THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Fine Line Features Director: Adam Brooks Writer: Jennifer Egan (Novel), Adam Brooks Cast: Cameron Diaz, Jordana Brewster, Christopher Eccleston, Blythe Danner
Why are Americans so fascinated with Europe that they travel there in great numbers, and if Europe is so wonderful, why do so many Europeans come to the United States on their three-week vacations? Obviously we all crave change-- the chance to break way from our daily routines to see how the other side lives, secretly hoping to find that the grass is not really greener on the other side of the fence. For Phoebe O'Connor (Jordana Brewster), her maiden trip from San Francisco to the streets and hills of the Netherlands, France, Germany and Portugal were for a different reason. She is a person following a dream--not the dream of "finding herself" as so many people seem to think that a couple of months in the Old World will achieve but of a chance to discover how the sister she adored lost her life, her crumpled body found on the rocks below the steep hills of Portugal's tiny village of Cabo Espichel. What makes her voyage to the Continent of particular interest is that Phoebe is anything but a party animal: she is someone who finds that she cannot fit in anywhere and yet she takes off alone at the age of 18 despite the refusal of her otherwise hip mother, Gail (Blythe Danner), to grant permission.
This is yet another coming-of-age drama. I suppose many in the audience will find it to be a woman's picture, a chick flick, and "The Invisible Circus" is that, but there's more to the story than a focus on a young, sheltered, introverted woman who changes her life by taking her first real initiatives. The tale involves the politics of the early seventies, the time that young people, especially students, were rebelling thorughout most of the Western world against what they considered their warmongering governments and against large corporations who supplied the materials needed to kill.
Faith (Cameron Diaz), who is Phoebe's older sister, has grown up in a middle-class home in San Francisco, adoring her father who returns the affection and incurring the jealousy of her mother thereby. Apparently bored with the security which her life provides, she is determined to make a difference in the world and, this being the late sixties, she pulls a Patty Hearst and joins up with revolutionary groups who commit robberies and worse to bring down their governments. While at first enjoying a romantic relationship with Wolf (Christopher Eccleston), she ultimately breaks away, finding her boyfriend too timid about taking on so- called oppressive governments. When her body is found in Portugal in 1970, sister Phoebe is determined to find out how she died.
Conventional though the story telling may be, "The Invisible Circus"--an ironic title given that the expression refers to a European fun-house--is an involving tale featuring a solid performance by the comely nineteen year old actress, Jordana Brewster. Brewster has us caught up in her adventure, making us empathize with her conflicts and compulsions, leading us to appreciate how her bonding with her sister's former boy friend Wolf could lead into her very first sizzling romance...and in this movie the couple do indeed sizzle. Christopher Eccleston, who does not know how to give a poor performance, is perfectly cast although Cameron Diaz, who could easily pass as the daughter of Blythe Danner, appears too old for the role. Diaz at one point is even asked to portray a girl of about twelve, and not too successfully.
The story moves forward smoothly, with Adam Brooks's cameraman Henry Braham taking us on a Cook's tour of some high spots in Europe in both meanings of the term, though we wonder whether Brooks is geographically challenged. Did we really see Phoebe cross directly from France into Portugal? (No mention whatever is made in the production notes that she spent even a moment on Spanish soil.)
"The Invisible Circus," then, is a substantially fine adaptation of an novelist Jennifer Egan's bildungsroman, with both Jordana Brewster and vivid scenes from the Continent most pleasing to the eye.
Rated R. Running time: 98 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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