p.s.

Writer-director Dylan Kidd's "P.S." is funny, sweet and moving and better than most romantic-comedies these days.

Laura Linney's magnificent. Then again, when is she not? Let's face it, she, and not Julia Roberts, should have won the Best Actress Oscar for 2000. Linney makes acting look so easy, a pleasure to watch.

In "P.S.," Linney's Louise Harrington, a Columbia University administrator who maintains a close relationship with her ex-husband, Peter (Gabriel Byrne). One day she's startled when she gets an application to the School of Visual Arts from a young artist named F. Scott Feinstadt. Her shock? Her late childhood sweetheart was an artist named Scott Feinstadt. Naturally, Louise wants to know more about the young applicant and what follows is a wonderful telling of the lengths to which we go sometimes to rekindle old passions.

As captivating as Linney is in this film, Topher Grace, best known for his playing Eric on TV's "That '70s Show," turns in a performance that's surprisingly good, filled with warmth, humor. This chap's got a promising career ahead of him. Grace's F. Scott has attitude to spare and Kidd uses him wisely. Our introduction to F. Scott is not what we'd normally expect - a meet-cute or the initial interview at Columbia. No, the first time we're aware of F. Scott is through a telephone, when Louise calls him up to ask for samples of his work. It's a deft touch by Kidd. It's a breezy, fun turn by Grace who imbues F. Scott with confidence and a cavalier attitude that immediately lets us know what kind of a person he is even before we see him.

Louise's transformation once she meets F. Scott showcases what a fine actress Linney is. There's this charming schoolgirlish giddiness about Louise. We watch as this mature woman feels the excitement of a new love and it's something with which we're all familiar.

The film runs into problems when we're introduced to Louise's best friend, Missy (Marcia Gay Harden), a flirt who played a key role in the Louise-Scott relationship years before. I never quite bought Harden's role and the Louise-Missy conflict isn't nearly as interesting as watching Louise blossom into a sprightly woman with a tremendous crush. Her love affair is more enticing and funnier than a disagreement that seems fabricated to give us some conflict.

Kidd doesn't fixate on whether F. Scott really is Louise's sweetheart reborn. It really doesn't matter. This film is about life's delightful coincidences. Sometimes, facts are stranger than fiction. So it's irrelevant whether Kidd solves that mystery.

Kidd's direction here seems more assured than his debut film, "Rodger Dodger" (2002). But his characters aren't as memorable and "P.S." might not have moments you recall years later - I still remember the park bench and party-crashing scenes from "Rodger Dodger." But "P.S." still is an awfully good film with a fine ensemble cast. It could be tightened; the film feels about five minutes too long. But that's a minor quibble.

This is yet another good film having difficulty getting released. "P.S." isn't one of the great films of the year. But it's infinitely better than most of the movies in wide release right now. It has two outstanding performances, plenty of genuinely good laughs and is an enchanting romantic-comedy that deserves to be seen by more people.

On paper, Kidd's earlier film Roger Dodger, about a snide Lothario (played to Oscar quality by Campbell Scott) and his attempts to "mentor" his nephew, seems the lesser of P. S., about an August/ April romance between an admissions officer at a Columbia art department and a young applicant who stuns her by looking like an old departed boyfriend. But Roger Dodger feels tight, finished, and driven by a wild logic of its own, while P. S. is riddled with incompletenesses. Laura Linney is such a fine and affecting actress that she could convince me she had erotic chemistry with a bookcase, but despite her talents, the alleged electricity between her character and her young paramour in P. S., played by Topher Grace, required frequent suspensions of my disbelief. Grace here has such a hard time leaving his arch, "That 70s Show" schtick behind that he plays this film as though it were a bizarre dream sequence from his TV program. He often looks impatient and half-in-character, as if he expects Laura Prepon, his redheaded gal pal from the TV show, to rustle him awake so he can say, "That was the weirdest dream" and proceed in the comfortable universe of avocado and harvest gold situation comedy. Also, the script for this film is half-baked. Many oddities of character and plot, in addition to abrupt and mechanical statements of intentions by characters throughout the film, suggest an outline rather than a finished screenplay. Nonetheless, Linney gives a beautiful performance and there are still many things to like along this film's awkward way.

Topher Grace steals the show in this movie...he really owns the screen and has a confident charm to him that you will see for years to come. I'm a HUGE Laura Linney fan, and this is a fine performance for her, but nothing you haven't seen before, as you grow to expect brilliance from her. The acting was fine all around, but I do agree the second half of the movie starts to drag and I think the relationship between Linney and Marcia Gay Harden takes the movie off track...it's not appealing. It's almost hard to buy the Gay Harden character all together.

Good Indie flick...a definite rental. This flick has more artistic value to it than Roger Dodger...more to it, but not as enjoyable interesting enough.

6.5/10

"P.S." continues the trend this year of movies and TV shows with aggressive older women attracted to geeky, barely post-adolescent boys.

While most of them come across as male fantasies, this one, based on a novel by Helen Schulman I haven't read yet for comparison, takes the viewpoint of the woman, to make her seem empowered. At least here we see how she herself is still mired in her own Glory Days (just as the male lead in writer/director Dylan Kidd's previous film "Roger Dodger" was), through her memories, her relationships with her brother and mother, and with her ex, whose student she was (though their relationship is talkily given additional problems of lack of urge control that seem unnecessarily complicated -- does Gabriel Byrne ever play a non-adulterous husband?).

Laura Linney is so good, however, that she portrays the character as stronger and making more sense than the situations or her continuing competition with her best friend, as played by Marcia Gay Hayden (and I couldn't figure out when the friend was in New York or California). Hayden's character even defensively says at one point "We're being just like the boys."

Linney is particularly effective with chilling monologues, as she dissects life's disappointments in comparison to adolescent hopes and dreams, that her character has faced not only in her life but daily as a college admissions director. I do challenge as a cultural bias and the character's hang-up the assumption that one is perfect at age 20, such that only the good die young.

While the plot is set in motion by a magic realism kind of coincidence that seems reminiscent of sci-fi-ish films like "Happy Accidents," "Sliding Doors," or "Me, Myself, I," let alone "Vertigo," even the characters agree by the end that they've had enough of this mystical stuff and that angle just gets dropped as they try to be real.

The film uses the Columbia University setting effectively and the soundtrack and scoring are full of New York City musicians, including Yo Le Tengo, Martha Wainwright, Citizen Cope and cellist Jane Scarpontoni.

all the elements - casting, acting, lighting, sound, photography, costumes, locations, writing, you name it, really come together in this Dylan Kidd film.

the writing in particular and the story from the novel tell a nuanced, complex yet not overly layered movie. the acting is simply superb - laura linney wows again with her completely truthful and complete portrayal, and topher surprisingly handles drama as well as comedy and everything in between. Gabriel Byrne, Paul Rudd and the actress playing the mother (sorry, can't remember her name but she's perfectly cast!) all are excellent. Marcia gay harden's character draws you in - watching her abhorrent sad character is like not being able to turn away from the plastic surgery reality shows - awful but fascinating!

i really enjoyed this film - there are some confusing moments, but i surrendered myself to the story, trusting that it would unfold in time and it did. hopefully laura linney will get the Oscar nod that she deserves, instead of another star doing mediocre 'already seen that' work.