Couples Therapy: “The Roses”

Someone out there is spending tons of money publicizing the new British film, The Roses. It was the feature attraction, over Labor Day weekend, at the very popular Century City Mall, and I’ve spotted  elaborate merchandising attempts at my supermarket. Here’s the question: is the film worth all that attention? It’s gorgeous to look at, with Australia’s dramatic sea coast filling in (alas) for Northern California. There’s a opening credit sequence that’s a delight. And the film stars two of Britain’s finest, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, as loving spouses who can’t quite adjust to a change in their marital circumstances. Both are lively presences who have a talent for dishing out nasty quips at one another’s expense.

 Moviegoers with long memories (or subscriptions to Amazon Prime) might recall that The War of the Roses, a cleverly-titled novel by Warren Adler, was made into a 1989 battle-of-the-sexes film starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as marital sparring partners. The highly popular black comedy was cleverly directed by Danny DeVito, who also cast himself as a chain-smoking divorce attorney. Serving as narrator, DeVito takes the viewer back to the meeting of Douglas (as Oliver) and Turner (as Barbara) at an auction for high-end collectibles. Both have a passion for home design (and a special yen for English ceramics), so when they marry and nest in a mansion, décor is very much on their minds. Ultimately, alas, the bloom is off the Roses, and Barbara demands a divorce. Moreover, she demands full custody of their dream house, something Oliver would never willingly grant. Soon nothing—and no one—is safe, including the household pets and Oliver’s prized sportscar. It all builds to a grim conclusion that is a hoot if you enjoy seeing things go smash.

 I’m not sure The War of the Roses has much of a point to make (outside of this: never run over your spouse’s cat). But it’s an uproarious exploration of people at their worst, and we can all use a good bitter laugh from time to time. By contrast, the new British film, The Roses, seems determined to be about something. More precisely, it seems to want to put its finger on how marriages go sour, and when precisely this happens. Theo and Ivy Rose are an English couple who share a snarky sensibility. They’ve moved to Northern California to pursue their creative passions. Theo is a trained architect with a taste for the ultra-modern. Ivy is a chef who has put her professional aspirations aside while raising two children, until Theo buys her a hole-in-the-wall diner she promptly renames “We’ve Got Crabs.” As it turns out, the same natural disaster that scuttles his newest and most innovative design proves to be a boon to her little café. So she’s suddenly famous, and he’s out of work.

 The film then becomes a study of what happens to a marriage in which one partner is thriving professionally while the other is put out to pasture. (I’m certain matters are all the worse because it’s the formerly stay-at-home wife who’s suddenly the Next Big Thing.) The topic is definitely a pertinent one, but this film seems determined to cover lots of territory by bringing in additional plot strands. There are many new characters (the rather baffling children, the horny best friend, the doofus buddy, the sinister attorney) to distract from the central his-and-hers conflict. The irony of the conclusion is well handled, with a nice jab at the “smart house” Theo has designed, but well before that point I was tired indeed of the couple’s overblown spat. 

 

Movies as the Splice of Life

Charles Jensen’s Splice of Life is not the first book I’ve ever read that tells a personal story by way of the films that have shaped the author’s life. I remember with affection John Manderino’s Crying at Movies. In that charming book Manderino admits learning how to kiss through watching the Swedish art film Elvira Madigan, and divulges that his apparent physical resemblance to The Graduate’s “rodent-like” Dustin Hoffman won him an unexpected bed partner. But Jensen’s new work, subtitled “A Memoir in 13 Film Genres,” is both the smartest and the most complex example of the genre that I’ve ever encountered.

 I know Charles Jensen as the highly dedicated director of the Writers’ Program, offered both “on-ground” and online through UCLA Extension. Before I read his new book, I was aware that he is a serious poet, as well as a man deeply committed to providing learning opportunities to students of every stripe. But Splice of Life has given me new insight into the fellow who oversees the screenwriting classes I offer twice a year. It’s a deeply personal look at Charlie’s in-depth fascination with movies, and how films intersect with the high and low points of his own sometimes complicated life. 

The early chapters detail Charlie’s awkward acknowledgment of his own sexual leanings by way of films like Mean Girls (which neatly parallels his high school years) and Fatal Attraction. I love his smart close reading of the latter film, in which he views not the sexy seductress Alex (Glenn Close) but the philandering husband Dan (Michael Douglas) as the villain of the piece. His take on Fatal Attraction led me to think hard about how the “victim” label in movies is sometimes used to excuse what he calls “peak male fuckery.” He has also taught me a new key term—“queer coding”—that indicates how (in popular films like Scream) gay subtext is partially concealed, except for those with eyes to see.

One of my favorite chapters goes back to classic Hitchcock: 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt.  Charlie’s analysis of this great film (in which the seemingly amiable Joseph Cotten secretly dispatches wealthy widows) uncovers more “queer coding,” but it also plays against the startling real-life story of a member of Charlie’s extended social circle, who was ultimately convicted of murder.

 As Charlie shows himself evolving into a relatively happy and productive Angeleno (following the awkward years in the upper Midwest and the formative ones in Arizona), his film pairings sometimes become more lighthearted. He matches Get Him to the Greek with the poignant but also rather wacky story of the burial of his grandmother’s cremains. We also, in various chapters, learn about his hair-loss anxiety, his body-image issues (he deals here with the obsessive ballerina in Black Swan), and—somewhat climactically—his semi-successful appearance on Jeopardy! To capture the emotion of his big moment on the tube, he writes about the raw competition spelled out in The Hunger Games. It all leaves me wondering how the UCLA Writers’ Program will figure in his next book, and what film he’ll choose to illustrate the complexities of his current job.

 Charlie opens Splice of Life with three wonderful quotes from master filmmakers. I can’t resist quoting them here, because they all figure into what he’s achieved between his book’s covers:

 Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves. —Alejandro González Iñárritu

 Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism. —Pedro Almodóvar

 A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. —Orson Welles

 Congratulations, Charlie!

 

 

Romancing the Lost City (or Do Romance Novelists Have More Fun?)

A recent airline trip gave me a good excuse to catch up with The Lost City,  a much-touted new action comedy in which a reclusive romance novelist finds herself south of the border, fighting off bad guys and finding true love. Starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, with assists from Daniel Radcliffe (as a weird baddie) and Brad Pitt, it makes a running joke of the low-cut and sparkly fuchsia jumpsuit in which the heroine is kidnapped, and in which she eventually finds herself sprinting through tropical rainforests and plunging down waterfalls. There’s also fun in the fact that Tatum’s character, initially a cover model in a Fabio-like long blond wig, turns out to be less a dashing swashbuckler and more a sensitive guy with a crush on his favorite author.

 The whole thing was enjoyable airplane viewing, but it made me think back to the original film that successfully blended Latin American adventure with comedy and romance. Of course I mean 1984’s Romancing the Stone, starring Michael Douglas (who also produced) and Kathleen Turner.  Both were near the start of their acting careers at the time. Douglas, son of Kirk, was best known for starring as a homicide inspector in TV’s The Streets of San Francisco and for producing (but not appearing in) the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He began as simply the producer of Romancing the Stone, before deciding to take on the role of the film’s gutsy though slightly goofball vagabond hero.  Turner had leapt into the public consciousness as bad-girl Matty Walker in Body Heat(1981). and was mostly being typecast as a femme fatale. Romancing the Stone gave her a chance to stretch as a dreamy, introverted romance novelist who finds herself in over her head after being summoned to the jungles of Colombia. Another member of the cast is Danny DeVito, Douglas’s former roommate and longtime pal, as an inept rogue also vying to find the priceless emerald that is the film’s McGuffin.

 A young Robert Zemeckis directed with a light touch, just one year before he became a big man in Hollywood following the release of Back to the Future. But for me the essential part of the team was the film’s screenwriter, Diane Thomas. Thomas enjoyed a Cinderella sort of career in Hollywood, but one lacking a happy ending. She was working as a Malibu waitress, and studying screenwriting through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program (which employs me to this day) when she managed to slip a copy of Romancing the Stone to Michael Douglas. He read it, loved its razzle-dazzle spirit, and the rest is movie history. The film’s success led to other projects, including the chance to write an Indiana Jones sequel for Steven Spielberg. Alas, in 1985 she was riding with boozy friends on Pacific Coast Highway in the Porsche gifted to her by Douglas when a terrible accident ended her life. For years, UCLA Extension hosted a student screenwriting competition in her memory.

 Is Romancing the Stone better than The Lost City? That’s hard to say, story-wise. It has no shocking pink “disco-ball” glitter garb, no Fabio-lookalike, and no outrageous Daniel Radcliffe, though it does boast a  plethora of crocodiles. Perhaps the big difference between the two is that the earlier film doesn’t seem to be trying quite so hard to give us a rollicking good time. Still, I’m not sure Douglas is right in saying that Romancing the Stone invented a genre that had never before been tried. Maybe it's worth mentioning The African Queen?