La grande traversée

A film like a tent. You recognize the director and the art of actors, the meaning of improvisation and the realism of message. And, scene by scene, you discover the freshness of honest perspective about family, friendship, duties and jealousies, expectations and live. A cruise travel and livra, secrets, vulnerabilities of three people. Their connections. And, no doubts, Meryl Streep and Lucas Hedges.

I'm not sure if I liked the movie as much as I wanted to. The story sounded more interesting than it actually is. I catched myself a little bored at moments, waiting through the whole movie for something really exciting to happen.. but nope. It could have been better though if it wasn't for Lucas Hedges' annoyingly-forced acting.

What an enormous disappointment.

I was very much anticipating this. Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and Candice Bergen - what a cast!

What a bore. It felt like there was no script, that it was all ad-libbed and nobody knew what to say or how to bring any story.

ZERO character development. Almost NO conflict. Maybe five lines of conflict for the first 90 minutes. Then one scene sort of out of nowhere. It was strange.

The kid playing the nephew could hardly act. And apparently is incapable of washing nor brushing his hair.

The only thing I can figure is that they wanted to be directed by Steven Soderbergh. And with the music crescendo at the end, it made you feel like Soderbergh thought he just directed something deep. Instead it was almost two hours of... nothing.

Please. Don't. Watch. This is like a Woody Allen movie without the comedy. I can't imagine anything more boring than this. I would like to corner the writer and director and demand my money back plus a fine for wasting my time. I feel sorry for the actors who will be vilified for foisting this mess on the public.

Knowing ahead of watching that the dialog was totally unscripted and improvised I found myself appreciating the true art form by the actors. Knowing how petrified they all were during the shoot, it's never apparent from their seamless performances. They were all given a frame to stay in and also an ending to each scene. The rest is them and their own words and reactions. Shot in only 8 days, the film is a triumph of modern day filmmaking. My only criticism was the ambient lighting was at times distracting.