Surprised by Love One Couples Journey From Infidelity to True Love Book Review
Films that seem to have everything going for them but that don't come together can exist much more frustrating than films that are only bad. You keep rooting for them and then sighing. Eleanor Coppola'due south 2nd dramatic feature "Honey is Love is Dearest" is that kind of film. It'southward an anthology of three short stories nigh love and commitment and the prismatic nature of the human personality. It draws together a first-rank bandage of character actresses and actors, most of them over l, and then mostly fails to invest the material with the invention and snappiness needed to invigorate information technology and make information technology memorable, as opposed to merely agreeable.
The offset segment follows a film producer named Jack and his confectioner wife Joanne (Chris Messina and Joanne Whalley) who are separated past geography (she's back in their hometown, he's in Montana shooting a motion picture) just decide to take a virtual engagement by taking their laptops to nearby restaurants. The appearance of a beautiful female colleague on Jack'south end of the connection introduces a annotation of uncertainty and suspicion that changes the vibe of the meal. This spurs Jack to strenuously declare his love for Joanne, and makes Joanne unsure whether her married man is overdoing it because he got defenseless cheating or considering he's just upset over having inadvertently upset her.
This segment is a modest two-hander, like a little one-human activity play with a coda, and while the setup of 2 people trying to connect well-nigh by taking their laptops to candlelit restaurants volition remind some viewers of life during the beginning year of the Covid-xix pandemic, the personalities and situations transcend that historical moment. It's probably the most fully realized of the three segments because information technology's on-point and lean, and sets u.s.a. upward without much fuss for a punchline that we know is coming (notice how a particular prop that came into play during the opening scene becomes of import in the last one).
The 2nd segment is altogether the weakest because it sets up a situation that seems rife with potential for humor and revelation simply doesn't do much with information technology. Marshall Bell and Kathy Baker play John and Diana, a married couple who find themselves at a crossroads after 33 years of union. John starts a chat with Diana on a startling note by revealing that he'south thinking of getting himself a girlfriend. He says Diana isn't available enough to suit him and won't render the favor when he takes part in activities she cares virtually but that don't interest him. This leads, in a roundabout way, to an exploration of John'due south insecurity near aging (which seems like a partial motivator for that upsetting comment) as well every bit some of the factors that contributed to the gap betwixt them (John is particularly irritated that Diana won't go sailing with him because existence on the water makes her anxious and seasick).
Of course they terminate up on a boat, simply the setting comes across equally less of a dramatic crucible in which the characters tin be tested than a playwriting workshop where we've been given the not-so-precious gamble to watch a comedy that shouldn't have been put in front of an audience until information technology was really ready. The fundamental selfish obliviousness of John is never seriously explored, much the unanswered question at the heart of it all: what does Diana see in this jerk? And why does she seem and so surprised if this rupture has been brewing for so long? There doesn't seem to exist any real spark between the two, certainly not plenty to explain why seemingly incompatible people would be together three decades. And for whatever reason, Baker's performance doesn't match the person existence described by Jack and embellished past Coppola'due south screenplay (which was cowritten with Karen Leigh Hopkins). Baker is a swell extra, but seemingly not great enough to tamp down her natural verve enough to play somebody like this.
The final and longest segment occurs at a ladies' lunch that is before long revealed to be a wake for a woman named Clare, whose daughter Caroline (Maya Kazan) has gathered some of her closest female friends together in mourning and remembrance. A superficial circular of anecdotes and comments eventually gives way to deeper remembrances, and Coppola and Hopkins' script makes sure to distribute big moments democratically among an ensemble that includes Rosanna Arquette, Valarie Pettiford, Cybill Shepherd, Polly Draper, and Rita Wilson. There are revelations and confessions, stories of ballgame and infidelity and surreptitious pregnancy, and the unexpected mid-meal arrival of a package with dramatic significance.
Merely fifty-fifty though it'due south a treat to encounter a powerhouse cast of character actresses in their 6th or seventh decades of life all get a gamble to do a monologue or two, the repetitious, circular-robin approach to filming them (with a fixed camera cut between closeups and group shots of people saying their lines) apace becomes tedious. The clumsiness of some of the verbal setups doesn't aid (at ane point, Caroline begins a line by telling the grouping, "As you all know, I'm a lawyer").
And some of Coppola's choices are simply cringe-inducing. Information technology's bad enough that the lone Black woman at the table, Wendy, is the only major graphic symbol of colour in the movie; so Coppola has to have Wendy tell Caroline and the residual of the group that her very favorite thing about Clare was how she used to constantly ask Wendy questions nigh race. In what universe would a Black woman such as this say such a thing under these verbal conditions?
It's one of many unfortunate moments when you find yourself thinking about the casually privileged milieu of the unabridged production (a very Beverly Hills brunch); how such movies tend to mistake the discontent, unhappiness, momentary inconvenience for suffering, and how uninterested the filmmaker is in really acknowledging or commenting upon whatever of that stuff.
Of class, not every movie about rich people needs to exist a corrosive social satire. But if you're not going to go in that location at all, the movie should exist escapist, or at to the lowest degree funny and precise and clever and low-cal, seeming to glide across the screen rather than constantly stumble over itself. And it ought to evidence human beings reacting as they might really react if, say, questions about faithfulness were all of a sudden about to be confirmed or put to residual, or if the mate that 1 had expected to spend the rest of 1'south life in a monogamous human relationship with had suddenly announced his intention to go shopping for a side piece. And when was the last time you were at a tabular array with seven or viii grieving people, where every single individual who wasn't talking saturday in scrupulous silence with their easily on their laps until someone finished their monologue?
Oy.
Now playing in select theaters.
Matt Zoller Seitz
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Big of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.
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Love is Honey is Love (2021)
91 minutes
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