Broken Lullaby

I admit to having a soft spot for "Broken Lullaby." It's an interesting if complicated story, filmed in Budapest. There's also romance.

An elderly cosmetics queen (Vivian Reis) asks her niece Jordan (Mel Harris), a genealogist, to trace her family - now a widow, she feels time is passing and she would like to know more about her roots. She only has a picture of a little girl next to a magnificent music box, which, it turns out, was made by Faberge.

Jordan travels to Europe and finds out that the box is highly prized and sought after by several people: a count (Oliver Tobias), a young man (Rob Stewart) who feels the music box belonged to his family, and one other person who seemingly will stop at nothing, including murder, to get what he wants. Jordan doesn't know whom to trust.

The story takes us to Vienna, though the credits say it was only filmed in Budapest. The scenery is very beautiful, and the acting is fine. The problem is, it's not particularly well directed. As someone pointed out, with a complicated story, a film like this needs a stronger structure.

I haven't seen many other Harlequin films; I think this story is a cut above, and certainly had a decent budget. I recommend it.

Take young, pretty people, put them in an exotic locale, stick in a few bad guys, have the two lead characters find romance after a couple of heavy breathing scenes, create the flimsiest of plots, then work out a happy ending for everybody (other than the three or four who get murdered, of course) That's the classic (and successful) format of the Harlequin Romance. It's not very good but then it's not very bad either, like most of the little yellow pocket books. And the location stuff in Budapest is especially interesting, even if they didn't use the wonderful old train station (designed by Gustave Eifel) or show the city's famous thermal baths.

The story concerns a genealogy researcher (Mel Harris) who is hired by her Estee Lauder-like cosmetic queen aunt. Her aunt (by marriage we are left to presume) is trying to track down her long lost family in Europe. All they have to go on is a photo of a young girl standing by an ornate music box. The researcher heads to Europe and conducts her search in places like Milan, Budapest, and Vienna. The scenery is the real thing and is actually shot on location (unlike a Murder, She Wrote where Jessica is supposed to be visiting a far-flung locale and Lansbury never left Burbank). Anyway, she meets a young man who is also searching to solve a family mystery of his own and they team up to track down clues and menace bad guys. The dialogue, particularly the romantic dialogue, is terrible. I watched this because of the scenery but the script was so bad that I stayed on just to see if it would get worse. It did. Acting was also off. I can see why Mel Harris's career never really took off after thirtysomething, but she is adequate (seems too old for her co-star though). But, the supporting players are straight out of the community playhouse. I also lost count of how many times they say "Budapest" to each other. Yes, it is pronounced Bood-a-phesht. We know, okay? I realized halfway into the film that this had to be one of those Harlequin movies and sure enough it is. Guess that says it all.

The plot was quite interesting, with the Russian revolution background. I also enjoyed seeing Budapest as the movie was partly filmed there. Sadly, there was zero chemistry between the 2 main characters so it was hard to believe the love story between them. The love scenes were forced and mechanical. Jordan kirckland was really stiff, almost icy. Rob Stewart was quite charming and boyish, so she looked like his older sister rather than his girlfriend. The ending, when we finally figure out who was actually after them, was quite weak and made no sense whatsoever. I think I would have enjoyed this movie a lot better if the relationship between the 2 actors was slightly more credible.

Mel Harris is Jordan Kirkland, a divorced New York family history researcher whose Aunt Kitty Ridgewood (Vivien Reis) asks her to find a missing Faberche-egged music box which she believes holds the secret to her orphaned childhood, and is said to be worth $10 millon. Jordan travels to Milan where she meets art expert Nicholas Rostov (Rob Stewart), whose grandmother Natalia believes the music box belongs to her. Jordan is also pursued by Gudran Cooper (Jennifer Dale) who works for Count Borodan (Oliver Tobias) who is also after the box, an anonymous assassin (Bela Jaki).

Harris wears her brown hair in a bob with grey strains, apparently so she can match Stewart's grey hair strands. Stewart is actually a Ken Olin look-alike which creates a reference to Harris' thirtysomething TV series. Harris here looks tanned, wears a French-style black striped white top, and a purple/blue ball gown with Medusa sculptured hair. She looks lovely in reaction to the sight of a messy room, is funny when parodying Nicholas's phraseology and resisting his physicality, supplies a drunken girlish giggle, a silent look of sarcasm to Stewart's `I haven't done anything I have to apologise for', has a slow move to kiss Stewart, but 2 rear views of her mannishly walking and her running in short skirts present her unflatteringly. Jordan isn't Harris at her best, but the fault is as much with the convoluted script and uninspired direction as with her.

Based on the Harlequin book by Laurel Pace, the teleplay by Guy Mullally and Jim Henshaw have multiple observations of Nicholas' `charm', but contextually clever lines are followed by cliches. To Jordan's `I'm having a great European vacation' Nicholas says `I'm scared enough for the both of us', his `Let me explain' is answered by her `And which lie would you like to start with', though `I have an appointment' with `I've been expecting you' is laughably redundant. Jordan doing her make-up in the back seat of a taxi gets a spin from her being able to see she is being followed, but the idea of a proposal is somewhat romantically undermined by the plot resolution.

The narrative being so complicated demands the touch of a strong director, which Michael Kennedy is definitely not, since he also uses unexplained fireworks, though that is preferable to his creeping camera for close-ups.