Saturday, June 22, 2013
ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
Today's film was the NYTimes Critics' Pick and near Oscar winner, David O Russell's
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
which is superb and deserves to be seen again if only to hear the lines (which are certainly very clear the first time but bear repeating) and to see the ensemble cast of highly skilled actors maintain the edge that Russell creates, near to the brink and about to go over.
It is not a farce exactly but feels like that. The lines go fast and furious between this family and their friends who are all almost certifiable whacky (obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarding, debt addicts, paranoid neighbors) and, like the star Bradley Cooper quite sure they are right. You are wrong.
Cooper meets Jennifer Lawrence*, who has many problems herself (sexually compulsive, deep grief) and they connect. At first it seems the connection is pretty sick and headed for disaster but, this is a romance drama comedy and so it has to end up OK if harrowing.
There is four star support. DeNiro (very good here for a change and out of his mould), Alan Arkin (any film with him is charmed), Jacki Weaver (Mom to a tee, worried fixer and deeply what they call co-dependent) and Anupam Kher as a therapist. The voice of calm. Well, sort of.
This is surely a 5. I will want to see it again sometime and I have already queued up Russell's Flirting With Disaster.
*Jennifer Lawrence is so hot right now and she doesn't seem like the same woman role to role. At all. She is submerged in it up to here. There.
Labels: films
