NINA TAKES A LOVER
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Laura San Giacomo, Paul Rhys, Michael O'Keefe, Cristi Conway, Fisher Stevens. Screenplay/Director: Alan Jacobs.
I have this idea for a screenplay, and so do about a million other people in the Los Angeles area alone. The form seems so accessible--three acts, 120 pages and a couple of meaty characters--that the allure is easy to see. Every once in a while, one of these ideas will end up on the screen, and every once in an even greater while, the writer will get the chance to direct his own story. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing for a novice; a single vision can be unifying or it can be self-indulgent. Alan Jacobs' NINA TAKES A LOVER is an extremely intriguing concept, and a handsomely made film. I just kept thinking that it needed another hand in the production to point out some major distractions.
The story of NINA TAKES A LOVER unfolds in flashback, as the principles describe the events to a reporter (Michael O'Keefe) doing a story on infidelity. Laura San Giacomo plays Nina, a married San Francisco woman whose husband is away on one of his many business trips, this one for three weeks. A close friend of Nina's (Cristi Conway) is having an affair with a sleazy cafe' owner (Fisher Stevens), but Nina doesn't seem to be the type. One day, however, she begins flirting with a photographer (Paul Rhys) that she meets in a park, and the flirtation turns into a romance. As the relationship develops, Nina begins to realize that she is getting much more out of her affair than out of her marriage. She also makes some discoveries about both her husband and her lover which force her to decide which she wants more.
On one level, NINA TAKES A LOVER works wonderfully, and that is in the examination of Nina's character. As the film opens, she is something of a mystery, a shoe store owner given to lying around her bed in a neglige. Gradually, however, this somewhat bland Nina makes sense. She is a woman seeking, as her never-named lover describes it, an "experience:" something, anything different from her marriage. Her thrilling experimentation with her lover is sometimes uncomfortably to watch; she asks him challenging questions and expects answers, something that apparently is not possible with her husband, and she feels more adventurous, more sexy. NINA TAKES A LOVER considers what it is that makes people stray, and succeeds in showing people finding out that they were missing things that they never realized they were missing before.
The problem with this very affecting story is that it is trapped in an awkward structure. NINA TAKES A LOVER has the confessional feel of a stage play, and it might have worked better in that medium. The segments involving the discussions with the reporter heighten the staginess, pull the audience away from the more interesting events of Nina's affair, and, perhaps worst of all, suggest a rookie director resorting to telling you what he couldn't figure out how to show visually. The sub-plot involving the affair between Nina's friend and her annoying lover is similarly unnecessary, adding only some silly comic relief. NINA TAKES A LOVER seems best suited to being a two-character piece, since it is the relationship between Nina and her lover which really works.
Even that adjustment would not have addressed Jacobs' sometimes distracting over-direction. There are moments when scenes are spliced together in a manner which is too self-consciously artsy and draws too much attention to the strange cutaways, as though Jacobs didn't trust the ability of his narrative to hold an audience's attention. The editing is also quite clumsy on occasion, the choice of who is in a shot somewhat arbitrary in appearance, and many of the performances pitched at a level of hyper-seriousness which veers dangerously close to melodrama. Jacobs' might have been well-advised to have another voice around to tell him when he needed to lighten up, or to let the story tell itself. Still, NINA TAKES A LOVER is a thoughtful, atmospheric film which tells a great story. If Alan Jacobs the director could serve Alan Jacobs the writer better, he could have a bright future.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 lovers: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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