Return to Montauk
Cert: 15A; Now showing The subject of middle-aged love is increasingly common. Someone has obviously worked out that there are loads of us floating around and we might just be interested in the bit of contemporary romance.
Colm Toibin co-wrote the screenplay of Return to Montauk with director Volker Schlondorff, so potentially there was lots to like. It was a surprise then to find it annoying, a Nicholas Sparks-type story stumbling in its need to be wordy and high-minded. The opening scene with author Max (Stellan Skarsgard) reading from his book about how the only things that matter in life are one’s biggest mistakes and one’s regrets for things left undone encapsulates the whole film in more ways than one; Max’s regrets, and Max’s pseudo depth. This is a man in his early 60s who has come from his home in Berlin for a book launch in New York. His much-younger wife Clara (Susanne Wolff ) has been based in New York at his behest, but although they haven’t seen each other for a long time, Max’s mind strays to an old flame, Rebecca (Nina Hoss, pictured).
Initially chilly Rebecca relents and invites Max on a road trip to Montauk where they reminisce about their time together and we discover why it ended. All of that is interesting and the acting is good — but Max is just such a knob.
Wrapping his bethedging hound-doggery in vague existentialism doesn’t mean he isn’t a bet-hedging hound dog. Some of the dialogue is hard to understand, a lot of it unrealistic. A good idea, it felt very self-aware and emotionally weak.