Rachel-20

It's not that I didn't "get" this movie. It's not that I found it hard to follow. It's not that I only like romantic comedies or action flicks or whatever other kind of film that fans of this kind of movie think of as lowbrow. It's that I just couldn't make myself care about the characters. I didn't care if they got back together, I didn't care if they erased each other, I didn't like them, and I couldn't identify with them (never having, say, consumed illicit substances or been promiscuous, which sometimes seemed to be the two major activities depicted here).

The premise is interesting, and goes back to Shakespeare and before with the whole 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all' bit. The pace and 'feel' was a bit too frenetic for my tastes, although I can see how it would appeal to a lot of people (it felt like watching the beginning of _Moulin Rouge_, a film I enjoy immensely except for the first fifteen minutes, for an hour and a half). Kate Winslet was brilliant, and Jim Carrey was, well, Jim Carrey, which is not bad, I suppose. It all comes back, though, to the fact that I just wanted these foul, vulgar, bizarre people to get out of my living room and never come back.

I am the snobbiest of adaptation purists. I really am. I was sure I'd dislike this film because I knew how widely it varied from the novel, but I wanted to see it so as to be able to give an opinion of it. And I must say that I like it. Not much as an adaptation -- let's face it, there would be no modern audience for a direct retelling of *Mansfield Park*, with its Brontë-ish moral underpinnings and antiquated ideals, much as I personally might agree with them. It is a very different creature from the novel on which it is loosely based, in more ways than one. Ack, the undertones of lesbian eroticism were a bit too much, really, and the slavery subtext with all it entailed was, I thought, an unnecessary addition. However, it does touch on some of the main themes quite well. What makes this movie enjoyable for me, though, when I manage to mentally separate it from the novel I love, is the pretty and somewhat unconventional directing. And unlike many reviewers here I think Frances O'Connell did a wonderful job as Fanny; in fact I thought the whole cast was well-selected and did a fine job.

If you sit down to this movie expecting your average romantic comedy you're going to come away, as many of the reviewers here did, befuddled and probably seriously disappointed. I'm no high-art film critic, but I had the advance warning, of sorts, of having watched the previews on the VHS edition of this movie (of all things), which let me know not to expect anything ordinary from it. Plus it's Robert Altman, right? So I went into it expecting not to take things at face value -- and that's what you have to do to enjoy this movie. The idea is that you have this man who treats women with love, respect, and chivalry. He is surrounded by demanding women all day long, and yet the focus on the individual patients whose encounters with him we witness shows the truth of something he says to his friends: every woman is unique. And then we see the different ways in which the women respond: His office manager falls in love with him. His patients demand more and more (and are very well-directed). His wife goes insane because she's loved too much (a diagnosis as obviously unrealistic as hers HAS to have been written into the story for a reason). His daughters rely on him, shock him, disappoint him. His sister-in-law takes advantage of his hospitality while drinking herself into a stupor. His girlfriend (who is kind of a man's woman) rejects his chivalrous overtures ("I'll do it! I'll get it!"), is the only self-sufficient woman in the film, and ultimately rejects his offer for an interdependent relationship. All these combine to create a world whose stresses pile up until a surreal conclusion whisks Dr. T away to a completely different world... where straight away he's put back to work, and he delivers a boy. And who can blame him for being relieved.

Overall this is a movie I'm glad I saw once; it was an interesting experience. Kudos to Richard Gere for probably the best acting I've ever seen him do.