Feast of Love Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)October 16th, 2007
FEAST OF LOVE
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2007 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
Veteran filmmaker Robert Benton (the OscarÂ(r)-winning writer and director of "Kramer vs. Kramer") likes to pick his projects carefully, often taking three, four, sometimes five years between assignments. When that pacing produces a gem like 1994's "Nobody's Fool," or "Places in the Heart," or "The Late Show," then the writer/director's patient, patented approach pays dividends--those three films garnered Benton another four Academy AwardÂ(r) nominations and a third statuette.
Alas, "Feast of Love," which takes its bow four years after Benton's last directorial effort, is not the stuff of Oscar dreams. In fact, it's a wistful, somewhat melodramatic look at love--its incarnations, manifestations, and aftershocks--as enjoyed, off and on, by a disparate sampling of love-struck Oregonians (Portland circa the here and now).
Based on the book by Charles Baxter and adapted by Allison Burnett, "Feast of Love" certainly sports the potential for yet another Benton homerun. The cast, which includes Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell, Selma Blair, Fred Ward, Missi Pyle, Billy Burke, and Jane Alexander along with the lesser known Alexa Davalos and Toby Hemingway, are moths to Baxter/Burnett's flame and Benton himself gets the local color nicely--and exactly--right. But this cinematic compendium is too episodic for its own good; the plot threads are too pat and convenient; the binding ties thrust together more out of narrative necessity than might otherwise play out.
And then there's the nudity, an almost guaranteed staple of "A Robert Benton film." Like the late Robert Altman, Benton's tenure (although he's directed less than a dozen features compared to Altman's 50-plus) has somehow afforded him the kind of stature that causes varying female cast members to eagerly and earnestly disrobe. In "Nobody's Fool" it was Melanie Griffith. In "Twilight," Reese Witherspoon. Nicole Kidman put her naked mark on "The Human Stain" and in Benton's latest picture it's the turn of Mitchell and Davalos to bare all. Some will argue that the explicit nude scenes are an essential part of their characters' relationships yet that doesn't negate the uneasy, exploitative feel they generate.
Two cast members who keep their clothes mercifully on are Freeman and Alexander, as a married couple still struggling, even now, with the death of their son. This common hurt has kept them close; theirs is a love that's genuine, ingrained. Freeman's Harry Stevenson is the film's social observer, the catalyst, the one people seek out for advice, sympathy, or just dessert. Freeman's performance is effortless. It almost always is.
More drama besets Greg Kinnear's character, Bradley Thomas, who runs a java joint called Jitters. First his wife (Blair) leaves him... for another woman, and then he meets and falls in love with Mitchell's randy realtor, although she's having an affair with a married man (Burke). Davalos and Hemingway are young lovers thrust together by fate, much like the tasty co-mingling of espresso and steamed milk the latter doles out at Jitters. Ward plays an angry father; Pyle a convenient sister. Altogether it's one heck of a love fest. But as a significant and satisfying feast, well... "Feast of Love" is about as weighty as the froth atop a tall skim latte.
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David N. Butterworth
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
