OBJECT OF BEAUTY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A well-crafted comedy with some nice dramatic moments and some serious things to say. This story is of the theft of a valuable piece of art from a spendthrift American couple living in London. The story touches a broad range of emotions with some of the minor characters more interesting than the main ones. Rating: +2.
It is fairly easy to make a comedy with an Eddie Murphy or a Bette Midler mugging away on the screen and a lot of artificial gags. With a film like that, you know why it is enjoyable and ten minutes after it is over it is really over. It is much harder to make a comedy with solid, three- dimensional characters in a situation that is not obviously comedic and just let well-observed characters drive the story. OBJECT OF BEAUTY is at least nominally a comedy but it spans a broad range of emotion. It is a good story well-told.
Jake and Tina (played by John Malkovitch and Andie MacDowell) are an American wheeler-dealer and his girlfriend living together in a posh London hotel and virtually hemorrhaging money. The problem is that it is money that Jake can ill-afford to waste on meals that cost over a hundred pounds. Jake is hoping for a big return on an investment in cocoa which has been washed out by a dock strike in Sierra Leone. He needs money desperately and wants to sell a valuable Henry Moore sculpture that Tina was given by her husband Larry. Tina prefers hiding the object d'art and claiming the insurance. Meanwhile the lonely deaf-mute chambermaid (delicately played by Rudi Davis) finds that this little bronze head is the only solace for the loneliness of her affliction. She spirits the head away and keeps it as a needed friend. Since Jake and Tina had just discussed hiding the head for the insurance, each suspects the other has done just that and is holding out on the other.
The story then moves between the two worlds. One is the hotel where Jake and Tina are finding this new strain destroying their relationship. It is also where Jake is finding it increasingly difficult to dodge the hotel management on the matter of his bad credit while he is still getting them to pursue the matter of the missing piece of art. The other world is the lonely one of Jenny (the chambermaid) and her delinquent brother. Here what has been a light comedy gives way to some serious drama including at least two scenes of real dramatic power.
The script by Michael Lindsey-Hogg, who also directed, seems to have attracted a first-rate but oddly matched cast of supporting actors, including Lolita Davidovich (from BLAZE) as Tina's best friend, veteran British heavy Joss Ackland as the hotel manager, Bill Paterson (from COMFORT AND JOY), and Peter Riegert (from ANIMAL HOUSE and CROSSING DELANCEY) as Tina's real husband. The script is subtle and rewarding in a way that the British seem to do far better than the Americans. This is a rewarding story with a good balance of comedy and drama. I rate it +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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