She Came to Me

I'm a big fan of Peter Dinklage and Rebecca Miller has a fantastic actress eye and pen for drama that's good fun.

This story has 2 very different plots that sort of come together in a clunky awkward manner that some might find strange but it works. The acting is superb by all cast and its premise gets so absurd that it's al list like a NY play that full of surprises.

The only absurd character is Anne Hathaway yet she pulls it off yet there is zero chemistry between them so Marisa Tomei is fantastic with Peter and that story could easily have been the main plot and been a masterpiece.

6 stars and looking forward to more from Rebecca Miller.

She Came to Me is about an Opera composer and his dysfunctional relationship with his wife who is also his ex-therapist. One day when writer's block has a harsh grip his OCD wife sends him out for a walk, which will change his life forever.

The cast is magical. Peter Dinklage is mesmerizing as Steven (the opera composer) Anne Hathaway plays his wife Patricia, who is perfectly cast as this clinical OCD control freak.

Marisa Tomei as Katrina is quirky, fun, and compelling, she truly is perfection in this role and you can't help but be cheering her on from the sidelines.

If you like films that are offbeat, original, and quirky then this film is a definite must-watch. I really enjoyed it.

Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei are absolutely fantastic in this film. Their presences on screen, individually and together, demand attention at all times. This even while struggling through a woefully pedestrian script, the expository parts of which are mind-numbingly bland. Thankfully, these two are able to rise above script. And it doesn't hurt that even made to look a bit rough as a tugboat captain, Marisa Tomei is positively gorgeous in her late 50s. But that's about where the praise slows down. The truth is, they are not on screen for nearly enough time.

There are three intertwined stories that never really quite gel cinematically (go see a John Sayles film, Lone Star, or Sunshine State to see this done masterfully). Anne Hathaway is serviceable, but in a role that could be, and largely was, phoned in. One extreme (the kreplach) scene, presumably meant to go viral, doesn't really land. Nor does the rather telegraphed final joke for her character (no spoiler).

But the anchor that drags this otherwise interesting film down is the onerous thread of the star-crossed teens. A bad script with supreme talent (Dinklage and Tomei), leaves a film short of its potential but passable. A bad script with dull and listless young actors is a recipe for an atrocious afterschool special. The ham-fisted symbolism of the father's Civil War re-enactments (isn't that really just cosplay, though?) and the 'futurism' of the teens gets hammered home. There were audible shifts from the audience with whom I watched, as scenes changed from the dynamism of the leads to the lethargy of the teen story. The biggest problem with this is that the audience needs to care about these two young people and their future. And we just don't.

Unfortunately, the three threads are needed to make the story come around full circle in the end. Only one thread is compelling with Dinklage and Tomei. Hathaway's thread had potential but ultimately was just tangential, and the teens' thread was a burden to endure to necessitate the final act. And all this and overwrought opera presentations, not good enough to be worthy of praise, but not quite so obviously parodic to garner laughter. Perhaps that's symbolic of the film itself, middling. Dinklage and Tomei deserved better.

Thank heavens I didn't let the 6.0 rating deter me from going ahead to see this. I went in almost blind cos I didn't focus much on the plot but I saw the trailer and i was determined to see it regardless of what the critics say and boy was that a spot on decision.

Everything about it works for me and I really don't like romantic movies but it wasn't even that. It had this subtleness about it with the occasional humor that actually made me laugh once or twice but smiled a lot.

The cast was perfect. I almost feel like a different cast might not have done justice to what the script was trying to portray.

Director/screenwriter Rebecca Miller has fashioned quite a quirky relationship roundelay in this 2023 dramedy as she focuses on a dumbfounding love triangle saved from complete absurdity by the dexterity of the three leads. The plot is convoluted. Stephen Lauddem is a famous composer with writer's block who sleeps with Katrina, a shopworn tugboat captain with a sex addiction, and then writes a celebrated opera about their fast affair. Stephen is married to Patricia, a beautiful Manhattan therapist with OCD and a strange obsession with nuns. There's a parallel story of Patricia's son who is in love with the underaged daughter of the family maid whose husband is hellbent on breaking up the relationship. All the story strands come together but don't emotionally resonate nearly as much as they should. Miller seems more preoccupied with the characters' eccentricities. The star performances compensate. Peter Dinklage plays Stephen with jaundiced charm, while Anne Hathaway shows off a welcome edginess to Patricia. Marisa Tomei conveys a convincing lived-in approach to Katrina that helps ground the movie's somewhat flighty tone.