Absolution in love - The Cake Eaters

I have been waiting for this movie from a very long time. Wait is a worthwhile, and i thoroughly enjoyed this one. Mary Stuart Masterson has captured complete concentration from the audience. You can watch this movie if your feeling low or even good.

This movie is about love and relationship. If you are physically unfit, you are not going to loose out of love and its wonderfully portrayed by Kristen Stewart. Overall your heart will float in a sea of joy.

Kristen Stewart is amazing, she takes a through a journey of kind bigheartedness and love. She definitely has a bright future and a long career. The storyline is perfect which contains emotions and humor.

Aaron Stanford is equally good in his own way. A piece of work through which you will fell good for at least a day. Cheers!!!!

In a backwater town in upstate New York, Georgia Kaminski (Kristin Stewart), a teenage girl with a terminal nervous disorder, finds herself torn between the frivolity of her grandmother (Elizabeth Ashley) and overly protective mother who, in the hopes of bringing awareness and humanity to her daughter's disease, takes controversial photos of Georgia in the nude. Several miles away, aspiring musician Guy Kimbrough (Jayce Bartok) returns to the house of estranged father Easy (Bruce Dern) and younger brother Beagle (Aaron Stanford), trying to hide the secret of his failure to make it big. Easy is the town butcher, recently widowed, with secrets of his own, while Beagle, the kid who never left home, has surrendered his life to the care of his father and late mother, and struggles to find an identity of his own. Kaminskis and Kimbroughs conjoin dramatically when Georgia, hoping to find love in her life, and to find it before it's too late, courts the affection of Beagle, whom she meets at an outdoor flea market. The innocent but contentious relationship causes a series of reckonings, as both families are forced to contend with the heaps of emotional baggage that have piled up in their lives.

Masterson keeps it real with this one. The drama is understated, the tension is subtle, and the characters are both distinct and believable. Hats off to Kristin Stewart, who manages to be a dozen things at once – tragic but not pitiful, strong, endearing, funny, unconventionally sexy, and none of the clichés we've grown to associate with any of Hollywood's notorious mental illnesses. Remaining hats to Bruce Dern, a long-time favorite of mine, who keeps a lid on things and never fails to command our respect, even as his character slides deeper into dubious behavior.

In many ways, the film's strengths almost become its undoing. The sustained, understated quality of the storytelling prevents the movie from having any kind of real climax, and the immaculate tension set up in the first hour of the movie never quite pays off in a way I would like. That said, it's still a beautiful film, a capstone of movie-making maturity, and deserves the widest audience possible.

If you only know Kristen S. as "Bella", than you haven't seen her full Spectrum yet. This is one of the films where she can show what she is really capable of. Of course this being an ensemble piece, there are quite a few other people, who are all really good in their roles. And while this is a man trying to get past his ... well past (I'm talking about the script writer), it still is able to affect other people (the viewers), too.

Of course a drama isn't something that will get all people excited and there are quite a few things, that might get you off the movie. But if you take the time and invest in the characters as the filmmakers did, you will come to like it. Plus the audio commentary is a really nice one to listen to.

The film's title could baffle or be lost on you. Then you realize after watching it that it is one of the smartest titles written for a story. Really. I remember one cheeky poster I saw eons ago, "Life is short, eat dessert first!". And from there you know why this title is so apropos.

"The Cake Eaters" was made two years ago but was only released in theaters recently. Mary Stuart Masterson, yes that great actress who directed this little film, should thank high heavens for Twilight. Because before Twilight, Kristen Stewart was just that young indie actress recognized only by people who watch little indie films. We all know Twilight at present is still officially undead, which is good news for the leads' older films that were shelved and are now miraculously resurrected. Otherwise there was a very slim chance for this little film to go mass market. Because first, it is a "quiet" character-driven movie (no action sequences typical of blockbusters). Second, the cast is a group of actors and not stars.

But they are not really new actors. Which leads us to Bruce Dern, playing the widower Easy, who gave a very solid performance here. Aaron Stanford, playing the naive and reliable Beagle, has been making films since 2002. He reminds me of Michael Cera, by how he portrayed Beagle here. And then we have Kristen Stewart, who plays Georgia, a headstrong 15 year old with a degenerative disease (Friedreich's Ataxia). Kristen inhabited Georgia here. She plays her so convincingly you think she's born with the disease. You can imagine the twitching, slurred speech and uneven gait could take a toll yet she was consistent with it. The best thing is, though she played a girl who is physically weak, her Georgia shows strength and maturity. Kristen has received a lot of flak for underplaying her characters. But consider that here she achieves Georgia's strength with her restrained acting, opting to convey emotions through facial expressions and succinct delivery of lines. Georgia becomes not just a sick 15 year old girl but much more than that. We feel for her, but we do not pity her. Which is what all people with disabilities want anyway.

And who would have guessed that Guy, the black sheep brother, is played by the screenplay writer, Jayce Bartok. He writes better, we say, but kudos to him for churning a thoughtful mature story.

I am a fan of Masterson's and was so glad to learn she's gone into directing. Her steady hand has allowed this little film to achieve its purpose. The choice of making a film set in a small town reminds you of "Fried Green Tomatoes". This does have a feel of that film. Subtle , unassuming, natural. She worked hand in hand with real life brother Peter as cinematographer, who gave some stunning shots.

The OST is also worth mentioning, considering that Duncan Shiek has lent his talent. His relaxed introspective music accompanies this film well.

In this superbly rendered drama from Mary Stuart Masterson, two small-town families find their lives unexpectedly intertwined when the quiet, socially awkward Beagle Kimbrough (Aaron Stanford) invites the romantic attentions of Georgia Kaminski (Kristen Stewart), a young girl with a rare but terminal nervous disease who knows her window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Much to the chagrin of her domineering mother, and the chilly audits of her otherwise zesty grandmother, Georgia decides to follow her feelings to wherever it is they lead her. Meanwhile, Beagle's older brother Guy (Jayce Bartok), the wayward son, returns from a dead-end bid to become a musician and struggles to reconcile himself with estranged father Easy (Bruce Dern) the town butcher, whose wife (Guy and Beagle's mother) has recently passed away.

There are so many points in this movie where a less steady hand might have foundered the effort, either by overplaying the sentiment card, or by trying to hard to push the tragic undertones, but the film finds an immaculate balance, that golden middle-of-the-road equilibrium that just gets rarer the more time goes by. The characters are so genuine, their stories so real, that the film exacts an impact that is no less raw, and no less memorable, than the trials and tribulations of families we know in life.

The first scene offers a perfect illustration of everything that's right with the movie: Beagle and Easy sit across from each other at the breakfast table, Easy contemplating such bold measures as changing his breakfast cereal, Beagle listening, responding in monosyllables, almost without thinking, and from this one tiny encounter we glean the whole spectrum of what their relationship has become – perfunctory, habitual, and void of energy.

With writing this precise, and with performances so nuanced and natural that all of Hollywood's clichés are swept under the carpet without so much as a whimper, the stage is set for perfection.

Which is what this movie is – perfection.