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The Face of Love (2013)

There is a terrific movie in here somewhere, but it misses on several subtle points here and there and ends up being good, totally watchable, and a nice view on Ed Harris (as Tom) and Annette Bening (as Nikki), the leading actors.

At its best, the movie dug into the nature of mourning and loss, and in love. The two main actors were struggling with losses, each, and ran into each other and some confused sparks flew. But the hook to the movie, and the problem really, is a quirk. Nikki sees Tom and he looks exactly like her dead husband (Garrett). So she has a weird attachment to him, and leads him on (a little like Vertigo in the second half). It's a fun idea, but it doesn't quite fly.

So really the movie follows this couple in their 50s falling in love. With the constant worry that the woman's psychosis will screw things up. You'll have to see. Warm, with perturbations.

Oh, and Robins Williams has one of his last roles here. He's nice and sympathetic, and maybe not quite enough for the role, which is the third leg to the whole thing in theory.

"Am I a bad person?" Nikki (Benning) is madly in love with her husband. While they are on vacation he unexpectedly and suddenly passes away. A year later she is still trying to get over him. When she goes to a museum she spots Tom (Harris), a man who looks exactly like her dead husband. This begins a complicated romantic relationship. First thing I have to say about this is that the acting is great and the movie is very emotional. The emotion that is invokes though is a mix between sadness and anger. Nikki makes you feel sorry for her and makes you despise her at the same time. You know why she is doing what she is doing but you can't help but see and feel how selfish she is being. The movie is a little slow moving but the anticipation of her coming clean is what keeps you watching. She is a woman who is hard to root for but at the same time you can't really root against her. That is the sign a a beautifully written movie. Overall, a slow moving movie that keeps the anticipation high which keeps you watching. I give this a B-.

The Face of Love, a drama directed by Ari Posen, also appears to be a psychological thriller. It's successful in part, and it's compelling during its 92 minutes. Posen's choice of Annette Bening for Nikki Lostrom - a recent widow trying to pull the strings of her life back together - is inspired, and a performance worth the DVD price.

Her intricate, emotional portrait as Nikki Lostrom allows the film a resonance it would, otherwise, never achieve. And this, not because the story and other actors aren't good. It is, and they are.

The complex level of emotional states between characters is crucial to the film's narrative. The action is the familiar and mundane elements of their day to day life in LA. On this canvas Nikki's husband Garret/ Tom Young (Ed Harris), Roger Stillman (Robin Williams) and Nikki's daughter, Summer (nicely played by Jesse Weixler) are unwittingly drawn into circumstances Nikki faces, this woman whose grand personal deception damages each of their lives.

The crux of Nikki's story - subtle emotional shifts in desiring to touch a world she'd known, allow our sitting on the edge of emotional catastrophes, and are a testament to Bening in her prime. She is so good at giving us access to simple and raw emotional information. And she's looking great on screen. Her ardent transparency in the close ups, is exquisite and unassuming. Here, Bening's fine art sensibility as an actress is on display. I remain averse to taking much Hollywood fare and personnel seriously. Hollywood studios do what they do well. And there's usually too much obvious punctuation in their symphony, too much starch and corn syrup in their product. As a piece of film making, The Face of Love gets the balance of these ingredients right - slices of contemporary American life without laboring on the familiar. Here, it uses those as a vehicle for an effecting emotional journey.

This is where I found the rub. There are some films that I love Ed Harris in. He's a capable & experienced film actor. But he's not for the role of husband, Garret, in this story. He makes a decent fist of the role, but in one of the first shots of him from behind, while we're shown Bening gazing adoringly at him, the character captured on screen is his baldness. There's no other way around it. Yes, yes, scold me that ' Love is blind', and it may well be for Bening's character, but the audience aren't blind, nor in love with Garret. They see what's up there on the screen - a man, bald as a coot, barely as tall as Bening, who, despite convincing displays of sincerity and kindness, in no way physically meets the obsessive attachment projected throughout by Bening.

If the act of your passing (death) is going to drive a woman into a spiral of longing so great that it warps the fabric of time, as in this story, then as that object of her longing, you need to show us the goods. Nikki, shown to us to be an exquisite, humane, capable, sensitive being in her own right is meant to have grown into utter union with this husband. We must see the beauty or uniqueness in him that attracted her. And it's right for us to believe that nothing or no one is ever to again come close to fulfilling that role in her life. Particularly not the simpering neighbor, Roger Stillman, played unlikeably well by the late Robin Williams.

For all his experience, Ed Harris is not the leading man for this role. Physically, the pattern and nature of his baldness, in close up, is a character in its own right. That's not to disparage Mr Harris, but to state fact of its appearance on screen, and the power of it's distraction to this role.

Harris' is a hard bitten face. It looks as if it's spent most of it's time being chiseled by the elements. Admire it as a wonder of creation, but topped with his immaculate baldness and lack of height, you have a mismatch for what the role needs. To surmount this distraction. Mr Harris needs to show us a truly affecting transparency in his character, as Bening does emphatically, for this story to work. We greatly need to see what makes him tick, and significantly, what it is about him that Bening totally surrenders into.

At times, Mr Harris gestures toward finding that, but again, (and this is a director shortcoming) front, back and side, mid and close up shots of this severely bald man, amid being adored by his on screen wife, detract repeatedly, and are an anomaly.

The Face of Love might have transcended script limitations and its occasional self conscious direction with a better choice of male lead. I do wonder where the script doctor was. A bit more attention to the process of script and story, this had the makings of a minor classic and an Academy nomination for Bening. Maybe getting things of this caliber made now in Hollywood is much harder. In any case, the film nearly breaks free of it's earthly bonds to morph into the stratosphere of thrilling possibility, and falls tantalisingly short. It is impressive. Despite not fulfilling it's thriller potential (Hitchcock would have LOVED this story) and my sigh of 'oh, what might have been' , I recognise it is something I will watch several more times, if only because Bening is so damned good.

Along with 'The Angriest Man In Brooklin' this is an example of a film that Robin Williams made late in his life that was released straight to DVD (in the UK at least).

I think it is one that is well worth seeking out though because although Robin only plays a supporting role, he says so much through his lovely characterisation and facial expressions that you really believe in his character of Roger.

Annette Benning and Ed Harris are the ones that really carry the film though and although the ending is perhaps a little rushed, the rest of the film is an engaging and interesting love story.

So overall although the cover of the DVD (I can only vouch for the UK edition) will lead you to believe that Robin Williams is in it a lot more than he is, the film itself is well worth watching.

Saw the US premiere of this movie at the Mill Valley Film Festival. The director, Arie Posen, described the inspiration for this film. His mother thought that she saw her late husband walking across the street one day. Of course, it could not have been him, but it was a powerful experience for her. I think many of us have this fantasy of being with a loved one again. It explored the fine line between extreme grief and mental illness. The movie is very well cast, with Annette Bening and Ed Harris delivering strong and believable performances - and chemistry! There were many suspenseful moments where the audience gasped - because we knew what was going on, but the other characters in the movie did not. Throughout the entire movie I was wondering how this could possibly end, but the film does manage to find a conclusion - it does not leave the viewer to write the ending, like so many movies these days.

Nikki Lostrom (Annette Bening) is devastated by loss of her husband Garret Mathis (Ed Harris). Summer (Jess Weixler) is their daughter. It's 5 years later. She stages open houses. Roger Stillman (Robin Williams) is her neighbor and friend. She starts stalking and then dating college professor Tom Young (Ed Harris) who looks exactly like his dead husband. She hides his resemblance from everyone. He's still friends with his ex Ann (Amy Brenneman).

Arie Posin sets up an interesting premise. I wish he had taken more chances. The movie never really raises the tension. This could be a highly emotional character study. Annette Bening is definitely a good enough actress to carry that out. This could be a case of obsession but it's not really. This could have been a lot of things but it never gets there. I kept thinking she could just tell him the truth. The movie could have moved to an even more compelling emotional landscape after Nikki comes clean with Tom. The movie feels stretched out as we wait for the inevitable reveal.

Beautiful, grieving middle-aged widow, whose loving, devoted husband recently drowned, recalls blissful times together while gazing out over the ocean in her backyard...jump ahead five whole years, and she's still thinking about him. She tells her grown daughter that she doesn't like "looking back", and then immediately visits the museum where she and her husband spent a great deal of time hugging in front of the art. Screenwriters Arie Posin, who also directed, and Matthew McDuffie give our heroine (played with her usual pluck and vulnerability by Annette Bening) a plush job decorating houses for sale, a gorgeous home by the Pacific (designed by her late husband and filled with his art purchases), a healthy daughter to touch bases with, not to mention genteel, lovestruck widower Robin Williams as her neighbor! By the time Bening meets and begins dating a divorced art teacher who is a lookalike for her deceased husband (both played by Ed Harris), it all seems like too much. Because warm yet tentative Bening plays the central character, we are, presumably, supposed to feel for her widow automatically; however, not even this talented actress can breathe life into such stale scenes as a first kiss in a restaurant that causes her to panic and rush off to the ladies room. This is Harlequin Romance stuff, and what these wonderful actors saw in the tepid screenplay, loaded with uneasy conversations and clumsy exposition, is simply not clear. The sequence where the woman talks to her husband's double for the first time (in his classroom) and starts crying uncontrollably is an intriguing starting point for dramatic material, but McDuffie and Posin are too schematic. Their picture is a mechanical, infuriating valentine. *1/2 from ****

Review: This is another movie which I found hard to get into! It really takes ages for anything to happen and when it finally gets going, I didn't really understand what the point was. Its about a woman who tragically looses her husband in a swimming accident and 5 years later, she meets another man who looks exactly the same. She eventually realises that she is using the man to get over the death of her husband and the guy starts questioning why they were together. I found it a bit weird that the director used Ed Harris to play the ex-husband and the new boyfriend and the director made a weird choice of casting Robin Williams as the next door neighbour, who didn't have that many scenes. Anyway, I wasn't that impressed with the pace of the film but on the plus side, it isn't that long.   Disappointing!

Round-Up: I can't remember the last time that I saw Annette Benning in a decent movie. She was quite good in American Beauty and Running With Scissors but she seems to be sticking to the same type of roles lately. I don't think that she has a wide range but she does have the ability to bring emotion to her roles. Ed Harris puts in his usually good performance but the script didn't push his ability. Robin Williams looked a bit lost throughout the film but it was good to see him in one of his last roles. Anyway, I was left feeling pretty empty when the film finished because I couldn't really remember anything amazing happening. Judging by the box office takings, I'm not alone with thinking that the director didn't make the more of a good cast.   Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: $1.5million

I recommend this movie to people who are into their deep dramas about a lady who looses her husband in a tragic swimming accident and falls in love with someone who looks exactly like him. 3/10

Stars Annette Bening as a widow who grieves for her dead husband (Ed Harris). We briefly see them as a happy couple vacationing in Mexico and then he dies. Flash forward 5 years and she's settled into her dull life until one day she visits a museum. And there she spies a dead ringer for her dead husband (Harris again). She's jarred from her fugue state and before she knows it she's back at the museum on a daily basis, hoping to catch a glimpse of the look-alike.

The story then takes on a journey not unlike that in VERTIGO, whereby Bening stalks and befriends Harris and tries to re-create him in the manner of her dead husband. As she descends more and more into this fantasy, she gets derailed by her grown daughter and a nosy neighbor. How can she explain this? How can they accept this? She flees to Mexico with Harris but is undone by an old photograph.

The VERTIGO connection is deliberate and even the music echoes Bernard Herrmann's. Had never heard of this film, but it was a good find.

I found the premise interesting but was quite surprised at just how engaging the film was. Without giving anything away, be prepared to be drawn into the anticipation in this film. Great cast, excellent acting and kudos to the director as he kept Bening right on point with how she looked at Ed Harris...you could really feel the depth of her gaze. Don't be put off by the film warnings as they were so minimal compared with most films online today and that made this film so refreshing to watch.

(2013) The Face of Love DRAMA/ PSYCHOLOGICAL

Co-written and directed by Arie Posin with the movie opening with flashbacks of Nikki Lostrom (Annette Bening) enjoying her time with her late husband, Garret Mathis played by Ed Harris. Ending those flashbacks is when she recalls finding her husband not breathing while he was lying on the beach- viewers suspect it was a drowning. The movie then jumps after 5 years later upon visiting an art resort her late husband used to goes to, she would then catch a quick glance of a man who looks the same as her late husband we find out later his name is Tom Young also played by Ed Harris. For the next hour or so, she would then make every conceivable effort to keep him from knowing the fact who he originally used to look like, which brings up more questions than it answers. Robin Williams also stars as the neighbor/ friend of Nikki's old family.

As a huge fan of director Arie Posin's misunderstood and underrated look at suburbia in his 2005 debut film The Chumscrubber, it was with great anticipation I awaited his long gestating follow up which turned out to be this slice of middle aged romance The Face of Love (or the Look of Love in some countries). The cast looked good, the story seemed intriguing and even though the initial reaction to this film was lukewarm at best I still held out hope that the promise Posin showed on debut would come to the forefront, sadly this was not to be the case.

The Face of Love is a hapless film, a groan inducing amateurishly written tale of love and loss that suffers the rare feat of growing worse and worse as the dire dialogue and story line unfolds one after the other. It's actually quiet embarrassing to sit back and witness the silly story take full effect and the actors of such experienced calibre like Annette Benning, Ed Harris and even the late Robin Williams (in a turn obviously taken during his financial troubles) struggle to make the film work. Benning in particular looks utterly lost in her role as grieving widow Nikki, she's given most of the films worst lines and scenes but to say even the reliable Ed Harris succeeds would be a lie as the actor also gets lost further and further into a character that was never going to work. With a lack of solid direction, badly directed acting turns and a terrible script it's like Posin has taken a step back in all areas from The Chumscrubber.

The Chumscrubber was often inventive, satirically smart and featured an abundance of neat acting turns (bar the always horrible Camilla Belle) which all fail to eventuate here. Posin was clearly passionate about his follow up project, reading about the film it's easy to see that it was not an easy sell and at the heart of proceedings there is an undeniably intriguing story to tell but in the final product there is no real heart and soul, it's a cold picture where it should have been full of human emotion and care. We never wholeheartedly feel the love Nikki feels for Garret and his doppelganger Tom and romantic moments between the lovers always feels forced and eerily creepy. It's almost like the film turned into a voyeuristic nightmare where we should have been engaged in an emotionally charged love.

Without question one of the year's worst films and a major disappointment for those like me that thought Posin was a talent to watch. Face of Love is an embarrassment for all those involved and a showcase for how not to produce a potentially effective screen story. Hard to watch for all the wrong reasons, Face of Love neither inspires, affects nor intrigues, yet does make you wish the horrors on screen would stop for the love of all things decent!

Half a desperate neighbour out of 5