DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Richard LaGravenese
PRODUCERS
Danny DeVito
Michael Shamberg
Stacey Sher
CINEMATOGRAPHER
John Bailey
MUSIC
George Fenton
EDITORS
Jon Gregory
Lynzee Klingman
CAST
Holly Hunter (Judith Moore)
Danny DeVito (Pat Francato)
Queen Latifah (Liz Bailey)
Martin Donovan (Bob Nelson)
Richard Schiff (Philly)
Elias Koteas (The Kisser)
Suzanne Shepherd (Mary)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 100m
U.S. release: October 30, 1998
Video availability: VHS - DVD
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As
if compensating for last summer's drought of decent movies, the
last six weeks or so have brought one goodie after another: the
re-releases of Touch of Evil and The Wizard of Oz,
the lyrical Pleasantville, the amiably silly The
Waterboy, the brutally funny Vampires,
the clever Antz,
the exciting Ronin,
the disturbing Happiness
and Apt
Pupil. (I'm conveniently forgetting Practical
Magic.) That covers just about every genre, but where's
the romantic comedy? Some may be holding out for You've
Got Mail in December, but if you like your romances with
a minimum of schmaltz and a good helping of reality, Living
Out Loud is your best bet.
I've read some reviews, like Owen Gleiberman's in Entertainment
Weekly, that poke holes in the movie's plot. Why, they ask,
would a newly divorced woman who looks like Holly Hunter fall
for an elevator operator who looks like Danny DeVito? Not only
is this question cruel (why not?), it isn't even accurate.
Judith (Hunter) has just lost her husband and everything she
thought her life was. Pat (DeVito) has recently lost much more.
Yet they're not just two losers clinging to each other. They're
two of the many lonely people in New York, and they're comforted
by each other's company. The movie is about the romance of connection;
it isn't necessarily about the standard romance that, in movies,
usually ends in marriage.
This lovely and understated film is the directing debut of Richard
LaGravenese, who wrote The
Fisher King and tried to make something out of the adaptations
of The Bridges of Madison County (he just about succeeded)
and The
Horse Whisperer (okay, so he's not a magician). Directing
his own script, LaGravenese is content to let the camera sit
and watch the actors, for which we're grateful. Hunter and especially
DeVito seem almost delighted to be able to relax and speak to
one another like normal humans. Both actors have tended toward
caricature in past performances -- usually pretty funny caricatures,
like Hunter's yowling wannabe-mom in Raising
Arizona and DeVito in just about everything. Here, the
actors enjoy each other's quiet rhythms so much that, even if
the film ended up selling you a romance between them, you'd happily
buy it.
LaGravenese, though, has other things in mind. Judith and Pat
both need to move on from their losses; she wants to get over
her cheating ex-husband (Martin Donovan) and go back to med school,
he wants to go into the olive-oil business with his uncle back
in Sorrento. Their relationship is essentially a safe place for
them to rest and think aloud to each other, expressing plans
they didn't know they had. The danger isn't that they'll grow
apart, it's that they'll grow too close -- get lost in each other
and never know what they could have accomplished on their own.
Judith and Pat, in short, learn what the miserable people in
Happiness don't: that another person can't be your lifeline,
that connections based on fear of being alone are faulty. Living
Out Loud is essentially a two-character play (though it benefits
from the appearance of Queen Latifah, who has a beautiful singing
voice and turns out not to be the soulful you-go-girlfriend angel
you may expect from the ads -- she's just a friendly person).
If it were more conventional, I would recommend it with misgivings,
focusing on the touching honesty of Hunter's and DeVito's performances.
But the triumph of the actors and their director is that the
movie itself is touching and honest, so instead of sticking
out and transcending the material, the actors blend right in. |