La brûlure

Like a good relationship that goes sour, "Heartburn" is impossible to love but hard to write off entirely. Despite its fine cast and script by Nora Ephron, the film is disjointed and, ultimately, dishonest.

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play two Washington journalists who meet at a wedding, and — seemingly in the next scene — are saying their own vows. The developments that follow in their relationship are just as abrupt and just as believable. The rapid-fire pace of their many separations and reconciliations stretches credibility to the limit, and it's hard to generate any interest in these characters when it was never clear what drew them together in the first place.

Streep does a fine job as magazine writer Rachel, but Nicholson's cad is all too familiar in his role of Mark, the womanizing columnist. Supporting players Stockard Channing, Maureen Stapleton, Jeff Daniels and Kevin Spacey, while uniformly excellent, seem underutilized and distract from the main plot.

"Heartburn" is worth watching, if only for its strong cast, but it's as memorable as leftover lasagna.

Let's face it, these aren't the two most likable people on the planet, but that's only because writer Nora Ephron may have been a little too hard on herself. (Actually, she's hard on most everyone in this.) We care about this relationship, and the performances ofthe excellent cast make it intriguing at first, but viewers are just as likely to grow impatient with these characters as they do with each other. It's worth seeing, but a hard film to love.

Now, some words about the Carly Simon song, "Coming Around Again." I heard the song before I saw the movie and it no doubt affected my viewing of it. So many movies seem to just tack on any old song at the end credits, but this song really captures the essence of love and marriage and brings out all the emotions of a great film scene in merely a few minutes. I cannot believe the overblown "Take My Breath Away" from "Top Gun" (also overblown) won the 1986 Oscar for Best Original Song, and "Coming Around Again" was not even nominated! Perhaps this is why Carly Simon won her Oscar for "Let the River Run" two years later, to make up for this gross omission. (She would also duet with Streep during the end credits of "Marvin's Room"--an even better film.) The song alone is reason enough to see "Heartburn".

You got (the now late) Mike Nichols, you got Streep, you got Nicholson, you got Nora Ephron adapting her own semi-menoir about her relationship with Carl Bernstein. Given the pedigree behind everything involved with the film - and, for me, I'm a sucker for a good infidelity drama - it's only a shame this isn't, you know, one of the top films of the 80's. It doesn't quite get there, but it's not for lack of trying on anyone's part. Heartburn is an entertaining picture, even as it doesn't quite move to a beat of a fast drummer, nor does it have very easy solutions to its dramatic conflicts. But that's a good thing here; Nichols and Ephron know this story has people who can't resolve or move on too easily, despite all signs pointing in a direction the audience can read.

It's basically this: girl and boy meet, boy marries girl - though girl doesn't really want to marry exactly, and one of the funnier set pieces shows Rachel stewing about in the bedroom adjacent to the wedding as friends and family come to try and support (sort of) this whole union - girl and boy find a real 'fixer-upper' house, girl is going to have boy's baby, things are happy... and then suspicion creeps in for the girl. A lot of this is not very much 'plot' driven, though Nichols knows how to tell his story.

If there's anything 'off' it might be that the pacing is a little lackadaisical. Not quite the same as 'slow' exactly; you just have to be keyed in to the rhythm that's going on here. The filmmakers here are emphasizing character more. You get scenes, sometimes very funny, like when Mark just breaks out into a goofy song following the news that he's having a baby... and then breaks out into song again the next morning to wake up Rachel. A lot of the movie is more funny in a sly, observational way. It's not as 'LOL' type of funny as work Ephron was to do after this, and some might say like those other movies it's a little "chick" centric. I can't say if it can be so easily pegged, albeit there are piffy bits like Rachel watching the TV and getting messages about the infidelities going on.

Nichols knows this material needs the help of its actors, and of course he has two of the best... ever, really. The charisma and combination just works, there's no doubt about that. And there's both real comedy and real drama to work on (probably more drama than comedy). And sometimes things happen in the movie that seem to be more incidental than anything to push it forward - i.e. Kevin Spacey's debut as a thief - but even this ends up kind of playing a part in the story, at a key moment, near the end. The actors make all these beats very, painfully, awkwardly, sadly and bittersweet-like real. When Rachel suddenly realizes that moment where things are "wrong" in a hair salon, the way it comes to her, how Nichols moves the camera (and, one of his gifts, knowing when NOT to cut), and how she looks and she goes from 0 to 60... it's wonderful stuff.

Why not great? Maybe a little too loose in parts, and the Carly Simon score is grating after a while and dates the movie (the songs too). But all in all, Heartburn is a very good movie about this relationship and its peaks and valleys, but also about the nature of indecision, and how something as seemingly clear-cut as 'stay with your husband - or go' is a real, concrete, existential dilemma. Underrated, really.

Although somewhat artificial, the humor and "heartburn" of this Nora Ephron film seem more affecting and less manufactured than those in her more slick subsequent films, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in Seattle. Perhaps the autobiographical slant helped.

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play a couple based on Ephron and Carl Bernstein. They meet, marry, settle in Washington, and have children. Streep's wedding-day jitters, it turns out, were amply justified; she discovers an affair between her husband and a social-climbing hostess.

Streep is so luminous and so natural that one may not realize until the end of the film how completely insipid and devoid of any distinguishing qualities her character is. "Rachel" changes from a wan, nervous divorcee (before meeting Nicholson's character) to an obsessively devoted wife and mother who keeps babbling about how happy she is.

Nicholson is well-cast as the rakish but (initially) endearing husband. The supporting cast reflects the expert hand of Juliet Taylor, Woody Allen's longtime casting director, who peppered it with many familiar faces, including Allen favorites Joanna Gleason, Caroline Aaron, and Karen Akers. Maureen Stapleton is particularly droll as Streep's shrink. Nineties audiences will enjoy seeing Kevin Spacey as a neurasthenic mugger.

The comedy in the film is somewhat uneven, but often extremely engaging, as in a running parody of "Masterpiece Theatre." And compare the spontaneous bravado of Nicholson's lopsided rendition of "Soliloquy" from Carousel (the comic highlight) to the forced quirkiness of Meg Ryan's tone-deaf "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" in When Harry Met Sally...

Just to watch Streep and Nicholson together in a movie is good enough for me. A lot of the scenes seemed kinda improvised. They're crazy good together. I always wondered why they weren't in more movies together. Who knows, maybe they didn't like each other very much in real life. Also, Nicholson always seems to be dancing between genius and insanity. Streep's more the straight-forward type. At least to me.

Nora Ephron who wrote this and the supposed autobiographical novel it's based on, wasn't known for immense depth, but for romance. I think every girl or woman who grew up before the start of this century is familiar with her work (Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally etc.).

6.6/10 just for the main leads.