MAGGIE'S PLAN

MAGGIE'S PLAN is a delightful film that where's it's profundity lightly.  Written and directed by Rebecca Miller, based on an unpublished story by Karen Rinaldi, it's basically a film that what happens after you marry the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl.  That's the whimsical, pretty young woman that exists in many modern romantic comedies to allow the sad, depressed, trapped male hero to escape into a better happier world once the credits rolls.  These poor girls - often played by through the ages by actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Jennifer Aniston, Zooey Deschanel, Natalie Portman or Cara Delevigne - don't really have an interior life of their own, or any kind of aims for their own life beyond rescuing their beloved men.  This has been somewhat grating for female viewers, and presumably for the actresses themselves.

And so we get the wonderful Greta Gerwig - who has played plenty of these supremely capable fixers of broken men and women  in her time - as the lead character in this amazing film.  She plays Maggie - a loving and lovely woman who decides she wants to have a baby despite not having a boyfriend.  She gets an old college friend called Guy (Travis Fimmel) to be a sperm donor, but on the night she's going to do the deed ends up shagging a married college professor called John (Ethan Hawke) instead.  Long story short, she decides to rescue him from his apparently horrendous high-maintenatnce super-successful wife (Julianne Moore), and they have a kid together.  At this point the conventional rom-com ends.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is a movie that is utterly, wretchedly disappointing. Despite an all-star cast, and handsome production values, the resulting film is uneven in tone, superficial where it wants to be profound, and undeserving of the big emotional punches it tries to pull.

The film was written and directed by Rebecca Miller(THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE), based on her own play. It features the eponymous Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) as a middle-aged woman, questioning her life choices through a series of flashbacks. Despite her picture perfect middle-aged existence, we learn that, as a young girl, Pippa was damaged by her exposure to her mother's addiction to speed and resulting psychological problems. The young Pippa (Blake Lively) thus high-tails it to New York where she almost falls into become a soft-porn model for her aunt's girlfriend (Julianne Moore) out of sheer boredom, develops a drug habit of her own, but then is rescued by an older man (Alan Arkin.) Fast forward to her present day crisis, and Pippa is living with her aged husband in a retirement community. She is insulted by his affair with a damaged even younger woman (Winona Ryder) and so trips into an affair of her own with an equally damaged young man (Keanu Reeves).

As I said, this is a well-cast film, and handsomely photographed. I have no doubt that Miller is trying to earnestly explore middle-aged feminine angst and to say something profound about self-esteem and addiction. The problem is that none of it seems real. It all seems like a very stage-y very contrived set of scenes, clumsily shuffled into a movie. At times it almost seems like a caricature of one of those Woody Allen films, except without the wry humour, where old men seem to be able to attract ever younger more attractive women and everyone spends the whole time discussing their neuroses and committing suicide.

Enough already.

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE was released last autumn and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE - beautifully crafted drama

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE is a beautifully crafted, lyrical movie. It unfurls at a languorous pace which I suspect some might find frustrating. However, the pace perfectly matches the emotional arc of the key character - a young Russian woman called Laura. Laura is in a relationship with an old, wealthy record producer called Alan James. He is not a bad man, and one suspects that he does love Laura and their young son Sam. But he is one of those personalities that dominates a room - successful, out-going and yet somehow like a bulldozer. Her attitude begins as one of stolid, uncomplaining contentment. As she says to Alan's grown-up son, she lives better than anyone she has ever known and feels that she has no right to complain. The movie traces her increasing self-awareness about what she wants from life and what she feels about her current situation, faciliated partly by a messy affair. As the movie closed out on a freeze-frame on Laura, I was reminded of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady.

The movie deals unashamedly with adult themes in an unflashy, unsentimental manner. It hangs on a script of uncanny insight; deft, intimate camera-work; and two lead performances of subtlety and conviction. Rip Torn - better known to most as Will Smith's boss in MEN IN BLACK - is a revelation as the ageing musician. Dina Korzun is outstanding - truly Oscar-deserving - as Laura. I should also mention that the sound-track is superb - particularly the title song. The upshot is that I heartily recommend this film - although it is clearly not for those Friday-night popcorn moments.

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE premiered at Sundance 2005 where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It has since been on release in the US, Austria and France. It opened in the UK yesterday. I have no information about the German or Australian release date.