First Love, Last Rites may say it's directed by Jesse Peretz. And Peretz's pedigree as a former member of the Lemonheads (since when is that something Cool?) and as a commercial and video director may get this film its only real notice. And Ian McEwan may get credit for having written the story the film was based on. And Natasha Gregson Wagner and Giovani Ribisi may be the recognizable faces that would make somebody stop when the movie comes on TV. But only Tom Richmond, the director of photography, really deserves to put this film on his highlight reel. First Love, Last Rites is a slow, contemplative film that doesn't develop into anything. It's possible this might work better for some people than others.
Sissel (Gregson Wagner) and Joey (Ribisi) are two kids spending the summer in a one bedroom shack up from the Bayou. They're basically drifting -- Joey from his Brooklyn roots and Sissel from her feuding parents. Basically they listen to records, have sex, and throw garbage around their place. Naturally it smells. Naturally there's a rat in the walls. And naturally they both need outlets. When Joey begins to go into the eeling business with Sissel's father Henry (Robert John Burke), Sissel goes to work at a sugar factory. And things get stressed.
The story, by Ian McEwan is 14 pages long. And it's set in England. Why Peretz thought that moving the story to Louisiana and expanding it to 100 minutes is a bit of a mystery. Thanks to the beautiful colors and images Richmond produces, First Love, Last Rites at least feels like it's set somewhere. The fact that the actors all seem a little adrift is something else.
It isn't just that the writing doesn't give any character depth to anybody. Ribisi gets to deliver a pointlessly Freudian monologue about the first time he was his parents having sex. Gregson Wagner gets to pout a lot. Burke, as the Vietnam vet father, has the most colorful part and his intensity seems both out of place and strangely pleasant. Even if he feels like he's acting in a different movie, his appearances strengthen the film. None of the actors effectly reproduce any kind of accents.
The film that immediately comes to mind after seeing this one is Victor Nuñez's Ruby in Paradise. That, of course, is a better film. Nuñez produces the thing that Peretz most fails at -- authenticity. Ruby features authentic emotions, authentic performances, authentic images, and a plot that grows organically from the surroundings. Gregson Wagner, Ribisi, and Burke are all very sincere in their performances, but no amount of trying can make any of it seem real.
A side note: Another review of the film made note of the preponderance of drowning imagery involving Natasha Gregson Wagner. Now, seeing as how much of her appeal as an actress (an actress, let me emphasize, who's beginning to get much too old to keep playing teenagers and innocents) comes from her similarities to her mother, Natalie Wood, isn't the director who keeps showing her drowning a little bit sick? I think so... Neither here nor there, I guess.
First Love, Last Rites is a film of greens and blues, of sunsets and squirming eels. It's a film of beautiful pictures and minimal story. The photography is very fine, but it's not enough to give this film more than a 5/10.
