8/18/2023 0 Comments Film endings beginnings![]() ![]() Dornan comes closest to creating a potentially interesting character, and his scenes of emotional reckoning with Daphne have a hint of genuine feeling. The movie aims to make Daphne’s journey raw and real, but mostly it’s just insipid. The truth is that Daphne is a snooze, despite Woodley’s best efforts to breathe some dimension into her via one sleepy self-exploration scene after another, most of it suffused by cinematographer Marianne Bakke in a dreamy haze and fragmented in restless jump cuts. She’s a post-Time’s Up inversion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl she exists to allow the writer-director, somewhat patronizingly, to show unmoored young women how to love themselves, flaws and all, and take control of their lives. We watch her play pinball, hand-paint old teapots, babysit her adorable niece or exchange meaningful looks with Jack’s cute corgi. But she’s still a woefully underdeveloped character. While Doremus’ fixation on the complexities of modern love makes you wonder if anything formative ever happened to him outside the bedroom, he does at least try to get beyond that here by focusing on a character gradually learning to make choices not driven by head-spinning romance.ĭaphne tends to blame the example of her mother ( Wendie Malick) for her tendency to move from guy to guy, making impulsive decisions and hurting people along the way. Evidently, Daphne has never seen a movie, because she’s surprised when a pregnancy test proves positive, with no clues about the baby’s paternity. (One at a time, natch, since Doremus’ oeuvre is strictly heteronormative.) Her commitment initially is to grounded Jack, but sexy, unpredictable bad boy Frank’s invitation to join him on a Big Sur road trip proves hard to resist. But the casual talk about fear of emotion, and passion being left by the roadside on the way out of one’s early 20s seems just a formality to stall Daphne’s inevitable tumble into bed with both men. The discovery that Frank and Jack are buddies causes both Daphne and the guys to step back for fear of driving a wedge into their friendship. Frank comes on strong, sending her flirty texts and a Spotify playlist of “Music to Suffer To.” (This plays right into Doremus’ hands, since he never met a montage or a wispy indie-rock underlay he didn’t like.) Jack is more conventional in his approach, inviting her to watch him drink while she consumes a non-alcoholic beverage. That vow starts looking shaky at Billie’s New Year’s Eve party, where Daphne first meets Frank (Stan) over cigarettes and insufferable (though not to either of them) small talk, and then writer-teacher Jack (Dornan), whose Irish accent and academic credentials give him more substance. “That’s terrifying,” deadpans Daphne, though she pledges to herself to take a six-month sabbatical from drinking and men, determined to break the messy pattern of her emotional life. Her older friend and confidante, Ingrid ( Kyra Sedgwick), suggests she take a break and spend some time alone. While figuring out what’s next, she moves back into the pool house of her married half-sister Billie (Lindsay Sloane), seemingly not for the first time. She was convinced he was “the one,” but seems to have sabotaged that hope with a one-night stand with Jed (Ben Esler), which caused her also to abruptly quit her job. And on the evidence of their soporific dialogue here, Woodley, Dornan and Stan are not going to cause Aaron Sorkin any sleepless nights.ĭaphne (Woodley) is reeling from the end of a four-year relationship with Adrian (Matthew Gray Gubler). But Doremus is no Mike Leigh, whose process involves extended rehearsal periods of improvisation and experimentation to refine characters and storylines. No such magic elevates the stubbornly wan new film, which was developed from a basic outline with backstories, written by Doremus with novelist Jardine Libaire the actors collaborated to flesh out their own characters and dialogue. ![]()
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