearsal dinner scene in Rachel Getting Married.

I didn't just want to crawl under the chair; I wanted to flee the county. Anything to prevent having to endure the slow emotional explosion about to erupt on the screen.

Director Jonathan Demme's new film, graced with a raw and sharply observant script from Jenny Lumet — daughter of director Sidney Lumet — is a painfully intimate examination of a dysfunctional family brought together for a wedding ceremony that takes place over one tumultuous weekend.

It's a fascinating, cleverly assembled film, and profoundly difficult to watch. On the one hand, I can't imagine recommending it as a good time at the movies; on the other hand, Hathaway delivers a starring performance that's as fearless, blunt and exposed as anything you're likely to see this year ... or next.

I'm generally not a fan of video verité; thus far, the gimmick has been employed mostly to conceal the weak, logically bankrupt storytelling in low-rent horror quickies like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and the just-released Quarantine.

But just as it took a director with Alfred Hitchcock's chops to show how 3D cinematography really should be used — back in the 1950s, with Dial M for Murder — Demme and cinematographer Declan Quinn have exploited high-def video in a way that not only makes perfect sense, but forcefully complements the story being told.

Indeed, about halfway through the film, I stopped noticing the jiggly camerawork and often under- or overexposed lighting, and felt like I had become part of the newly extended Buchman family celebration ... which, of course, was precisely Demme's intent.