|
|
SHE CAME TO ME
Director: Rebecca Miller Cast: Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway, Marisa Tomei, Evan A. Ellison, Harlow Jane, Joanna Kulig, Brian d'Arcy James, MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:42 Release Date: 10/6/23 (limited) |
|
Review by Mark Dujsik | October 5, 2023 Composter Steven Lauddem (Peter Dinklage) has a philosophy: Everyone's life could be the subject of an opera. That seems to be the philosophy held by writer/director Rebecca Miller, too, who gives us a group of characters and looks for drama going on behind their allegedly ordinary or seemingly perfect lives. There are a couple of problems with this particular bunch, though. First, they're not exactly everyday people. The protagonist of She Came to Me has a fairly niche job, writing operas in English to much success and acclaim. His wife Patricia (Anne Hathaway) is a therapist, who works out of an office connected to the family's lavish New York City home. Even Katrina (Marisa Tomei), the interconnected narrative's most prominent working-class person, has a job that even Steven, a man who presumably goes looking for the unlikely stories of equally unlikely people, finds novel. She's the captain of a tugboat, who has spent her life living on the same vessel, traveling up and down the east and southern coasts of the United States, and looking for love at every port, often finding it with disastrous results. These characters are inherently and plainly unique in an assortment of ways, so it's little surprise that their lives have some drama to them. That brings us to the second issue with Miller's screenplay. This weaving tale is more the soapy variety of opera than actual drama. The result is a thoroughly strange movie, which is fine, of course, except that it treats the material with such straightforward sincerity that the whole thing comes across as a fun-house mirror reflection of reality. Miller plays it without any self-awareness of just how convenient, contrived, and melodramatic it all is. It doesn't help that the story is filled with so many characters, each of whom is given a significant amount of weight within the narrative, and told at such a quick-fire pace that none of them is given any room to breathe, let alone come across as an actual person and not a bunch of quirks or pawns in this soap opera plot. It begins with Steven, currently experiencing writer's block and quite anxious about his lack of output. His wife, by the way, is also his therapist, who keeps him on a regimen of prescription and over-the-counter medication. Patricia's quirk is that everything in her life has be organized in such a way, from ensuring that her house is clean to sticking to a strict schedule of sex with Steven. He goes out for a walk one day, finds Katrina in a bar, and goes back to her boat with her. The two have sex, and Steven, feeling guilty, runs away, only to fall in the water and have a revelation about his new opera. It ends up being about a woman tugboat captain who murders her lovers, and Katrina, who's in the crowd on opening night, doesn't see that as insult. She assumes it means Steven believes her to be his muse and, hence, must love her as deeply as she has come to love him. Whether or not this odd tale, which also includes Patricia rediscovering her Catholic faith and believing she has been called to become a nun, is worthy of exploration is impossible. It probably is, if only because it is so eccentric, but Miller seems impatient with it. After all, there's an additional quartet of characters—namely Julian (Evan A. Ellison), Patricia's son from a previous marriage, and his girlfriend Tereza (Harlow Jane), as well as her mother Magdalena (Joanna Kulig) and stepfather Trey (Brian d'Arcy James)—contending for space in this story. Their deal has a racist Trey, a court reporter and Civil War re-enactor, learning about his 16-year-old stepdaughter's romance and trying to bring criminal charges against 18-year-old Julian. Magdalena is also Patricia's housekeeper, which gives the mother something to do besides being protective of her daughter, apparently. The whole notion of everybody having a story worth telling doesn't seem so authentic in the face of such shallow development. By the time all of these relationships and connections and idiosyncrasies are established, Miller's screenplay is already in a rush to bring together the conflicting interests and start heading toward a resolution. It doesn't matter that, in order to get there, the entire narrative of She Came to Me skips multiple steps, such as actually developing any deeper bond or even basic chemistry between the characters whose romance is meant to be the cornerstone of the main theme. It's something about love, which is apparently enough for the filmmakers but feels as fake and forced as the rest of this movie. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)
|
(for
some language)
