LIVING OUT LOUD A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1998 David N. Butterworth
***1/2 (out of ****)
As "Living Out Loud" opens, Judith Nelson's 16-year marriage to a wealthy, Fifth Avenue cardiologist is about to go kaput.
She's dining with her husband (Martin Donovan), whom a friend has seen arm-in-arm with another woman. "Why couldn't you have told me yourself?" asks Judith, whose bleached blonde hair can't conceal the fact that she's not as young as she used to be. "She's probably about thirty," she muses.
"She's thirty-four" concedes her husband, with shame reverberating in his voice.
That "thirty-four" hangs in the air like a lead balloon waiting to drop and crash through the floor of the restaurant, dragging Judith and everything she thought she believed in down with it. As if the humiliation of losing one's husband to a younger woman isn't enough, a thirty-four-year-old "younger woman" only adds insult to injury.
Finding herself alone and disconnected in her swank, Upper East Side co-op, Judith yearns for human contact. She ventures out to a jazz club where a chance encounter with a stranger (Elias Koteas, briefly reunited with the actress after their sexual collisions in "Crash") gives her a new way of looking at life.
Judith is played by Holly Hunter, an actress who has proven time and again, with her disparate roles in "Broadcast News," "The Piano," and "Raising Arizona," that she has talent to spare. She plays Judith to perfection, expertly balancing physical and verbal humor with the pain of sadness, loss, and loneliness. She's paired with Danny DeVito as Pat, a divorced, debt-ridden elevator operator who is also struggling with a recent loss. Judith and Pat might sound like an odd couple on paper, but Hunter and DeVito breathe life into these characters, turning them into believable people with real problems and emotions.
Steering all of this is writer/director Richard LaGravenese, who wrote "The Fisher King" and adapted "The Bridges of Madison County" and, more recently, "Beloved." "Living Out Loud" is his first directorial effort and he directs with as sure a hand as he writes.
LaGravenese knows when to use words and when to let silence carry a scene. He knows when to cut, and when to let a scene run on to its natural conclusion. He includes just the right amount of soul searching, and just the right amount of fantasy--the film's crowning moment is a wonderfully choreographed sequence of such pure delight that I almost stood up and applauded. And he solicits rich, textured performances from Hunter, DeVito, and rap queen Queen Latifah, who plays a sultry lounge singer who befriends Judith.
Earlier this year a film called "As Good As It Gets" gained Oscar nominations for its three leading actors. It's not too much of a stretch to think of "Living Out Loud" as a reworked version of that film, with Hunter in the part realized by Helen Hunt, DeVito in the Jack Nicholson role, and Latifah filling in for Greg Kinnear. The key difference, however, is that "Living Out Loud" has everything that "As Good As It Gets" was missing: warmth, credibility, and a refusal to succumb to tired, conventional plotlines.
Not that we should expect anything less from a movie that has the resourcefulness to encourage Holly Hunter to dance, Danny DeVito to sing, and Queen Latifah to act.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu
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