The Simian Line

THE SIMIAN LINE kinda intrigued me for a while. It has a cast full of known names and yet so few reviews, so for me it could have been some sort of must-see. Well, I was wrong and after I finished it I could see why it has been forgotten.

It begins during an Halloween party thrown by Katherine (Lynn Redgrave) when a psychic named Arnita (Tyne Daly) predicts that one of the couples at the party will break up by the end of the year, but nobody believes her. Arnita doesn't tell her that she can see a fourth couple, the ghosts of Mae and Edward (the late William Hurt). Days pass and Katherine becomes jealous of her lover's flirting with gorgeous neighbour Sandra (Cindy Crawford), and the lives of the other two couples are shown but at this point, who cares?

In the beginning it looked ok, but as it progressed it took a detour to Stupidville and never went back. The acting was lazy, and only William Hurt and Eric Stoltz looked like they were trying, but all the others? They just went through the motions. Most of the characters were bland or annoying, and this is a major strike for any movie (not just this). The plot looked boring and I am amazed I didn't feel asleep during the viewing.

Not a really bad movie but something close thanks to sloppy direction, lazy editing and hard to believe situations. Only of interest if you love to see beloved actors in low points of their careers.

I saw this movie at the Hamptons International Film Festival. It was definitely my festival favorite. It was also a treat to see Harry Connick Jr., Samantha Mathis, the director, Linda Yellen, and the child star there. They gave a great interview. It was a lot of fun.

The Simian Line tells the story of three couples who get together for a Halloween party. They bring in a psychic (played by a VERY funny Tyne Daly), who finds that there are ghosts in the house (William Hurt and Samantha Mathis). Hurt plays a Southern Gentleman and Mathis a whimsical 1920's flapper. When no one belives her, Daly angrily reveals that one of the couples will be forever broken up by New Years.

From here, the audience watches the relationships mingle and shift shape while the couples try to remain together. One of the couples is Harry Connick Jr and Lynn Redgrave. They maintian a May/December romance. Redgrave plays her part with such power, I wouldn't be surprised to see an Oscar award next year. Cindy Crawford and Jamie Sheridan are another couple. Sheridan is the wall street exec. working endlessly on a merger, while Crawford is the patient wife trying to start a party planning business. Crawford is surprisingly good in this "glamour"-less role. The third couple are Monica Keena and Dylan Bruno who play two 20-somethings trying to make it as rock stars. (Keena belts out a great song entitled "Kiss My Ass.")

All in all, I really liked this movie because it had several funny moments which got me laughing out loud, as well as some deeply moving emotional scenes. I would recommend this movie to anyone, but I would say it's an especially good "date movie".

It's not surprising that my expectations were a bit inflated with such a terrific cast of actors assembled, regardless of the story. I would say that the movie has some good moments, but overall, missed an opportunity and really should have been much better. There's some interesting themes introduced in the FIVE story lines/relationships that go mostly unexplored, and things are tied up quite neatly and abruptly at the end, which I found unsatisfying and frustrating. This film isn't a waste of time, but is likely to be enjoyed only if you approach it as the light fairytale that it is, and don't expect anything more.

The Simian Line (2000)

There are attempts at stylizing, moments of humor, apparent insights into contemporary life in New York (and New Jersey), and a kind of cheap glamorizing of people who already very glamorous. There's a very starry cast (big names drop like snowflakes, and have has much resilience), but between a television kind of tawdry filmmaking, a stumbling overreaching plot, and just plain bad directorial decisions, it's pretty awful.

In fact, the longer you watch it, the more you wonder at how so many people could have been involved in something that went so wrong. The director Linda Yellen is known for a line of increasingly awful television movies, poorly made and either sentimental or pushy. This is not officially made for t.v. but it has the same feel, with dissolves used for convenience rather than effect, with flat or bright lighting and still cameras, with actors who are determined to act normal, and normal is pretty dull when you take it literally. Some odd additions might not help--Harry Connick Jr., who is charming as a sit-com guest doesn't hold his own, and Cindy Crawford, who of course has mostly to look pretty, making you realize this is what most actresses do, and just as well.

The music is sappy to boot. Which reminds you of all those movies who want to make you feel something by pulling all the right strings, but you end up resenting it because it's not the real deal. What's frustrating here most of all is a movie that wants to be deep, and which made such attempts to be deep, only forces you to react against it.

If you do stick it out, you'll find a growing interlayering of lives, including a couple from the past (one of them a William Hurt with a horrendous southern accent) seen only by a mystic. And by the viewer. It's just not clever or interesting enough. Yes, the guys are buff, the women are charming, and life for regular very rich people who act very badly is the raw material for this really striving but impossibly flawed movie.

Great cast, sloppy, thrown-together movie with huge plot holes and characters for whom I cared very little. Saw this "film" at a movie class - the director came after the move and told us that it was filmed in 12 days. And, boy does it show! Just a few of my beefs: (1)Two of the main characters are ghosts, but they don't really add anything to the film. I suppose that they are part of the plot, but I feel that they could have been left out entirely. Moreover, the questions that their presence brings up were very distracting: we see them drinking champagne and sleeping and flirting and touching humans which made me want to know the rules of ghosts - are they really just like us? Do they have bodily functions also? Don't you think that people would hear toilets mysteriously flushing in their house at all times? One of the ghosts was uncomfortable sleeping in a chair - are we really to believe that most people have spare beds in which their ghosts sleep?(2) A young couple rents a room from a successful, very neat and sophisticated real estate broker (Lynn Redgrave). The room we see them inhabiting has painted graffiti all over it and incredibly loud music blaring at all hours - can we as an audience really believe that their landlord would not only put up with this, but be friends with them? (3) We witness fights between couples where very serious issues are brought up, but never resolved. When some of these couples make up, the issues are never brought up again, just blissfully ignored. Yikes. The entire film smacks of (very bad) "TV movie". A disaster.