A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, September 9, 2024

The Lovers (Azazel Jacobs, 2017)

Debra Winger and Tracy Letts in The Lovers
Cast: Debra Winger, Tracy Letts, Aidan Gillen, Melora Walters, Tyler Ross, Jessica Sula. Screenplay: Azazel Jacobs. Cinematography: Tobias Datum. Production design: Sue Tebbutt. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Mandy Hoffman. 

Azazel Jacobs's The Lovers has a premise that sounds very French: A middle-aged married couple, each of whom has a lover, has decided to separate. But all of a sudden they discover that their old passion for each other has flared up again. As a result, they begin lying to their lovers to cover up their reheated marriage. But these are not Parisian sophisticates, they're American suburbanites. The couple, Mary (Debra Winger) and Michael (Tracy Letts), are cubicle-dwellers in tedious office jobs; their respective lovers, Robert (Aidan Gillen) and Lucy (Melora Walters), bring a little artsy glamour to their lives -- Robert is a writer and Lucy a dancer. Mary and Michael have promised their lovers that they will separate after their  college-age son, Joel (Tyler Ross), comes for a visit with his girlfriend, Erin (Jessica Sula). Joel has been witness to the tension in his parents' marriage, which he blames on his father, and he warns Erin that it will not be a pleasant visit. But Erin finds them to be warmly affectionate, which in its turn causes tension between her and Joel. Meanwhile, Robert and Lucy, both frustrated by the delay in the separation of Mary and Michael, begin to act out: Robert confronts Michael in a supermarket, and the volatile Lucy actually hisses at Mary when she sees her -- an event witnessed by Erin. Unfortunately, Jacobs can't find an easy way to resolve this crisis and the very promising film begins to fall apart. From the outset, in fact, the film feels a little off in tone, as if it's not quite sure when or whether we're supposed to laugh at the situations the characters fall into. For one thing, it's overlaid with and sometimes smothered by a lush, romantic, symphonic score by Mandy Hoffman that often seems at odds with what's happening on screen. Defenders of the film say that these are directorial choices designed to be unsettling, but I have to wonder why Jacobs chose this particular story to unsettle us with. 

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