I’m not the only one who questions the success of the new Roses adaptation by Tony McNamara, but I might be more intrigued by its intention.
This movie, which is a remake of the 1989 one by Michael J. Leeson and 1981 novel by Warren Adler, focuses on the relationship between Theo, an architect whose major project has failed, and Ivy, a chef whose return to work after this failure was more successful than either imagined.
Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) is struggling in his new role as primary parent, so Ivy (Olivia Coleman) returns a favor by offering to finance their dream home, which he designs and builds as a way of restoring his professional and personal reputation. Its development is inversely related to the deterioration of their marriage, which culminates in a fateful dinner party that finally reminds them after everyone has left of their shared desire to restore their relationship just before the house and presumably they are destroyed by a gas-leak explosion.
Many are critical of this movie. The Chicago Reader for example suggests that the pacing is off and that the performances should be funnier, which seem reasonable. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by its intention, which could be a funny foray into the challenges of marriages, especially those that last many years.
Research suggests that married couples, even unhappily married ones, are generally happier after many years (e.g., Carstensen 2011, 119-120). Anyone in one of these can attest that such longevity often requires unforeseen compromises and challenges.
Such a reality is central to this movie, which wants to acknowledge it in a witty way. This worthwhile challenge however is ultimately more than it can manage.
Both central characters are mutually witty, which is part of their attraction and they suggest in a counseling session could be considered repartee, or less caustic criticism and more emotional release. Also, the ending, which is different from the previous movie, more attests to the absurdity of married life.
These and other conditions never quite coalesce in anything coherent, which is a problem. Such moments are played for laughs before any black comedy discomfort can arise. For example, the new-age-adjacent Amy (Kate McKinnon) offers her husband’s friend and client Theo a romantic road trip but when challenged merely acknowledges her desire for novelty without any intention of leaving her husband Barry (Adam Samberg).
This mixed messaging means that the move is at most an amusing couple of hours with solid main performances and more than adequate technical elements. These unfortunately are constrained by choices from its author and its director (Jay Roach), and make it a mostly forgettable project.
As such, it never quite does justice to its central story about a long-married couple confronting challenges. Some obviously fail while others succeed, and this difference could be compellingly considered in a movie but just would need something clearer.
Most top critics seem to like Caught Stealing, a dark comedy crime thriller written by Charlie Huston, directed by Darren Aronofsky, and set in the late 1990s New York City, but I expected, or wanted, more.
Henry “Hank” Thompson, a functioning alcoholic bartender, and former high school baseball phenom, who relocated to NYC after losing his professional baseball dream and his high school friend in a drunk driving crash, is asked by his neighbor Russ Binder to watch his cat while he unexpectedly goes to London. Hank’s paramedic girlfriend Yvonne brings Russ’s cat and litter box, and unbeknownst to them a key to drug deal money, into Hank’s apartment.
That key, and Russ’s disappearance, lead to confrontations with the Russian mob that costs him a kidney, a crooked detective Elise Roman who threatens his freedom, and some Hasidic drug-dealing brothers who later kill Yvonne to send Hank a message. Hank must avenge Yvonne’s murder, protect his West coast mother whom he daily calls, and extricate his remaining kidney and himself from this murderous mess, which he ultimately does by recreating the same kind of crash that killed his friend and his dream even though that was the first time he had driven since that tragic event so many years ago.
This movie seems like a love letter to 1990s NYC, which has a certain amount of audience appeal. This ambience, which was still evident when we lived there in the 2000s, is a testament to the successful technical features, and especially the sets, costumes, and lighting, that suggest an affection for the city and its culture at that time.
These establish a tone without compromising the pace, which is a credit to its director Aronofksy. At the same time, all the violence, as symbolized in the motif of pooling blood beneath dead characters, occasionally become distractions, and pull focus from the larger story.
That could be one reason why it might work better as the 2004 book by Huston even though the adaptation was done by the original author. Novels obviously allow readers to modulate violence or any other features in ways that don’t unproductively distance them from the narrative.
Nonetheless, the film intriguingly illustrates how authors establish crazy conditions for their characters and then enable them to escape these, which mostly work until they disruptively and distractingly don’t. For example, Hank, who has been mostly restrained, beats the crooked cop with his fists, and stabs her with a broken bat, but won’t shoot her, and doesn’t object with the Hasidic brothers do.
My biggest problem was the confusing conclusion, which leaves an odd aftertaste. Hank sends half of the money Russ was holding to his mother, and then he steals Russ’s passport, Elise’s retirement dream, and absconds to Tulum where he refuses a bartender’s beer offer, and instead asks for a club soda. Who got caught stealing what?
Many would agree that Hank murdered his neighbor and the two Hasidic drug dealers like he did his high school friend, and at least contributed to the murders of his girlfriend and the crooked cop. Some might also argue that he had his girlfriend and his current life, and perhaps even his professional baseball dream, stolen from him.
Perhaps the more plausible interpretation is that all these characters were caught stealing, and had their lives, literally or figuratively, stolen from them, as a result of drug deal that goes wrong after its banker disappears to attend to an ailing father. Only Hank, and his mother he hopes, emerge alive, and yet he has had to relinquish his life as he knew it although he might regain some semblance of it (and in the subsequent novels presumably does).
But why would he steal Elise’s retirement dream of relocating to Tulum? And what will he do there that he hadn’t done hundreds of miles from his high school tragedy in NYC?
Time for Hank will tell, and presumably does in the subsequent Henry Thompson novels Six Bad Things and A Dangerous Man by Huston. For us, it ends with the rolling credits and the reilluminated theater, which left me wondering whether we were merely entertained or had experienced something more.
Sorry, Baby takes its title from a comment at its end by Agnes, its protagonist and a full-time college English instructor who had been sexually assaulted when she was a graduate student at the same institution.
This movie is organized by chapters as a series of flashbacks interspersed with Agnes’s struggle to overcome the effects of this assault with the help of her grad school friend Lydie and her neighbor Gavin. In it, Agnes is groomed by her professor and assailant Decker, who describes her as brilliant and reschedules their appointment ostensibly as a result of a sick child for a more private conversation in his home.
Its story seems less about the assault than its aftermath, including her efforts to cope with its effects. The actual incident is more suggested, and is depicted as occurring behind the closed door of her assailant’s house. Moreover, the details, which Agnes reports, are hesitant and even ambiguous, and in her report, involve consent and intent.
Agnes as a result is sifting through this experience and her reactions, and needs Lydie to interpret it for her. Lydie also helps her for example confront an insensitive ED physician, who says that her bath likely washed away any evidence, and a former fellow grad student and current passive-aggressive colleague Natasha at a dinner with other former students in Natasha’s new home.
Agnes’s efforts are complicated when Lydie moves to New York City after their graduation although she returns to support her friend. On one visit, Lydie tells Agnes that she is pregnant, and she returns with the baby and her wife Fran, which is where the movie ends, and from where the title comes.
All three in this scene cannot go to the lighthouse after the baby has a restless night, so Agnes sends her friend and her wife while she babysits for the twenty minutes or so that they’re gone. In this time, she discovers that she can comfort a fussy baby, and tells her that she will always listen to her but cannot protect her from bad experiences, for which she apologizes.
The film received mostly positive responses from credible critics, and has a 98% aggregated positive rating, but it feels unfinished to me. One possible reason is that it’s the directorial debut of Eva Victor, and Victor also plays the role of Agnes, which could be a second reason. A third might be that it seems semi-autobiographical, which seems plausible especially given my own grad school experiences.
Whatever the reason, the result is that it stops short of the most challenging content. The obvious central question is one about intent, consent, power, and intimacy — intellectual, emotional, and physical — among adults in such situation, which the movie mostly glosses over as if it doesn’t have anything to explore.
Such a possibility can be illustrated by the tension between Agnes and Natasha, the passive-agressive colleague who studied in the same program and then stayed after graduation. Natasha tells Agnes that she wanted the full-time teaching position that Agnes received perhaps as a way of purchasing her silence about the assault or at least compensate her for her discretion.
This confrontation occurs in Agnes’s new office, which was her former assailant’s, and centers upon Natasha’s claim that Agnes took what was rightfully hers. This claim is based in part upon Natasha’s belief that Agnes is insufficiently sympathetic toward those, including Natasha, who encounter more challenges than Agnes does.
This exchange also includes the revelation that Natasha had sex with Agnes’s assailant in an effort to obtain his attention and other rewards, such as good grades or even a full-time position. That made me wonder whether Natasha is culpable or at least complicity in any way for Agnes’s assault.
Such a question in no way suggests that her assailant isn’t, or shouldn’t be, liable. He assaulted Agnes assuming her account is accurate, and should be held accountable for that and any other prohibited or otherwise inappropriate actions.
This dimension could be a moral trap set by the filmmaker, who obviously offers Natasha as a contrast, but it seems more like a missed opportunity. Natasha constantly simmers, and sometimes boils over, whereas Agnes seems unaware of her own anger, and almost needs Lydie to perform it for her. In this resides many possible, and provocative, interpretations.
Regardless, the movie will remain in my memory as a model for alternative ways to address trauma. Nowhere is this alternative more evident than a conversation near its end between Agnes and Pete, a sandwich shop proprietor.
Agnes has had a panic attack after her office conversation with Natasha on her drive home, and pulls into a parking lot to recover. Pete gruffly tells her that she cannot park there because his shop is closed but quickly recognizes her symptoms — his son, whom he later explains he doesn’t particularly like, has similar experiences — and helps her breathe through it.
Agnes and Pete are later sitting in the parking lot after Pete made her a sandwich from his closed shop. As they talk, he shares his opinions of the adjacent business and his adult son. In their exchange, he also affirms her experience and encourages her efforts, and does so without compromising his own perspective.
This exchange again could be another moral trap insofar that the contrast between her assailant and Pete is obvious. However, I think it affirms Agnes’s awkward attempt to address this trauma in an alternative way.
Agnes has persisted even after her friend departs after graduation for her own life. She has persevered in the uncertainty of an institutional environment in which administrators perform alliance yet are clearly more concerned about the institution and its previous employees than its former student.
Others might have exploded in similar situations. Agnes instead searches for support and sustenance around her. She rescues an abandoned kitten for example in addition to accepting a gruff stranger’s kindness.
And Agnes turns to her awkward neighbor Gavin, who she discovers is also imperfect yet quite human. They have awkward sex in her bed and awkward intimacy in her tub, and yet they persist, which Agnes also does when Lydie later appears with her new wife Fran and their new baby. Fran inappropriately advises Agnes how to babysit, and yet Agnes responds with gentleness and kindness.
Some might suggest that Agnes is dangerously disconnected from her emotions, but I think she offers another option for responding to such awful moments. Such a response is admirable, and one worth emulating, which makes this movie more than enough.