Deja Vu All Over Again! concludes at Trailers from Hell, with director Ti West on Francis Ford Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married," a bittersweet wish-fulfillment fantasy starring Kathleen Turner.Turner stars as a melancholy housewife fast approaching middle-age who hits her head at her class reunion and wakes up in 1960 as her 17 year-old self. What might have been just another helping of ersatz Capra-corn turns into a savvy and even rueful comedy thanks the shrewd screenplay by Jerry Leichting and Arlene Sarner. The duo turned this material into a musical that opened and closed in London’s West End in 2001. The final film of veteran actor Leon Ames.
- 1/10/2014
- by Trailers From Hell
- Thompson on Hollywood
Toronto International Film Festival
A portrait of a family in crisis, Agnieszka Holland's latest film hits the ground running, and that forward momentum carries it for its intriguing first hour before it heads smack into a melodramatic wall and never recovers.
The promising portion involves the relationship between Julie (Australia's impressive Miranda Otto) and her common-law husband Henry (William Fichtner) and what happens to it when she finds him in their bed with another woman.
In the midst of their certain breakup, their young son, Nicholas (nicely played by Ryan Smith), is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Desperate for a miracle, Julie brings the fragile boy to Poland, where Alexis, a creepy Russian healer ("Jesus of Montreal"'s Lothaire Bluteau), is said to cure people by the hundreds.
So far, so good -- and Holland, best known for "The Secret Garden" and "Europa, Europa", allows the story to unfold with jittery, erratic rhythms that neatly reflect the emotional pulse of its female protagonist.
Alas, not only does the creepy Russian guy with the miracle hands makes Nicholas' cancer go into remission, he also steals Julie's heart, and the two plunge into a rather preposterous, starry-eyed romance that would have been right at home on an afternoon soap.
Things will take one final, more sensible turn. But by that time, the film -- written by Holland along with Arlene Sarner and Roman Gren -- has crumbled under the dictates of a Canada-Germany-Poland co-production agreement under which it must be all things to all countries and ultimately ends up pleasing no one.
A portrait of a family in crisis, Agnieszka Holland's latest film hits the ground running, and that forward momentum carries it for its intriguing first hour before it heads smack into a melodramatic wall and never recovers.
The promising portion involves the relationship between Julie (Australia's impressive Miranda Otto) and her common-law husband Henry (William Fichtner) and what happens to it when she finds him in their bed with another woman.
In the midst of their certain breakup, their young son, Nicholas (nicely played by Ryan Smith), is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Desperate for a miracle, Julie brings the fragile boy to Poland, where Alexis, a creepy Russian healer ("Jesus of Montreal"'s Lothaire Bluteau), is said to cure people by the hundreds.
So far, so good -- and Holland, best known for "The Secret Garden" and "Europa, Europa", allows the story to unfold with jittery, erratic rhythms that neatly reflect the emotional pulse of its female protagonist.
Alas, not only does the creepy Russian guy with the miracle hands makes Nicholas' cancer go into remission, he also steals Julie's heart, and the two plunge into a rather preposterous, starry-eyed romance that would have been right at home on an afternoon soap.
Things will take one final, more sensible turn. But by that time, the film -- written by Holland along with Arlene Sarner and Roman Gren -- has crumbled under the dictates of a Canada-Germany-Poland co-production agreement under which it must be all things to all countries and ultimately ends up pleasing no one.
- 10/17/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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