The Dish & the Spoon

I don't know where to start. This is the film that Gus Van Sant always wanted to make when he was alive. Oh wait...he IS alive...sort of. A really excellent soundtrack....Cab Calaway?...really?...lol...the one camera shooting was very annoying..it's really not how we see things and very much really not what we expect in well made films...Olly Alexander is such an amazing talent...hope he stays true to his perceptions of art..this is one truly fun little film...loved seeing the ocean on the east coast rather than the obligatory northern pacific coast...there were some very well conveyed emotions to be seen and experienced...and the feeling of coming in out of the cold was nothing less than brilliant....thanks to the post prod team...excellent editing..

I enjoyed this movie, as it does not feel constructed in the way most movies are. It makes you feel the way you would feel if you were in Rose's shoes, overwhelmed by emotions and with no idea what you are going to do next. Enslaved by pain and bored by the lulls in between when she does not know what to do and acts without thinking. For me this movie feels totally realistic and true. Of course some scenes make no logical sense, but we are all a bit illogical especially when hurting. Still they are interesting to watch as other lives not our own seem more interesting sometimes. There are moments of profound truth and emotional release that are very impressively acted and filmed and make the movie totally worth watching. Don't expect a masterpiece, a precious gem, but a nice round pebble smoothed by the sea.

I wanted to like this picture (brave little independent film launches out into the big world at London Film Festival), and it has a striking opening sequence. Unfortunately, by the halfway point it started to feel laboured; by the end, fatally, the characters had become annoying rather than sympathetic, and the whole thing came across with an amateurish feeling.

It feels too long for its actual content: too many would-be-meaningful shots of driving, of landscape, of the camera looking at characters, of characters looking at each other, of 'oh-look-I-managed-to-catch-a-flock-of-birds-in-the-viewfinder' (this happens several times, and while it's a pretty composition and no doubt a challenging achievement, it doesn't really do anything for the film as a whole). And it needs a better script -- it sounded a lot of the time as if the characters were improvising their dialogue as they went along, and there is little coherent plot. The film manages to give the overall impression of someone's Film Studies degree project material expanded to feature length, not always successfully.

Perhaps the most frustrating scene is where the central pair, for no reason that ever becomes apparent, act out a scenario that involves the woman, dressed in man's clothing, performing a sexually aggressive pick-up on the young man, tricked out in make-up, a necklace and a padded bra -- like so much of the rest of the film, this scene doesn't go anywhere plot-wise, and I just got the impression that the director thought it would be a fun thing to get the actors to do. It's certainly confusing for the audience. (I was actually wondering at one point if we had been subjected to an artful piece of misdirection, and that the unfaithful spouse was actually being revealed as a partner in a lesbian relationship -- but apparently not.)

"The Dish and the Spoon" (again, why this title?) starts off with an interesting premise (and some jaw-dropping ranting on the part of Greta Gerwig), but gradually lost this viewer's engagement. This sort of free-flowing improvisational stuff really isn't in my line: your average B-movie would squeeze in six or seven times the plot and far more dialogue into two-thirds of the running time of this picture.

Apparently it's 'mumblecore', 'wacky', 'quirky'. It isn't me.

Rose (Greta Gerwig) is outraged over her husband's affair with yoga teacher Emma. She picks up an English boy (Olly Alexander) in distress. He had come to America for a girl which ended in disappointment. The two have an uncomfortable time as they set to confront Emma.

I wonder how young exactly is the boy supposed to be. Olly is twenty and there is no reason why he wouldn't jump all over Gerwig which makes the early hesitation rather silly. All of it depends on his age in the movie and I may have missed that. Since he doesn't even have a name, it's not unrealistic that he has no age. There is a big emotional scene from Gerwig which surprised and shocked me. Then there is the ending which is unearned since the audience knows so little about the husband. We can't forgive him if we don't know him. It's a missed opportunity for the boy which is how I feel about this movie.

The entire movie feels much like the opening - a long drive through a tunnel with a woman crying. Occasionally an amusing or artsy shot is added but they are not enough to redeem this exercise in boredom.

What little plot there is centers around the weekend (maybe) escapades of a woman whose husband slept with another woman. She finds a young man sleeping in a lighthouse and develops a quirky relationship with him. There appears to be no reason for many of their actions, particularly a scene in which she makes him a transvestite. Little is learned about the couple or their motivations. In fact, the name of the man is never revealed. The movie is best characterized by long takes of the actors homely faces.

The few moments of artistic interest, such as when the man excellently draws her face in the sand, do add something. The moments are too fleeting, however, to suffer the 90 minutes of agitation and boredom that this movie instills.