GOODBYE LOVER (Warner Bros.) Starring: Patricia Arquette, Dermot Mulroney, Ellen DeGeneres, Mary-Louise Parker, Don Johnson, Ray McKinnon. Screenplay: Ron Peer and Joel Cohen & Alec Sokolow. Producers: Alexandra Milchan, Patrick McDarrah, Joel Roodman and Chris Daniel. Director: Roland Joffe. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 97 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
GOODBYE LOVER is the kind of nihilistic entertainment that gives you a few giggles while watching it, then leaves you feeling dirty for not loathing the whole enterprise. Aptly labeled a "film-gris" in the production notes, it's a convoluted comic thriller centered around Sandra Dunmore (Patricia Arquette), a real estate agent with dreams of the good life and a car full of motivational tapes reminding her that she can have it. Standing in her way, unfortunately, is her alcoholic husband Jake (Dermot Mulroney), which leads her to an affair with Jake's more successful brother Ben (Don Johnson), while Ben also romances a co-worker named Peggy (Mary-Louise Parker) on the side. When the tangled interactions of this quartet leads to murder, Det. Rita Pompano (Ellen DeGeneres) comes on the scene to investigate and discovers that very little is what it appears to be.
The reason nothing is what it appears to be is that GOODBYE LOVER is a film about twisty-turny plotting...and, essentially, that's _all_ it's about. Allegiances shift, backs are stabbed (figuratively and literally), and greed is the order of the day. It's the kind of stuff that usually makes a film interesting to watch thanks to its unpredictability, but GOODBYE LOVER becomes strangely predictable in its unpredictability. It's so instantly obvious that it's a film about hidden agendas that it becomes a matter of waiting until the next character's obviously hidden agenda is revealed. There's not much fun in the zigs and zags the story takes because every 20 minutes or so you know it's going to be time for the next zig or zag, and the next permutation in a series of unholy alliances.
There's still something over-the-top goofy about GOODBYE LOVER which makes it possible to slip into its sociopathic world. Patricia Arquette is an ideal cast as Sandra, a driven Barbie doll who sees herself as the cutthroat reincarnation of Julie Andrews' Maria from THE SOUND OF MUSIC. The performance is only so-so, but the character is such a wild blend of madonna and whore that she's enjoyable to watch. Ellen DeGeneres gets most of the prime punch lines as the embittered Det. Pompano, most directed at her morally upright Mormon partner (Ray McKinnon). The real key to appreciating GOODBYE LOVER, however, is slipping into the slickness of a production which takes the image of Los Angeles as duplicity capital of the world and blows it up to billboard size. From the encounters with spin-doctoring publicists to the ubiquitous use of mirrors, GOODBYE LOVER has a blast with tarted-up sleaze and the way motivated misanthropes can create an image that allows them get away with murder (literally and figuratively).
In fact, GOODBYE LOVER is so gleeful in its complete absence of humanity that it may take you a while after it's over before you feel the need to shower its decadence right off of yourself. It's too self-aware of its lack of real characters to inspire too much head-wagging, but it's still one of those films that finds it cool to set up the only person with an ounce of optimism as an object of ridicule. GOODBYE LOVER is full of ugly-on-the-inside types who feel justified doing whatever it takes to grab the golden ring because, after all, everyone else is doing it. There's just enough residual cheesiness to keep the film in the realm of the surreal, with just enough bleak attitude to blunt its surreal appeal. It's not a thriller so much as it is an ultra-black comedy, where part of the joke is on you for leaving your moral outrage at the door.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 jilted lovers: 6.
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