LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS is a Henry Jaglom film. He is the director, the editor, and to the extent there is a script, he wrote it. As in most of his movies, he also plays a role, albeit a small role in this film. Jaglom is arguably the most independent of film makers in America today. He makes his movies for himself and allows the audience to view them much as your neighbor might invite you over for some home movies. He is frequently criticized for being self-indulgent, but to me that is his charm.
Although Jaglom films can be pretentious one moment and totally off the wall the next, they always push the edge of the envelope. My favorite is ALWAYS (1985) which should not be confused with Spielberg's ALWAYS (1989) with Holly Hunter. Jaglom's ALWAYS is a pseudo-documentary about the signing of his divorce papers and has a subtitle of BUT NOT NECESSARILY FOREVER. In ALWAYS he has a weekend party and invites his soon to be ex over along with all of their friends. It was one of my top ten movies of the 80s.
Jaglom does not mind experimenting which means some of his movies are turkeys, but others are brilliant successes. I found LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS to be a minimally enjoyable movie, but one that, nevertheless, has a certain fascination. It starts with the strains of "Accentuate the Positive". This choice of this tune has a meaning you may want to ponder during the slow parts of the film. In typical Jaglom style the picture is shot (Hanania Baer) frequently with a single handheld camera and too many pans and zooms that leave the audience dizzy.
In LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS, Helena Mora (Viveca Lindfors) the matriarch of an artistic family invites everyone back for the last summer they will have in the family home in the Hamptons before it is sold. Helena is a great star who owns the large sprawling home. Although retired from acting herself, she teaches it to others. Her family consists of her son-in-law, avant-garde director Ivan Axelrod (Andre Gregory), his daughter Trish (Melissa Leo) and his playwright son Jake (Jon Robin Baitz), Helena's son Eli Garield (Ron Rifkin) and his daughter Chlow (Martha Plimpton), and others. To the estate they have invited the currently famous actress Oona Hart (Victoria Foyt).
The family is one who prides themselves in taking forever to produce their artistic endeavors and not caring if they are financially successful. Jake however informs the audience that "the dirty little secret of the avant-garde is they are jealous of money." It is as if Jaglom is saying this himself. As if he is saying, I only make these art house pictures and although I claim not to care, I wish one would become a major hit that would make me filthy rich.
When Jaglom shows up in the movie, he plays Oona's agent Max. Max wants her to play a sequel to the mindless but popular movie she just finished. He claims that if she does this, she could start commanding two to three million dollars per picture. She is angry because she feels her life is being wasted and tells him forcefully, "We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!"
Although Oona is successful, she keeps trying to improve her craft. She does this by acting as a baby seal, a leopard, and a heron. She has long scenes where she converses with people acting and talking like these animals. A great but failed attempt by Jaglom at creativity. Poor Foyt really put herself out on a limb and tried hard, but ended up looking bizarre and totally ridiculous. When he has Andre Gregory (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE and VANYA ON 42ND STREET) act as a leopard wooing Foyt's leopard, you want to yell at the screen to get serious.
The best and only part of show that really works is the way it deals with Trish and her incestuous relationship with her gay brother Jake. None of the rest of the characters in this movie are the least bit believable, but Jake and especially Trish are. They have a serious problem to deal with and the movie handles the touchy subject of incest honestly and amazingly well. To further complicate things, Trish complains that Jake steals all of her boyfriends.
LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS runs overly long at 1:45. It is rated R for some bad language and for the incest themes. It is a soft R and would be fine for teenagers. Although I can not recommend the movie, I'm glad I gave it a try. Mining Jagloms can sometimes turn up gold, but then again, sometimes not. For the risk taking and for the excellent acting by Melissa Leo and Jon Robin Baitz, I give it * 1/2.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: December 14, 1995
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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