At the
Movies
Old-fashioned farce a fun romp; Streep shines in tear-jerker
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
One True Thing (Universal) is
a mainstream vehicle on an emotionally surefire subject: the cancer-ridden last
months of a brave mother. Meryl Streep inhabits the role with such luminous
force that she conveys a reserve of unsuspected strength even as she grows more
and more physically helpless.
Based on Anna Quindlens best-selling novel, the movie is
worth seeing just to catch Streep as Kate Gulden, but it never really
transcends its tear-jerker formula. Director Carl Franklin has permitted too
much gushy music on the soundtrack, and Karen Croners screenplay is
awkward and often confusing. Difficulties are compounded by the fact that
neither Kates daughter, Ellen (Renee Zellweger), nor her English
professor husband, George (William Hurt), are dramatically convincing or
sympathetic.
Its easy to understand Ellens frustration when she is
asked to put her job at New York magazine on hold in order to come home and
take care of her mother. Her father practices emotional blackmail: You
got a Harvard education, he tells Ellen, but where is your
heart? The trouble is that Renee Zellwegers all-purpose response is
an unattractive sulk.
To be fair, hers is the most difficult, most thankless role in the
film. Youre not intended to like Ellen at the outset, but the situation
calls for an actress with a repertoire of emotional responses that would
suggest the growth going on inside her.
The point is crucial since the narratives forward movement
takes place within Ellen: Initially she is Daddys girl, wanting his
approval for her own writing efforts and half embarrassed when Kate dresses up
as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz for a costume birthday party for her
husband. Unfortunately, Ellens journalistic ambitions are never made
credible, and the scenes showing Georges concern for his literary
reputation are too obvious. We are told he has won a National Book Award for a
collection of essays, but he seems pretentious and ambitious rather than
genuinely intellectual.
The movie is annoyingly vague about Georges affairs with
students. By the time were convinced of his infidelity, weve judged
him even more harshly for being apologetic about his wifes naiveté
when, without warning, he brings a famous writer home for Thanksgiving dinner.
Kate makes them hold hands as she says a childhood grace before the meal with
genuine simplicity.
Streep is so transparently good, we forgive her for being a
super-mom in a fatuous upper middle-class suburb. She convinces us that she is
still in love with her husband as she dances with him to Bette Midler songs;
she even triumphs -- with her womens group, the Minnies -- in organizing
and decorating the towns communal holiday celebrations.
Forced to observe her mother on a day-to-day basis, Ellen begins
to appreciate the role Kate plays in the community and the practical
intelligence hidden behind the housewifely mask.
One True Thing would have been more powerful, however,
if it had been anchored in an ethnic and religious reality; when Kate offers
that simple grace, were not sure whether its another example of
ingenuousness or a reminder of hidden conviction.
Indications of rootedness would also have given greater impact to
Kates fierce speech in response to Ellens growing condemnation of
her father. You make concessions when youre married a long
time, she says, defending the compromises of her life. Its so
much easier to be happy. The movie deliberately softens our view of
George later on, however; Ellen finds him in a bar, frustrated by his inability
to complete his novel, tearfully acknowledging his own mediocrity.
The logic of One True Thing seems to represent a
cultural corrective to an earlier stage of feminism, a rediscovery of selfless
domesticity. Women will perhaps remember how their own mothers managed to keep
everything running and will surely recognize Kates power, but it remains
to be seen whether such an example will be contagious.
Part of the difficulty is that the community in which Kate is
acting is totally unreal; everyone is so nice to each other Id take the
first bus out of town. Author Quindlen is herself responsible for part of the
problem because of the weakness of her male characters: Ellens boyfriend
and her brother are empty ciphers, and George is all surface charm.
If youre going to The
Impostors (Fox Searchlight Pictures), an old-fashioned farce set in an
imaginary 1930s, be sure not to be late. As the credits begin to unwind, Arthur
(Stanley Tucci) and Maurice (Oliver Platt) are at adjoining tables at a Central
Park cafe. Minor misunderstandings quickly escalate in the best Laurel and
Hardy tradition and nearby patrons are understandably terrified when things get
to the point where knives are drawn. Since Maurice and Arthur are unemployed
actors who like to rehearse their routines in public, no physical harm results,
but Arthur is outraged. Maurice, carried away by the drama , staggers to a
hammy collapse, forgetting that it was his partners turn to play the
death scene.
The two men are reconciled the next morning and continue their
zany practice scenes in their small room. Hopes of landing acting jobs,
however, seem bleak until they encounter Woody Allen in a cameo appearance as
casting director for his own play. Unfortunately, Allen gets a call from his
wife, who says shes leaving him and withdrawing her money from the
show.
Things only get worse after they win free tickets to a performance
of Hamlet played by the self-inflated and heavy-drinking English
actor, Jeremy Burton (Alfred Molina). Maurice is delivering a bravura
denunciation of Burton at Sardis after the show when the latter comes in,
prompting a fight that largely destroys the premises and forces Arthur and
Maurice to run from the police. With the mad logic of a Marx brothers movie,
they hide in a packing crate next to a dock and quickly fall asleep. By the
time they wake up, of course, they have been hoisted on board a luxury liner
headed for France.
The rest of The Impostors takes place at sea, in more
ways than one. Maurice and Arthur try to pass themselves off as stewards, but
Burton, a last-minute passenger, recognizes them and demands that the captain
hunt them down. It would be easy to complain that writer Stanley Tucci has
loaded the ship with too many characters and subplots, but as director he has
assembled some of the best comic actors in New York and made sure that their
sense of timing is as fine as his own.
A sweetly worried young woman steward (Lili Taylor), when not
fending off the heavily Germanic advances of the head steward (Campbell Scott)
or carrying on a romance with a member of the staff (Richard Jenkins) assigned
to capture the stowaways, tries to find places for the actors to hide. Dana
Ivey is a conniving mother with a seeming wallflower daughter, Hope Davis, who
promptly falls in love with a suicidal band singer (Steve Buscemi). Isabella
Rossellini turns up as a deposed Baltic queen. In addition, a gangster and his
moll are hatching an illegal scheme, an African sheik is looking for passion, a
crazy tennis pro decides Maurice reminds him of a Greek statue, and the first
mate is preparing to erase all class differences by blowing up the ship.
Theres method in all the madness, and if Arthurs
insistence that good actors play their characters small is contradicted by the
movies outsized gestures and exaggerated pratfalls, Tuccis precise
direction keeps it on a sure course to laughter.
Joseph Cunneen was for many years editor of Cross Currents.
National Catholic Reporter, October 23,
1998
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