Alex of Venice

From thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has emerged as one of my favorite actress's. Ever. She positively shines as "Alex of Venice" with yet another in a continuing string of organically enchanting performances.

This time she gives us Alex, a young environmental protection attorney whose workaholic overachieving has relegated her own family to virtual peripheral status. Alex's poignant reexamination of her priorities are at once engaging and heartbreaking as exquisitely brought to bear by the wondrous Winstead.

Chris Messina pulls double duty here. As Director, he shows a keen gift for extracting the essential nature from each of the film's fine cast. This includes Messina himself, as he delivers a moving turn in the role of George, a neglected husband who has ignored life's personal callings for far too many years.

Don Johnson is also simply superb and genuinely affecting as Alex's rough around the edges dad, Roger. Johnson's rendering of a washed up TV series actor playing a supporting part in what amounts to a community theater production parallels his character's succumbing to an insidious disease that threatens to rob him of his mental faculties.

Derek Luke makes an impression as a smoothly shrewd real estate developer who comes to reveal a soul more than capable of conveying compassion. And kudos to the great Jennifer Jason Leigh. While her presence is small, her big name is absent from the screen during "Alex"'s opening credits.

How often do we see THAT kind of modesty in Hollywood?

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Young woman loses her husband and has to take care of her kid by herself. What's new to this story?

The good: acting is good. The story is sweet and gentle. There is a certain effort to make it transcend the simple story of a single mom.

The bad: it's tedious. It's too safe. This story has been told before, with much more spark and punch in other movies.

I enjoyed this quite simple and straightforward story and script. The lead female character adds to the story and the script with her extremely natural performance and lets the movie flow smoothly. Yes, it could have become a deeper movie at many levels but that would also have taken away from the simplicity of the characters portrayed. I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it for a weeknight watch.

The attempt to portray Alex (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as a woman in flux, forced by circumstance to "reinvent herself", was lost on this viewer. Instead, little was done to drag her out of the mire of self absorption. She takes everyone around her for granted, and is clueless about what is going on with the people with whom she shares a household, most importantly her son Dakota (Skylar Gaertner) . It was very difficult if not impossible to find any empathy for Alex especially when her husband George (Chris Messina) manages, at a distance, to know more about what's going on with their child than she does. Alex's sister Anya (Julianna Guill) is invited by patriarch Roger (Don Johnson) during George's absence for reasons never revealed, and thankfully so, as Dakota would be a footnote barely visible to the story line, (let alone his mother), without Anya's playful interactions and wise counsel. Rather than building a powerful thesis on family dynamics the film focuses on superficial distractions like getting laid or barhopping as solutions to the very real angst that accompanies dramatic life change. We don't ever know why Alex's work is so important to her, or why she cannot relate in the most basic way to her son, or how she feels about her husband, or why she thinks it's okay to expect that everyone else is responsible for managing the day-to-day tasks of raising a child and managing a career. Supporting cast do a wonderful job of carrying an otherwise lackluster character study to a predictable end. Unfortunately for Winstead, she is faced with trying to unearth profundity from the shallow grave where Alex's character is buried.

This should be at least some 20 minutes longer. From beginning I felt whole storytelling as rushed. Husband suddenly announces that he can't do it anymore, and leaves. But we couldn't see almost nothing why, how family was really dysfunctional. And it was so most time. I don't know who to blame more: writers or director. Probably both. It seems that director felt in love with Mary Elizabeth Winstead (MEW in further text), and focused on her all time - there was plenty of scenes with only her on screen. Actually, I can not blame him for that - camera loves her, and she was ideal cast for idealistic, as young dedicated to school, work type young woman. I watched this mostly because of her. Don Johnson was pleasant surprise in atypical role. Unfortunately, there is strong impression that male characters were not just lower time on screen, but presented as lower worthy. Still, it could be pretty good indie movie with better storytelling and more time. Was problem with budget or directors inexperience, I can't tell. Acting from MEW, Don Johnson and Skylar Gaertner was superb. Other did good job too. My rating is 6 - it was watchable, not boring, maybe simply because you can not stop to watch MEW :-)