Films that aim to be full of passion
Little Men (out of 4) Starring Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Paulina Garcia, Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 85 minutes. STC
The disruptive nature of change illuminates this latest gem from New York’s Ira Sachs ( Love is Strange), an artisan of the small gesture and quiet epiphany.
Set in a funky Brooklyn neighbourhood that’s in the process of gentrifying, the film’s generational feud — adults versus teens — is also an evolution of sorts.
Brian and Kathy Jardine (Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle), the married new owners of a dress shop, want to triple the rent of their seamstress tenant, a Chilean immigrant named Leonor ( Gloria’s Paulina Garcia).
The Jardines feel they can no longer afford the sweetheart deal allowed Leonor by their recently deceased grandfather, who deeded them the shop.
Leonor, a single mom, insists she can’t afford to pay more. The Jardines have money and family pressures of their own: Brian’s a struggling professional actor supported by Kathy, a psychotherapist, and their move from Manhattan to Brooklyn was for reasons of thrift, not lifestyle.
The battling adults have13-year-old sons, aspiring artist Jake and aspiring actor Tony, fast new friends played by wonderful newcomers Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri.
Refusing to take sides, the teens begin a silent protest, refusing to speak until the rent dispute is settled and apologies are made.
The antagonists all make persuasive arguments. Sachs, co-writing with Mauricio Zacharias, is careful not to demonize the families or trivialize their sentiments.
This could be sitcom stuff in the wrong hands, but Sachs and his fantastic cast (which also include Love is Strange’s Alfred Molina) bring wisdom and humour to the situation.
Cinematographer Oscar Duran and composer Dickon Hinchliffe make strong contributions, adding visual and sonic grace notes to a simply lovely picture. Peter Howell Blood runs hot midway through this directing debut by James Schamus, the ex-Focus Features honcho, but alas, it’s not due to passion.
The electric connection is between Logan Lerman’s repressed college freshman Marcus Messner and his intrusive dean (Tracy Letts), who don’t agree on how a bright Jewish kid from New Jersey should conduct himself amid the conformist student sheep at a Christian-dominated Ohio school.
Their set-to briefly enlivens a screenplay, adapted from a semi-autobiographical Phillip Roth novel, which Schamus might well have penned with embalming fluid. The central romance between Marcus and his deceptively perfect girlfriend Olivia (Sarah Gadon) barely arouses its participants, let alone viewers.
Schamus gets the suffocating look of 1951American academia just right, with its sweaters and skirts, and with a rose motif worthy of Citizen Kane. What’s missing is any real drama or purpose. PH More sort-of character study than passionate exploration of an affair, How He Fell in Love is a rather onesided relationship.
Homeland’s Amy Hargreaves handles the emotional heavy lifting in this quiet indie about a struggling 31-year-old musician Travis (Matt McGorry) who meets older yoga studio owner Ellen (Amy Hargreaves), at his ex-girlfriend’s wedding.
She’s a failed dancer rescued from career disappointment by a much older husband; he has a mentally wobbly sort-of girlfriend. They fall into an affair without much consideration for the whys.
Trouble is, everything feels at arm’s length, even when Travis and Ellen are recalling past trauma or discussing failings and the often-flat work from McGorry costs the narrative. When a weekend away suddenly jolts Ellen into self-realization, the drama picks up, with the help of Mark Blum ( Mozart in the Jungle) as her wronged husband. Linda Barnard Tom Hanks exerts such a gravitational force in his movies, sometimes to his detriment, it’s fascinating to watch him struggle for equilibrium in Tom Tykwer’s adaptation of David Eggers’ novel of existential globalization.
Brows furrowed and eyes narrowed, Hanks’ deathless salesman Alan Clay is on a last-ditch mission in Saudi Arabia to prove himself — he’s lost his marriage, his home and now possibly his job — by selling a high-tech hologram communication device to the Saudi monarch.
Flashbacks of regret from Clay’s previous post as a bicycle company exec show that he callously shipped many good American jobs to China.
Portents of the near future include possible romance: Danish consultant Hanne (Sidse Babett Knudsen), whom he could be with, and female Saudi doctor Zahra (Sarita Choudhury), whom he shouldn’t be with. It makes for captivating disorientation.
Extras include making-of featurettes. PH Demolition is all about feeling: something, anything, even if you have to bust through walls to find it.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s emotionally wrecked Romeo swings a sledgehammer rather than a bouquet in this cockeyed romance from Quebec’s Jean-Marc Vallée, but it’s not what you think. Appliances get smashed, not heads, and hearts require healing.
Gyllenhaal’s Davis Mitchell is desperate to emote after this blinkered New York investment banker loses his wife in a car crash. Little things suddenly matter to him, like the peanut M&Ms a vending machine failed to provide. This prompts a long confessional letter to the vending company and an equally offbeat response from its customer service rep Karen (Naomi Watts). She has her own barricades to break down, along with a young son (Judah Lewis) who delights in mayhem. Earned tears and unexpected laughter combine for more satisfying impact. PH