director
Alexander Payne
screenwriters
Alexander
Payne
Jim Taylor
based on
the novel by
Rex Pickett
producer
Michael London
cinematographer
Phedon Papamichael
music
Rolfe Kent
editor
Kevin Tent
cast
Paul Giamatti (Miles Raymond)
Thomas Haden Church (Jack)
Virginia Madsen (Maya)
Sandra Oh (Stephanie)
Marylouise Burke (Miles' Mother)
Jessica Hecht (Victoria)
Missy Doty (Cammi)
Alysia Reiner (Christine)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 122m
u.s.
release: 10/22/04
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other alexander
payne films
reviewed on this website:
- about
schmidt
- election
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Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti),
the sad-sack oenophile who forms one-half of Sideways,
is the sort of intellectual loser often found in the work of
Woody Allen and Wallace Shawn. Miles doesn't know much -- about
himself, about why his marriage failed two years ago, about where
his amorphous novel-in-progress is going -- but he does know
one thing: wine. He sniffs, sips, swishes, and analyzes the stuff
like a born expert -- not that anyone in his immediate sphere
cares. Miles toils as an eight-grade English teacher,
hoping, like many other English teachers, that a publisher will
warm to his work and finance a cozy life spent at book parties
and wine tastings.
Sideways, directed by the incisive Alexander
Payne (Election,
Citizen Ruth), follows Miles and his old college buddy
Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a has-been soap actor, on a week's
vacation through the well-lit banality of California. Jack is
getting married the next week, and Miles wants to take him out
for a final bachelor roar -- which, for the schlumpily ascetic
Miles, means wine tastings and golf. Jack has fleshier goals
in mind: he's out to get as much pre-marital sex on the road
as he can before entering a life of fidelity. These two nowhere
men are a kind of indie-film odd couple: Miles scourges himself
with self-doubt, while Jack -- the sort of genially oblivious,
action-oriented guy who isn't, to paraphrase Shakespeare, sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought -- just wants to drink and
get laid. Miles is nothing but a pale cast of thought.
The men arrive at various vineyards,
where Miles is greeted as a regular -- accepted among others
who share his passion for the grape. Payne doesn't score easy
points off the wine-sniffers; they're not presented as snobs
or dorks. In fact, two of the movie's more dynamic characters
-- Maya (Virginia Madsen), a grad student who waitresses at one
of Miles' favorite restaurants, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh, the
director's wife, who made a bold impression as Diane Lane's acerbic,
very pregnant friend in Under
the Tuscan Sun), a wine pourer, are both also smitten
with wine. The movie respects the funkiness of specialized interests;
Maya and Stephanie lend oenophilia a patina of cool.
Most of the movie is a two-character
play, and the rising anti-star Paul Giamatti is ideally cast
as the depressive, mercurial Miles. Giamatti's specialty is schmucks
we can identify with, not because he sentimentalizes them, but
because he has a rock-solid instinct for regular-guy mannerisms.
Miles, in Giamatti's hands, is pathetic but never off-putting.
Sitcom actor Thomas Haden Church, of Wings and Ned
& Stacey, may have the harder role as a slick womanizer
with easy charisma and a streak of callousness. He gives Jack
a sort of rough-hewn humility -- Jack may be washed up, but by
God, he was on television for a few years, and women still
recognize him from the soap opera and take him to bed. He questions
neither his past good fortune nor his current obscurity (he does
voice-overs for commercials). He's also a boy who never grew
up, and in a key scene Church shows us the despair under the
mask of the eternal frat boy.
Alexander Payne may be warming
up a bit. I wasn't a fan of his previous film, About
Schmidt, which seemed too consciously tailored
as a Jack Nicholson bid for indie cred. (If Nicholson wants that,
he should continue to work under Sean Penn's direction, and leave
the ugly toupees at home.) That movie left me cold, but maybe
only because Payne's first two films, especially Election
but also the equal-opportunity offender Citizen Ruth,
were such vital satires. Sideways squirts no venom in
particular; the flawed people onscreen aren't ridiculed for who
they are or what they want. Payne is a compassionate observer
here, letting the dialogue scenes breathe, unafraid to throw
in some slapstick (a sequence with Miles trying to retrieve a
wallet is laugh-out-loud funny) but keeping the comedy rooted
in the characters' flaws and strengths. When Jack scores with
women, the movie doesn't disapprove -- we see that the women
are grown-ups and are choosing one-night stands with him. And
when Miles lifts a glass of wine to his nose, transported by
the hint of avocado or berries or whatever, the movie doesn't
nudge you to giggle. Sideways, in brief, is about
happiness and where you find it, and Payne has found it in himself
to allow for the comedy and tragedy of ambition. Moving forward
or upward, we see here, may be overrated: If Miles never sells
his book, and if Jack never finds quality acting work again,
at least they can always go sideways.
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