I have two theories about this clunker: (1) it's a recruiting film funded by Columbia University's art department, which doubtless needs more guys to fulfill its "diversity" quota, and (2) it's a farce gone tragically wrong.
Aside from the usual electricity that Laura Linney and, increasingly, Topher Grace bring to the screen, this is yet-another-mid-life-crisis-movie--juiced up with the delicious, mythic depravity of Linney's behavior. Delicious because it appeals directly to female fantasy, and mythic because it blatantly echoes so many classic libidinal tales (e.g., Electra, Leda and the Swan). In fact, I almost guffawed when "F. Scott" has a chat with his mother instead of the traditional post-coital cigarette.
The farcical plot artifice of using mistaken identity to cover for illicit sexual gratification is a cliché of Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy (except in the latter, Linney's husband would have been dead and they would have been humping on his coffin). Here, the combination of name and apparent dead-ringer physical congruity--this nonsense gives every female viewer over the age of 35 permission to enjoy her sexual fantasy of ravishing an adolescent stud. (Remember her speech where she ties his tie? Remember "Desparate Housewives"?)
Men, alas, are cut no such slack--the Humbert Humberts of the world are publicly vilified (but privately envied). A movie about a 40-ish male admissions director banging a nubile female applicant would never get made. I take that back: such a movie could be made, provided the guy be symbolically castrated at the end. As a matter of fact, even in this movie, F.Scott suffers a subtle castration, feminization, when he sheepishly admits that he's really known as "Fran."
This one lines the bottom of my cinematic bird cage: 2 out of 10.
-- Joe in Berkeley
P.S.
Oh, what does "P.S." in the title stand for? Puerile Sex.
Aside from the usual electricity that Laura Linney and, increasingly, Topher Grace bring to the screen, this is yet-another-mid-life-crisis-movie--juiced up with the delicious, mythic depravity of Linney's behavior. Delicious because it appeals directly to female fantasy, and mythic because it blatantly echoes so many classic libidinal tales (e.g., Electra, Leda and the Swan). In fact, I almost guffawed when "F. Scott" has a chat with his mother instead of the traditional post-coital cigarette.
The farcical plot artifice of using mistaken identity to cover for illicit sexual gratification is a cliché of Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy (except in the latter, Linney's husband would have been dead and they would have been humping on his coffin). Here, the combination of name and apparent dead-ringer physical congruity--this nonsense gives every female viewer over the age of 35 permission to enjoy her sexual fantasy of ravishing an adolescent stud. (Remember her speech where she ties his tie? Remember "Desparate Housewives"?)
Men, alas, are cut no such slack--the Humbert Humberts of the world are publicly vilified (but privately envied). A movie about a 40-ish male admissions director banging a nubile female applicant would never get made. I take that back: such a movie could be made, provided the guy be symbolically castrated at the end. As a matter of fact, even in this movie, F.Scott suffers a subtle castration, feminization, when he sheepishly admits that he's really known as "Fran."
This one lines the bottom of my cinematic bird cage: 2 out of 10.
-- Joe in Berkeley
P.S.
Oh, what does "P.S." in the title stand for? Puerile Sex.