Playing by Heart Reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

The Many Hearts of Playing by Heart

Last week, I closed my remarks on The Thin Red Line by saying that it was a three hour movie which should have been over in two hours. A friend responded that I had written a three page review which should have been over in two pages. So, to the point. Director\writer Willard Carroll's Playing by Heart is funny (very funny), it's sad, it's a pleasure to watch, and it's even a pleasure to think about, to remember, and to anticipate seeing again. The film is a web of hearts, sometimes linking, sometimes not, an anthology of six stories that bump into each other in unexpected ways. It is also a

showcase for some of our best actors.

Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands play an affluent couple dealing with forty years of marriage, her success as a television chef, his brain tumor, and their memories of his infidelities twenty-five years earlier. Their sparring includes the funniest lines in this funny film, delivered with perfect timing. Connery and Rowlands look fabulous, even "fah-bulous," and their portrayal of the film's oldest couple is hot, erotic--two definitely

sexy senior citizens. By the way, although in other plots undressed couples end up in bed together, the sheets always stay in place. No anatomy lessons here, but don't let that keep you away.

Dennis Quaid plays a man of a thousand faces, at least stories, hanging out in bars, with a new pickup line for each new woman. In the background or at the taxi stand, however, the same woman shadows him from persona to persona. Which is the real one? The envelope, please....

Ellen Burstyn and Jay Mohr, in the film's most poignant moments, play mother and son dealing with his impending death and her memories of a loveless marriage. They have never known each other--through no fault of hers or his either. Their attempts to build a new relationship are as uncertain as the first steps that any of the lovers take in their relationships. By the way, it is that Jay Mohr! And, if you have never seen the great work of the great Ellen Burstyn, then, as they say, run--don't walk--to your nearest video store and grab The Spitfire Grill. With her experience in theater more so than in film, she fills out every square inch of a characterization, all twenty-seven acres of a characterization in her case.

In each of the remaining plots, a young woman (Madeleine Stowe, Angelina Jolie, and Gillian Anderson) deals with the promise, the possibility, or the threat of a relationship with a young man (Anthony Edwards, Ryan Phillippe, Jon Stewart). Each of these plots is set in an emotional mine field. He wants her, but she doesn't want him, because... because she does want him (Anderson\Stewart). She wants him, he wants her, but he can't want her (Jolie\Phillippe). Or, they are married, just not to each other (Stowe\ Edwards).

At least since the great, sprawling French film La Ronde by Max Ophuls (1950) through Robert Altman's Nashville (1975) and Short Cuts (1993) and Wayne Wang's Smoke (1995), this kind of film, weaving several plots into a sometimes rather bumpy tapestry, has attracted and challenged filmmakers. This film, much as I enjoyed it, much as I want to see it again, shows the weaknesses as well as the strengths inherent in the form. There is an opportunity for the director to flex his cinematic muscles with characters, situations, and settings. In fact, this film's richly detailed ambiance, sometimes at the expense of intimacy of camera work, suggests Ophuls's work.

On the other hand, while we may want to know, need to know more, perhaps we are cheated by not seeing the characters fully. We see things from many different points of view, just not in great detail. There is an unsettling sense that the whole enterprise is made up of short cuts, as insubstantial as smoke. The greatest problem with this film is that while we don't see much of the characters, we do hear them, and hear them, and hear them.

The film begins with a line that we hear later in context, "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture." Then, let's subtitle this film, Pirouettin' about Frank Lloyd Wright. At times, the only way that we know that the characters are in love (or not) is because they tell us, adding new meaning to the term talking pictures. Yet, it is a sparklingly funny film that within its own limits pleases. Different lines elicited laughs from different corners of the theater; some of the more subtle witticisms brought laughter that moved in a wave, as some of us slower wits took longer to figure them out. While I'm subtitling this romantic comedy, I might add, Four Relationships and a Funeral.

A request. One of many eruptions in the Rowlands\Connery plot involves his giving away the ending of a film that she is watching, and another character refers to The Crying Game, Neil Jordan's 1992 film. When it was released, a major television network's evening news (NBC, I think) ran a feature on how fans of the film so scrupulously kept quiet about the film's crucial plot twist. Willard Carroll must have chuckled as he penned those lines. So, I shall keep quiet, and I ask you not to give away the punch line, either. All I shall say is that the film, like Shakespeare's comedies, ends with couples dancing together--while earlier two of the characters danced alone. They connect, only connect, but that is perhaps what we are here for, all we are here for. And, with varying degrees of success, they connect with us as well.

Keep your feet dry (the better for dancing), your heart full of noble thoughts, and... to she-who-knows-who-she-is, this is coming in just under two pages!