av_m

OK - don't like Jane Campion as a director, way over the top w. The blood & guts and sex - I think she's sees herself as heavily in competition w. Tarentino - but she ain't in his league and so her stuff comes across as just kinda chaotically violent to no avail.

But she had a good cast, no doubt about that.

Meg Ryan is almost unrecognizable - in a good way. None of the predictable cutesy MR schtick - just pretty impressive acting; altho truth be told she miscast for the part, as is Jennifer Jason Leigh - neither of them near raw enough for this gritty little New York noir.

Ruffalo too is good - actually kind of reminiscent of Burt Reynolds.

But, again back to Jane Campion, the director makes it plain as the nose on your face who the maniac killer is starting in about the middle of the flick - so, after that, there's not much narrative interest, just watching Meg refreshingly play a character other than stock Meg and classifying why Ruffalo is like Burt Reynolds, but why he's also not. And, it's kinda of insulting to the viewer that Campion thinks her audience is so stupid that they really were "mystified" till the end by her very weak kinda NYU film school student "mis-direction plot twists"

Recommend to watch? - hmmmm, it's a professional production, so not a waste of time - interesting performance by Ryan; that's about it.

Big name cast - of aging stars put in still another upscale amoral Westchester suburban parental roles; so so sick of Diane Keeton playing ever befuddled cute little Diane Keeton.

Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon were professionals - but, gawd, the hellaciously tedious script defeated event them.

The "darling young couple" - Emma "I'm only only the screen before you because my aunt is Julia Roberts" and Luke "who?" Bracey - boring, absolutely chemistry - and, again, that hellacious script making every character mouth idiotic non-sequiturs.

Bill Macy - stuck in am impossibly stupid character.

Whole thing - ghastly - and frankly I'd guess everybody involved would agree with that assessment.

Why did I even give it two "stars" - I dunno, could just as easily have been zero.

The only burning question I came from this movie asking myself was: was didn't French men in the second quarter of the 19th c. Ever seem to comb their hair?

Not only was Pete Doherty's performance monochromatically lackluster - but his hair was so constantly in his eyes that I, for one, simply could not get past wanting to just hand him a comb and yell: Try it, dude!!!!!

Ugh, thruout the flick, it looks like that affected coff of his literally likely has small infestations of bugs in it.

So, enough of that, you get it - annoying, repulsive.

As for the rest of it: for a period piece the sets were elaborate - albeit limited as they were in range (a "period" chandelier'd salon, or oak tables dining, or candle lit bed room here, a forested field there, a series of scenes from the same bumpy rural carriage ride) - the costuming was studied for accuracy, the tonality was period "sepia by candlelight", the casting utterly banal - extravagantly buxom "society" women, wizened clerics and old men, crocheting elderly matrons, oh so merrily square-dancing albeit grimy workers, etc etc etc

On the bright side, Charlotte Gainsbourg was, as always, excellent - always elegantly charming in a very simply way - so sorry she got mired in this swamp muck of a thing - chemistry w. Doherty? Zero - I don't blame her, that hair ...(and likely just as well for her character since his - 19th haute bourgeois debauchee - likely suffered his unremitting gloom of existential angst from a foully perduring case of physical syphilis than anything "cerebral"

An oh, the musical soundtracks were completely out of joint - inexplicable as choices.