Film
More than grief
by Helene Wong
The loss of a loved one can arouse more than just grief, and film-makers never seem to tire of exploring the alternatives – Ordinary People (guilt); In the Bedroom (revenge); All About My Mother and The Son’s Room (journeys of healing). Not to mention the other-dimensional forays of Ghost, The Others and Truly, Madly, Deeply. Two recent attempts are unlikely to make the same impact as these predecessors, but each has its pleasures.
The loss in The Upside of Anger is not through death, but abandonment: the husband of suburban housewife Terry Wolfmeyer has disappeared abruptly, apparently enticed away by his Swedish secretary. And Terry is angry. This, it seems, is what the film is about – an observation of three years in the well-heeled life of a pissed-off Terry and her four daughters, five storylines drifting along, occasionally touching and setting off sparks, finally converging in an utterly unexpected twist of an ending that is bound to divide opinion. For some, it will be a cheat, a way out of a script that doesn’t know where it’s going; or, it knows where it’s going, but not how to get there. For others – and this I incline towards – it suddenly illuminates all that has gone before, to reveal what the film is really about. Though thin in the telling, and contrived around that ending, the film is nonetheless a potent cautionary tale.
So, nothing much happens. Or, if you like, real life happens. Because in truth, outside the movies, the aftermath of such a traumatic event is more likely to be an inarticulate numbness and a well of internalised emotions. Not a great recipe for a movie, unless you have actors with the talent to convey that convincingly.
Fortunately, the casting works. As the next door neighbour who puts the moves on Terry, Kevin Costner slips back easily into the dishevelled charm he brought to Bull Durham – again as an ex-baseball player – and shows how much better he is at being laid-back than heroic. The daughters, a line-up of bright young Hollywood pulchritude – Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Alicia Witt and Keri Russell – commit themselves fully to their stories, even though writer-director Mike Binder fails to knit them together thematically. This may have been deliberate (the real-life thing again), but sometimes they must have wondered if they were in the same film.
The strongest performer, though, is the brilliant Joan Allen (The Contender) as Terry. Gaunt and drained, capable of freezing those around her with a look, she hits the vodka and spits out acid, taxing everyone’s good humour, yet displaying enough of her own to retain our sympathy without manipulation. She, and that ending, are all that hold this flimsy piece of work together.
The ending of The Door in the Floor doesn’t pack the same punch, but it, too, forces a re-evaluation of what has gone before. Unlike Anger, it’s an explanation that we have been expecting, the mystery and anticipation of it brooding over the action throughout and imparting a hushed, softer-edged style in contrast to Anger’s close-shot suburban setting. It’s in keeping because the response to loss here is deeply interior, to the extent of almost complete withdrawal.
Adapted by director Tod Williams from John Irving’s A Widow for One Year, it’s another observational piece, this time of the effect of two teenage brothers’ deaths on their parents, played by Kim Basinger (good) and Jeff Bridges (better). Ted, a writer and illustrator of children’s books, drinks too much and exploits other women, dulling the grief and guilt and denying himself closeness. Marion goes inward, neglecting Ruth, the child they believed would help them get over it. From the point of view of Eddie, a young writer invited to be Ted’s assistant, the disintegrating marriage – and his role in that – is seen as tragi-comic, and the tonal shifts can feel jolting. The story has less to say than Anger, and has lapses into predictability and sentiment, but there is a look and mood that lingers long afterwards, like sadness. And Jon Foster as Eddie manifests perfectly both the awkwardness of youth and a lovely brotherly chemistry with Elle Fanning as Ruth.
THE UPSIDE OF ANGER, directed by Mike Binder.
THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR, directed by Tod Williams.
