EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU and PORTRAIT OF A LADY
A film review by Eric Robinette
Copyright 1997 Eric Robinette
Everyone Says I Love You
Starring Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Drew Barrymore, Lukas Haas, Goldie Hawn, Gaby Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Natasha Lyonne, Edward Norton, Natalie Portman, Tim Roth
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Grade: A-
The Portrait of a Lady
Starring Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Tate Donovan, Barbara Hershey, Mary-Louise Parker, Shelly Winters
Adapted by Laura Jones, based on the novel by Henry James Directed by Jane Campion
Review(s) by Eric Robinette
Grade: C-
I can hear the question already. What on earth do these two movies have in common? To most people, not a lot, except that both are by renowned directors. As I saw them, however, both movies have flawed romantic scripts wrapped in distinctive packaging of lavish visuals musical numbers.
But oh, how differently the packages affect their films. While "Everyone's" production numbers make an otherwise ordinary Woody tale something special, Jane Campion's imaginative visuals only serve to emphasize how pompous and uninvolving Laura Jones' script is. I left "Everyone Says I Love You" not remembering a lot about who loved whom, but its infectious happiness put a grin on my face. I left "The Portrait of a Lady" not remembering a lot about who loved whom, and I could have cared less.
"Everyone" features nothing Allen hasn't done before storywise. Woody is again desperately in love with a beautiful woman (Roberts), and against the odds they manage to click for awhile before Allen is left wondering what went wrong--again. Similar situations happen to his family and friends. Some of the more outlandish comedy scenes even hark back to his "early, funny" films. The scenes between Tim Roth and Drew Barrymore could have come out of "Take the Money and Run," his directorial debut.
However, nothing Allen has ever done prepared me for this one-of-a-kind display of sheer good spirits. In fact, in this movie, the feeling itself is what's most important. Yes, the movie would have been better--among his very best, I think--if it had a meatier story. But what it lacks in substance it makes up for in feeling. And what better way to express feeling than through music? Love is often best expressed in a song, and the numbers the cast break into here cut straight to the heart. Some are a tad too goofy, such as the number where a lot of ghosts prance around in a funeral parlor, but I admired Allen for even putting them in there.
It also helps that as usual, Allen has a top-flight cast working with him. Their singing voices range from quite good (Goldie Hawn) to not quite good (Allen) to literally unlistenable (Barrymore, whose real voice was dubbed by a professional). But while their vocal abilities differ, all the actors do a great job of putting joy up there on the screen, and making it rub off on the audience. Granted, some people will simply never accept characters singing in movies, but for those attuned to it, this film should work wonders.
Jane Campion, too, has a top-flight cast working for her in "Portrait of a Lady," too, but even their considerable skills can do nothing to keep the film from being a stilted, virtually lifeless mess, albeit a visually interesting one.
Campion and her cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh come up with a great variety of eye-filling images that linger in the mind. Unfortunately, what didn't linger in the mind for me was the story the visuals were supposed to be reflecting. I remember very well shots of a train with its light beaming and shots of men vanishing around Nicole Kidman, but I can remember very little of what happened between all these people. Even worse, I don't find myself feeling bad that I've forgotten.
The problem, I think, lies not with the cast, which seemed to be trying very hard for the material. It was the script that couldn't convince me to care about anyone. The characters were putting out all kinds of emotion, but I found no reason to connect with any of them. I understood that the story was about cold, emotionally vacant characters, but for me to care about them, I have to identify with them somehow and want them to inject feeling into their lives. Jones' script never simply gave me that opportunity.
In the end, it almost seemed as if Campion was trying to inject some life of her own into the proceedings with her visual flourishes. Unfortunately, as she kept painting these dazzling pictures, they only served to push me further away from the material and remind me that there was no connection between me and the film. In the end, the movie's one strength ended up hurting it.
So here we have two films with pretty uninteresting plots, and yet I was able to truly enjoy one of them. Why? With both films, my head cared about neither story, but only "Everyone Says I Love You" was able to make my heart sing.
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