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'Feast of Love' movie review |
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Written by Robert W. Butler
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 |
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FEAST OF LOVE
3 ½ stars
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell, Alexa Davados, Billy Burke
Rated: R for strong sexual content, nudity and language
Running time: 1:42
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"Feast of Love" lives up to its name. It's a banquet.
Veteran director Robert Benton ("Places in the Heart," "Nobody's Fool") delivers a humanistic tribute to amour in all its guises — romantic, carnal, spiritual, innocent, mature, paternal and fraternal.
This ensemble drama, adapted from Charles Baxter's novel by Allison Burnett, is set in a college town in the Northwest and orbits Harry Scott (Morgan Freeman), a professor who has taken a long leave of absence following the death of his only child from a drug overdose.
Despite his loss (or because of it) Harry finds himself being pulled into the lives of the people around him. He befriends Bradley (Gregg Kinnear), the operator of an off-campus coffee shop, and somewhat reluctantly becomes Bradley's romantic sounding board.
Bradley is a guileless nice guy who can't win at love. His live-in girlfriend (Selma Blair) leaves him for another woman. On the rebound, Bradley hooks up with one of his customers, a tough real-estate agent named Diana (Radha Mitchell) who appreciates Bradley for his decency even while continuing her long affair with a married man (Billy Burke).
You can see the heartache in Bradley's future. "Sometimes," he laments, "I think love is just a trick nature plays on us."
Harry also witnesses the eager courtship of two young coffee shop employees, Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (a radiant Alexa Davalos), who defy Oscar's drunken brute of a father (Fred Ward) to start life together.
Maturity has been good to filmmaker Benton (he turns 75 on Saturday) and "Feast of Love" finds him delivering a wise, funny and sometimes shocking examination of humanity.
There are some terrifically good performances here. Kinnear, one of the most underrated actors around, is spot on as Bradley, a man so desperate to be in love he overlooks reality. Half the time you're sorry for him; the rest of the time you want to slap him until he comes around.
The breakout star of the film, though, is Mitchell, an Aussie actress who's been flirting with A-list success in films like "High Art" and Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda." Here she gives a searing performance as a hungry, sexually centered woman. It's a brilliant piece of work — you can see the lust and anger boiling beneath her smooth professional exterior — and it leads to some of the frankest sex scenes in recent American film.
As her paramour, Burke does something unexpected — he imparts a degree of integrity to a philandering, faithless husband. In one of the best-written speeches you'll ever hear in a movie theater, he tells Diana that he and she are, for better or worse, selfish individuals for whom erotic pleasure is paramount and that her marriage to Bradley is a sham, a feeble stab at conventional normalcy.
But then "Feast of Love" is noteworthy for the equanimity with which it observes its characters — no judgment, no cruel jokes, just an appreciation of the variety of human personality.
In one plot thread the young lovers, Chloe and Oscar, decide to make a few bucks by videotaping themselves having sex. Sounds tacky, but they approach the project with a playfulness and innocence that is disarming. Later they're told the tape won't sell because "You're too much in love ... you're laughing and (stuff)."
Apparently love isn't what porn consumers want.
At the center of it all is Harry, a man who, having lost his own child, discovers himself playing father to others. Freeman, of course, need do nothing more than sit still to radiate wisdom, intelligence and compassion.
"Feast" makes a last-reel detour into melodramatics and metaphysical woo-woo, but not even that can evaporate the good feelings the film generates. This one will sneak up on you. | Only registered users can write comments.
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