By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Because advertising and trailers can be deceptive, part of a movie critic’s job is to steer audiences to films they may enjoy. This poignant rom-com “Book Club” is directly aimed at older adults — and the matinee audience with whom I viewed it burst into spontaneous applause at the conclusion.
In suburban Santa Monica, four lifelong friends meet regularly to sip wine, nibble canapes and discuss their lives as they relate to the chosen book they’re all reading. Years ago, they began with Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying,” and now they’re into the purple prose of E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Capturing some of the fun of “The First Wives Club,” each woman represents a particular stage of romantic life:
Jane Fonda’s sexy, vivacious Vivien is a wealthy, workaholic hotelier who has always avoided emotional commitment — until, suddenly, old flame Arthur (Don Johnson) tracks her down.
Candice Bergen’s Sharon is an acerbic federal judge who hasn’t had a relationship since her divorce 18 years ago. But now that her ‘ex’ (Ed Begley) has a decades-younger fiancee (Mircea Monroe), she’s reluctantly risking dinner with internet dates (Richard Dreyfuss, Wallace Shawn).
Recently widowed after 40 years of marriage, Diane Keaton’s skittish Diane is fending off grown ‘helicopter’ daughters (Alicia Silverstone, Katie Aselton) who want her to move near them in Scottsdale, Arizona. On a plane, she meets Mitchell (Andy Garcia), a suave pilot who asks her out.
And Mary Steenburgen’s Carol is a successful chef/restaurateur whose once-sparky marriage to recently retired Bruce (Craig T. Nelson) has recently, inexplicably gone stale.
Working from a naughty-but-nice screenplay he wrote with Erin Simms, director Bill Holderman uses the book as a device to interweave stories, devising nostalgic moments: Keaton revives her androgynous “Annie Hall” wardrobe. Steenburgen does a “Melvin and Howard” tap dance routine. Fonda wears thigh-high “Klute” boots. And Don Johnson’s daughter, Dakota, played the “Fifty Shades” heroine.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Book Club” is a sweetly saucy 7, a feel-good chick-flick.
Chilean director Sebastian Lelio, who won this year’s Foreign Language Oscar for the transgender drama “A Fantastic Woman,” has adapted Naomi Alderman’s novel “Disobedience” as his first English-language film, co-writing with playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz (“Ida”).
Set in Hendon, the north London suburb where the Alderman, a former Orthodox Jew, grew up, it begins as elderly, revered Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser) is giving what will be his last sermon — on the nature of free will, a divine gift bestowed only on humans.
After he dies, his long-estranged daughter, New York avant-garde photographer Ronit (Rachel Weisz) rushes home. But that’s an insular, devoutly religious patriarchy, where she is treated with outwardly courteous but obvious contempt. She openly smokes, doesn’t cover her head, and rails against “institutional obligation.”
Greeting her as they’re sitting Shiva is Rabbi Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), her father’s disciple/surrogate son, soon to be chosen as her father’s successor. To her astonishment, Ronit discovers that he’s married to her closest friend — and furtive teenage lover — Esti (Rachel McAdams).
When Ronnit inquires: “Do you guys have sex every Friday?” Esti demurely nods, “It’s expected.” To which Ronnit, an avid feminist, murmurs, “Medieval.”
The women’s lesbian relationship is immediately rekindled, culminating in an afternoon of anguish and erotic ecstasy. Predictably, their ‘forbidden’ secret is soon discovered. The two Rachels deliver sympathetically realistic performances, while Alessandro Nivola’s restrained anguish is palpable.
While Sebastian Lelio reveals the austere manners and mores of the close-knit community, his heavy-handed, one-sided, melodramatic depiction of sadly repressed, oppressed Hasidic women in frumpy, dark clothes follows Natalie Portman’s “New York, I Love You” and Renée Zellweger’s “A Price Above Rubies,” among others.
In recent years, I have come to know reverently Orthodox women who exult in the joy and fullness of their traditional lives, presiding over their weekly Shabbat dinners.
On the Granger Gauge, “Disobedience” is a sensitive, yet simplistic 6, revealing an ideological, fundamentalist dilemma to a secular audience.
Appropriately titled “Dark Crimes,” this sordid crime thriller, set in Eastern Europe, begins with writhing naked women being brutally dragged through a dingy corridor — part of an underworld sex club.
That’s on a videotape unearthed in the basement of Krakow Police Headquarters by a disgraced police officer, Tudek (Jim Carrey), who connects the plot of a new ‘audio novel’ by imperceptibly psychotic author Krystof Kozlov (Marton Czokas) with an old, unsolved murder case.
Guided by his Polish pal Piotr (Vlad Ivanov), Tudek gradually works out the intricacies that connect wily Kozlov to corrupt Detective Greger (Robert Wieckiewicz), who was originally assigned to the murder case and has now been promoted to police chief.
Predictably and inevitably, since his wife (Agata Kulesza) is openly antagonistic, Tudek indulges in an interlude with Kozlov’s sadomasochistic, drug-addicted girlfriend, Kasia (Charlotte Gainsboug), that both clarifies and complicates matters further, eventually delivering an unexpected twist.
Allegedly based on a true story, it’s adapted by Jeremy Brock (“The Last King of Scotland”) from David Grann’s 2008 New Yorker article, “True Crime: A Postmodern Murder Mystery,” about a Polish writer, Kyrstian Bala, who was incarcerated after the plot of one of his novels was tied to an unsolved homicide.
Greek director Alexandros Avranas (“Miss Violence”) evidences only a disconcerting, pedestrian blandness as dreary scenes seemingly drone on.
The singular intriguing quality of this degrading film is Jim Carrey’s grimly serious performance which never reveals even a glimmer of the 54-year-old actor’s inherent charm or charisma — totally unlike his previous dramas (“Man on the Moon,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “The Truman Show”).
On the Granger Gauge, “Dark Crimes” is an exploitative 2 — inept and often incoherent.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
