She's So Lovely A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1997 By Michael Redman
**1/2 (out of ****)
Occasionally I will use a film as self-administered mood altering therapy. When I feel uncomfortable with my current emotions sometimes a movie will allow me to jump into another world and when I return to the mundane, will arrive changed.
Perhaps Graham Greene said it best in an episode of "Northern Exposure" when his Inuit shaman character called cinema the "white man's healing stories." It often works for me.
Such was the situation a few days ago when, feeling ungrounded and disconnected, I decided to see a romantic comedy. My usual policy is to know very little about a film before I walk into the theater so that I can approach the experience unbiased. Based on what I had heard about "She's So Lovely" (woman has to choose between her husband and lover), it looked as it fit the bill.
This was a mistake.
>From a screenplay by the late John Cassavetes and directed by his son Nick ("Unhook The Stars"), the film looks at lives that exist in a nightmare world of alcoholic haze and insanity. Maureen (Robin Wright Penn) is a pregnant bleached blonde who spends her days drinking herself into a stupor and falling down. Her realm is one where when she is beaten and raped by a neighbor, the event is almost lost in the daze.
When her husband Eddie (Sean Penn) returns from one of his frequent several days away without a phone call and learns of the assault, he has a major break with reality and goes after the culprit. The rampage ends with Eddie shooting a mental health worker and being institutionalized for an indeterminate time.
When he is released 10 years later and pronounced "cured" (although he believes that he was only in for three months), the world is a different place. Maureen has divorced him and married Joey (John Travolta), a well off businessman and is raising her three daughters (one is Eddie's) with him in suburbia.
Although Eddie can't quite understand what is going on, he heads to the better side of town to take his love back. The civilized veneer of the people who live in the little pink houses of Pleasant Valley proves thin indeed when the three meet face-to-face.
The actors are top rate. Wright Penn especially deserves admiration for her depiction of the "lovely" as a particularly unattractive seedy woman. It's certainly not a "babe" role and is a courageous one. Penn digs deep inside to come up with a angry deranged maniac who is still capable of feelings of love. Travolta with limited screen time does well as the only semi-sane member of the cast.
Harry Dean Stanton and Debi Mazar are entertaining as Eddie and Maureen's friends and could have used a bit more exposure. You can hear the audience breath a sigh of relief when they appear. Their lives are spent in a seedy bar, but they seem normal compared to the rest.
It's useless to complain that many of the characters' actions don't make sense. These people are so separated from any semblance of reasonableness that they could do _anything_ and it would fit in the film. Minutes after stating that she doesn't drink or smoke, Maureen shows up with whiskey and a cigarette. She never visits, calls or writes Eddie during the 10 years yet she considers leaving her husband and children when he is released.
Their relationship is summed up when she tells him "I want to smash beer bottles over people's heads. I just want to smash them cause I love you so much." These are not people that you want to know.
When we left the theater, we walked to get ice cream to shake the movie out of our heads. The shop was closed and we ended up standing in front of the movie house staring down the street wet with rain for several minutes. The world seemed an ugly place. It's a powerful film but not an uplifting one.
(Michael Redman has written this column for over 22 years and is still looking for a quality feel-good film. Email suggestions to mredman@bvoice.com)
[This appeared in the 9/11/97 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be reached at mredman@bvoice.com ]
-- mailto:mredman@bvoice.com
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