Le patchwork de la vie

I have watched parts of this movie more than once. The movie from start to finish only once. Each story unfolds like a facet on the quilt. Then as the main plot line draws to a conclusion, the thread that binds these stories together resolves each individual facet, to complete the whole.

Quilting as I understand it, is bringing many contributions together to create a final product. Each little design tells a story and the master quilter put's these stories together , to convey a theme or message.

I have not read the novel, but the movie conveys the message in it's title.

The soundtrack is tranquil and adds to the mood.

The interplay between Burstyn and Bancroft is a pleasure to watch. Winona is excellent.

This adaptation by screenwriter Jane Anderson (novel by Whitney Otto) presents us with a character named Finn Dodd (Ryder), a 26-year old college student who has just gotten engaged to her long-time sweetheart Sam (Mulroney). She begins to realize the many changes that will come about because of her acceptance to his proposal and needs time to think and adjust. She decides to spend three months at her grandma Hy's house in Grasse, CA, which is the center of operations to a longtime quilting bee. During her tenure, she continues working on her master's thesis (a project of which she continuously changes her topic), all the while listening to the quilting bee's romantic horror stories as they craft Finn's wedding quilt.

To sum it up, `How To Make An American Quilt' is the quintessential chick flick awash with many familiar faces including Maya Angelou. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet stars as Anna, the queen of an eight-member sewing circle consisting of Glady Jo Cleary (Anne Bancroft), Hy Cleary (Ellen Burstyn), her daughter Marianna (Alfre Woodard), Em Reed (Jean Simmons), Constance Saunders (Kate Nelligan) and Sophia Darling (Lois Smith). Anna winds up in the Cleary household at 16 - pregnant, unmarried and helpless. She will dwell there until the birth of her child, meeting Hy and Glady Jo for the first time. Little does she know that these two young women will remain in her life for years afterward, their interest and skill in the art of quilting mounting over the years by Anna's guidance.

There is also the story of Hy and Glady Jo themselves and their unspoken bitterness towards each other - we learn that Hy is the reason for Glady Jo's `self-expression' all over the walls of the laundry room. Then there is Sophia, an aspiring diver in her adolescence and later an abandoned mother of three; Em, wife to a histrionic artist, suffering his recurrent infidelity; Constance, a decent woman who endures the loss of her nearest and dearest, left with only her precious memories and Marianna, a lover of many but starved for the discovery of her soulmate.

We find as the film goes on that many instances of infidelity exist in the characters' cluttered histories. Half the women in this movie commit adultery at some point and even Finn falls victim to temptation. Where as once I could not relate, I find myself agreeing with many of Finn's thoughts and opinions on marriage upon becoming engaged - this includes a question in the very beginning that Ryder's voiceover poses to the audience: `How do you merge into this thing called 'a couple', and still keep a little room for yourself? How do we even know we're only supposed to be with one person for the rest of our lives?' These kinds of questions number in the hundreds of intended couples as they come closer to walking the proverbial aisle. I know that I have had my own reservations about marriage ever since I got engaged and many of my questions will never have an answer - I must trust my heart.and my gut.

Performances range in the areas of premium to mediocre. Who comes at the top of my list are screen veterans (and Academy Award winners, natch) Ellen Burstyn and Anne Bancroft. These two never cease to amaze me with how they can turn a character inside out and make it their own. Winona Ryder is so-so (as she is in most of her movies) as Finn but she does manage to touch a few nerves with her dark and luminous eyes - those pretty peepers are half of her dramatic capacity. Alfre Woodard is excellent, giving Marianna a carved edge but a soft core. Kate Nelligan is also wonderful but if you really wanna see her flex those acting chops, take a deep breath of Lila Wingo in `The Prince of Tides'. Dermot Mulroney always seems to play a nice guy that gets taken for granted (The Thing Called Love, My Best Friend's Wedding, Point Of No Return, etc.) and he does it again here - actis repeatus, you might say. Jean Simmons is a little disappointing as Em, the once beautiful and poised actress now only a shadow of herself. Maya Angelou does fine as Anna and some of Gen X's more popular faces make brief appearances in supporting roles (Claire Danes, Samantha Mathis, Jared Leto and Jonathan Schaech).

This film is a fairly even script-to-screen production and will please many that seek a decent character study. Of course, you can't outdo a detailed and poetic novel or the insightful author who writes it. As long as novelists continue to exist and evolve, filmic adaptations cannot compare (though there are a few exceptions here and there, e.g. Dolores Claiborne). This is not to say that `How To Make An American Quilt' isn't enjoyable - it's just not on par with what can be translated through literature. For those who have read Otto's novel, it will earn your rigid criticism.

I have spent many pleasant hours mocking "How To Make An American Quilt" to friends, but at this moment I want to play fair. I'm sure that there are many things to like about this movie and that somehow they escaped my notice. For me it was never more than a series of plot devices stitched together (ha ha) to form an unsatisfying story.

Winona Ryder is always a pleasure to watch. I've liked her better in more irreverent titles like "Beetlejuice" or "Heathers". Still, she wears earnestness well, and manages to make bearable the Poloniusesque quilt speech at end of the picture (see the quotes section).

The supporting players should be every bit as watchable (with several centuries of acting experience among them, they ought to be). I wish I'd been allowed to watch them act. Their function was to sit in front of the camera quilting and say a few words of introduction before the flashback--as if they were hosts of a documentary.

I want to pause for a moment over Maya Angelou's casting. It's always a tricky thing introducing a famous person from another discipline as an actor. I call it the "Hey, you're Kareem Abdul-Jabbar" problem (based on the scene from _Airplane_ where a kid recognizes the basketball player in the co-pilot's seat. The joke is in how much time he spends denying it). Maya Angelou has screen presence, but does nothing to dispel the problem. My dominant experience watching her was, "Wow, they got Maya Angelou, world famous poet!" Maybe this was the idea. Maybe the filmmakers felt her famous presence would, in itself, add depth to the proceedings, so why muddy it with anything as messy as an interesting character? Her appearance was less acting than promotion. Maya Angelou wouldn't appear in a dog, would she?

Well...

The plot reminds me of a line Robin Williams had about alcoholics, "You realize you're and alcoholic when you repeat yourself. You realize you're an alcoholic when you repeat yourself. You realize, oh dammit." Each woman's story follows a similar pattern. Girl meets boy, sleeps with boy, marries boy, boy leaves, boy comes back--each time unconvincingly (I wonder how far any guy has ever gotten with the opening line "You swim like a mermaid"). The Alfre Woodard story is the only variation, and as a result, the only interesting one among them.

And of course Winona Ryder's Finn has a similar problem. Does she marry Dermott Mulrooney or does she go off with the local stud muffin. I call him the local stud muffin because that's all he is. The actor who played him didn't convince me that there was anything under the perfect I-don't-have-to-work-out abs that would compel her to do more than roll in the field with him. He wasn't a character so much a plot device meant to set up an obvious choice. Handsome rogue or dependable architecht? Given the way the flashbacks ran, take a guess.

There are more scenes to pummel here. There's the thesis blowing away in the wind (she's the only grad student I've ever seen with no notes, no paperweight, and, since she was using a typewriter, no carbons), and there's her random meeting with the Stud Muffin (who just happened to be hanging out in the groves with a picnic basket and a blanket for her. I guess this was set before the advent of stalking laws), but it would take too long to mock them all. The real trouble with the movie is that it was so earnest, so desperate to convince the audience of its poetic depths, that it wound up shallow, unsatisfying, unconvincing and unintentionally funny.

Or, to put it another way--never have so many, who were so talented, worked on something so ordinary.

Bride-to-be Finn Dodd (Winona Ryder) hears tales of romance and sorrow from her elders as they construct a quilt.

Is this a chick flick or something more? I think it is primarily a chick flick, as it tells multiple romance stories from the point of view of the ladies. But it is not a romantic comedy, which makes it deeper than the average chick flick. And the cast... wow. Winona Ryder, Maya Angelou, Claire Danes and the debut of Jared Leto? That has to make it worth something.

And actually, it was the cast that really made this enjoyable for me. I cared very little about the plot, and definitely did not care about the romances. Finn could be with her boyfriend, a foreign guy or whoever. I don't care who she picks. But the casting was excellent.

When Berkeley graduate student Finn decides to spend some time away from her live-in boyfriend, and moves in with her grandmother and great aunt for the summer, while finishing her master's thesis, she gets an important and heart-warming lesson about love and commitment. Finn's grandmother and great aunt are members of a quilting bee, and their group (whose members have known each other for a long time) decide that their latest project should have the theme of "where love resides." As the quilt is made, each woman remembers significant events in their lives which relate to love and the joy and pain that it brings. Each woman brings her own perspective to the nature of love, from Anna (who signs off on men completely after a bad experience)to her daughter Marianne (who cannot settle on just one man). Some of the women have been cheated on, some have done the cheating, while others just let love die.

Along the way, Finn faces temptation in the form of Leon, a smoldering hunk who pursues her in spite of knowing that she is taken. At the same time, Finn must come to terms with her parents' failed marriage, as she decides whether to accept her boyfriend's marriage proposal.

Inspite of the pains that the women have suffered in the name of love, the movie does not in any way bash love or marriage (which has recently become popular). It is a beautifully made film, and while it is definitely a "chick flick," it might also appeal to the more romantically minded guy.