This movie is the kind of garbage you might find on the Lifetime channel. I was embarrassed for the actors who appeared in this gut-wrenching, slobbering, emotion-fest. Both Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connolly are fine actors, and anyone offended by mawkish sentimentality will wince at some of the lines they are made to speak in this in this awful, maudlin, frustrating movie.
Billy Crudup plays a super-decent, super-caring, super-sensitive Democratic (of course--just one of this movie's many cliches) Congressional contender. Jennifer Connolly is his lover from some 10 years ago, who he believes has been killed in Chile rescuing people from a despotic regime. Their affair is told through flashbacks. They have long senstive conversations. When they fight, they don't really fight--they are both too decent to yell at the other. They just look hurt, and we *know* that this is a very meaningful non-fight. Naturally, he is a gentle lover; she weeps during sex. Everyone in this movie is terribly earnest, and LOVES to talk about what they're feeling. In other words: This is the Über Chick Movie!
But then, when Crudup's character is running for office, he begins seeing Connolly...around, sometimes out of the corner of his eye, sometimes everywhere, a flock of her coming at him. It seems likely...likely that she's alive...or is it his imagination? We're never given a convincing reason why, if Connolly is still alive, she has been in hiding all these years, or how such a sensitive, decent person could justify doing what she did to him. If she isn't alive...then ole Fielding is hallucinating and is, therefore, a psychopath, and the whole idea that he could sustain a campaign, let alone get elected, is laughable.
There is one remarkably inept scene in which Crudup's character Fielding is eating with Connolly, her church coworkers (two priests), and 4 Chilean nationals they have just rescued. One of the Chilean women confronts Fielding on his desire to become a politician, condemning him specifically for becoming an American politician, and we--like Fielding--feel the others in the room silently agreeing with her. Fielding explodes (but decently!), pointing out their hypocrisy, and how, despite the world's finger-pointing at Americans, it is OUR shores they so often wash up on when fleeing the terror of their homelands. Finally, he declares that he is "choking on the collective superiority in this room!" It is a good line, and he delivers a great tirade...but everyone (except, perhaps, the Chileans) in this movie is so darn nice, and good and wholesome, that we can't believe for a minute that they can't see Fielding's goodness, too. So their collective superiority...it just doesn't ring true.
In fact, very, very little in this movie rings true. This is the sort of movie a 14-year-old girl wanting an adult love story might like; it displays precisely that sort of idealized emotional maturity. Few discerning adults will be able to stomach it. Even my wife (who is the reason I sat through it) disliked it.
Billy Crudup plays a super-decent, super-caring, super-sensitive Democratic (of course--just one of this movie's many cliches) Congressional contender. Jennifer Connolly is his lover from some 10 years ago, who he believes has been killed in Chile rescuing people from a despotic regime. Their affair is told through flashbacks. They have long senstive conversations. When they fight, they don't really fight--they are both too decent to yell at the other. They just look hurt, and we *know* that this is a very meaningful non-fight. Naturally, he is a gentle lover; she weeps during sex. Everyone in this movie is terribly earnest, and LOVES to talk about what they're feeling. In other words: This is the Über Chick Movie!
But then, when Crudup's character is running for office, he begins seeing Connolly...around, sometimes out of the corner of his eye, sometimes everywhere, a flock of her coming at him. It seems likely...likely that she's alive...or is it his imagination? We're never given a convincing reason why, if Connolly is still alive, she has been in hiding all these years, or how such a sensitive, decent person could justify doing what she did to him. If she isn't alive...then ole Fielding is hallucinating and is, therefore, a psychopath, and the whole idea that he could sustain a campaign, let alone get elected, is laughable.
There is one remarkably inept scene in which Crudup's character Fielding is eating with Connolly, her church coworkers (two priests), and 4 Chilean nationals they have just rescued. One of the Chilean women confronts Fielding on his desire to become a politician, condemning him specifically for becoming an American politician, and we--like Fielding--feel the others in the room silently agreeing with her. Fielding explodes (but decently!), pointing out their hypocrisy, and how, despite the world's finger-pointing at Americans, it is OUR shores they so often wash up on when fleeing the terror of their homelands. Finally, he declares that he is "choking on the collective superiority in this room!" It is a good line, and he delivers a great tirade...but everyone (except, perhaps, the Chileans) in this movie is so darn nice, and good and wholesome, that we can't believe for a minute that they can't see Fielding's goodness, too. So their collective superiority...it just doesn't ring true.
In fact, very, very little in this movie rings true. This is the sort of movie a 14-year-old girl wanting an adult love story might like; it displays precisely that sort of idealized emotional maturity. Few discerning adults will be able to stomach it. Even my wife (who is the reason I sat through it) disliked it.