In The Bedroom
Full Price Feature
Writer/director/producer Todd Field debuts with this surprisingly mature film. The subject matter looked too indescribable and heavy when I saw previews, and I am wary of first time writer/director/producer-type labors of love if I am not attracted by the story. After the nominees were announced, however, I realized I could no longer wait to see this film. I brought a small group with me, who appeared to have been as deeply affected by this intimate look into pain, acceptance, recovery, and forgiveness as I was. The title implies that the intimacy is sexual in nature; no sexuality could ever cut as close to one's insides as the words spoken here.
All the acting nominations are richly deserved. There has been plenty of press on poor Marisa Tomei's "freak" Oscar win for My Cousin Vinnie, but this is no freak nomination, whatever you may have thought back in the 1990s. Tomei guns the gamut in this film, and has to do some very hard things as a character, though it is not the showcase that it is for Sissy Spacek or Tom Wilkinson. Their on-screen marriage is as real as the seat cushion in your back, with all its familiarities and bitterness and unspoken cues. I can't describe it without delving into some "In The Actor's Studio" craft-type blather, but they inhabit their characters like Mikhail Baryshnikov dances. Wilkinson is always a joy to watch on screen. The first time I was aware of him was The Full Monty, and I loved him afterward in Wilde and Shakespeare in Love and The Patriot. I hope this film and this nomination catapult him into more roles. Spacek is dissected like a frog, emotionally, with not a whit of posturing or actor ego obscuring her performance, and it's breathtaking. At one point I recalled Piper Laurie, playing Spacek's insane horrible mother in Carrie, and wondered if Piper wishes she had played it more like this.
Field clearly did not learn anything from Kubrick while being in Eyes Wide Shut, for which we should all be grateful - the tension and the drama and the interest are all held in balance. He trains the camera on these artists and lets them find the rhythm, and you can see that very little of what they contributed was lost in the editing room. It's painful to see into other people's pain when you, as an empathetic audience member, are still processing your own - but then again, it makes you aware that you are an audience member - these people (though actors still) are really living what you are only vicariously experiencing. So many movies take weighty subjects and losses and present them in a sort of shorthand, so you either work to imagine how you yourself would react if such a thing befell you, or you are distracted by how you did actually react when it happened to you. Field's film gives you the real experience as close as you can feel it when it's still only projected light.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. reviews@cinerina.com Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com and http://www.capitol-city.com
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