METROLAND (Lions Gate Films) Directed by Philip Saville
"Would you still love me, no matter what I did?"
"You must be joking."
If you thought that exchange was taken from director Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," you're wrong, but not terribly far off the mark. It's actually from "Metroland," a British drama based on Julian Barnes' 1980 novel. Both "Metroland" and "Eyes" deal with a comfortable marriage jeopardized by temptation, but whereas Kubrick's film had the wife (Nicole Kidman) instigating the conflict, in "Metroland" it's the husband who opens Pandora's box.
"Metroland" is set in 1977. Chris (Christian Bale) has settled down comfortably in a middle-class London suburb with his wife Marion (Emily Watson) and their baby daughter. He's got the job, the mortgage, the car payments, the backyard garden and all that goes with it. Then Chris' old pal Toni (Lee Ross) shows up, still living the swinging life in his mid-30s. Now Chris has something else to deal with: self-doubt.
He flashes back to his days in Paris almost a decade ago, when he wore black turtlenecks, attended Truffaut movies and dreamed of being a photographer. Did he make the right choice in leaving behind that bohemian lifestyle for the safety and tranquility of his homeland? Would he have been happier had he stuck with his free-spirited French lover Annica (Elsa Zylberstein), instead of abandoning her to go off with Marion? The primary difference between the character of Chris in "Metroland" and Bill (Tom Cruise) in "Eyes" is that while Bill went looking for thrills in the present day, Chris is probing his past, looking back on what he's already done.
"Metroland" is likely to strike a chord with a lot of young husbands, especially those who find themselves sometimes envying their single friends. Though the movie is considerably more straightforward than "Eyes" and doesn't have an enormous amount of ground-breaking information to impart about making marriages work, Bale and Watson are utterly credible, as is the beguiling Zylberstein in a role that might have gone to Teri Garr 15 years ago.
Adrian Hodges' script manages to mix a bit of fantasy into Chris' mundane existance without throwing off the tone of the film, but his real strength is his dialogue; some of his words have surprising sting. Especially memorable is the first conversation between Chris and Marion, in which he insists he'll never get married and live in the suburbs. "I think you will," she tells him. "You're not original enough not to." James Sanford
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews