OVP: The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Film: The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Stars: Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Annie Corley, Victor Slezak

Director: Clint Eastwood

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Meryl Streep)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Growing up, I remember the first present for my mom that I ever paid for with my own money (with admittedly a little help from my dad in terms of paying part of the cost).  I had saved for weeks from my allowance to buy my parents and brother their Christmas presents, and my mom's I was particularly proud of-I had found at Target (which was thirty miles away from my home town) a copy of Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend.  My mom had read and loved the book The Bridges of Madison County, crying while reading it and even buying it in hard cover, which was a big deal in our household.  And so I got to give her the book that came after it, also by Robert James Waller.  As a result of this childhood memory, the book itself has always fascinated me (and, to couple that present of some twenty years ago, I recently got my mom tickets to see Bridges of Madison County the musical), but not enough to read it as the reviews were never quite kind enough for me to pick it up.  Still, I wanted to know the story behind my story, and so in anticipation of seeing the musical, I went out and watched Bridges as a recent Netflix entry.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film was something unexpected, and not just because after almost a decade of relative hamminess in front of the camera, it's strange to see Meryl Streep playing a straight dramatic role, particularly since she's so good at them.  The film follows her Francesca, an Italian immigrant who is left alone for four days on an Iowa farm while her husband and two children are at the Illinois State Fair.  On the first day, not long after her husband leaves, she meets a man named Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), with whom she is enamored immediately in ways that she's not entirely clear she understands.  The film progresses with their relationship starting at friendship, and because this is a romance novel, it ends up becoming something more.  All-the-while we are being told this story in flashback, as it's clear from the beginning that Francesca ends up staying with her husband, but as the film progresses we aren't entirely sure why, and her children have never known about this relationship as they learn through old journals their mother kept in a safety deposit box for them to discover upon her death.

As I mentioned above, it's interesting to see Streep play this part as a straight drama, but also for Eastwood to play it that way as well as a director.  There is very little humor, and almost no winking at the camera even though, by romance novel standards, this is a relatively schlock-filled affair that usually has a sassy friend to keep up with the leads.  I don't think I'll ever investigate the source material here, but one suspects that Eastwood might have cut some fat as he's more willing to put the camera on himself and Streep than anything else, with little in the way of side story and filler.  This shouldn't work, and it plays very differently from our American romances today, which are extraordinarily rare (when was the last time you saw a true, non-comedic, non-modernized American film romance onscreen-this is an endangered species, right here) in that we get the urgency and the fragility of this relationship.  There's a scene late in the movie where we think that Francesca and Robert will be found out, essentially ruining her life, and Eastwood finds the stakes in this relationship even without factoring in the truth that they are in love, perhaps soulmates, and can Francesca actually leave such a reality in her memories.

This may be the last great dramatic role of Streep's career, give or take The Hours, to date, and it's marvelous watching her onscreen.  I love not only the care she brings to her accent work (flawless Italian housewife-Anna Magnani herself couldn't have done better), but also to her humanity.  The way she laughs incredibly when she makes a joke about poisonous flowers (the way she informs the audience that she rarely laughs or tells jokes in this way), and the zeal with which she wants to continually extend her first night with Robert.  At its very best, it approaches something like Celine-and-Jesse or Russell-and-Glen, something so special and in-the-moment.  The movie can never quite capture that late in the film, as Eastwood as the romantic lead feels a bit clunky in delivering Waller's romantic prose, and we are frequently taken out of the story by Francesca's grown children, both unbearable and really every scene not containing Streep is downright terrible, but those early moments are passionate and treasured, and Streep tied it together.  I get why my mom, all those years ago, cried on the couch while finishing this story.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you a fan of The Bridges of Madison County in any of its many iterations?  Do you also have a memory of the first gift you ever bought your mom?  What do you think of Meryl Streep's almost entire shift into comedy?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Before Sunrise (1995)

Film: Before Sunrise (1995)
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
Director: Richard Linklater
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

If we're very lucky in life, we have "the moment."  I'm not talking about the moment where you meet the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with; in fact, it's far better if you don't spend the rest of your life with them from a cinematic vantage point.  What I'm talking about is the moment where life somehow, inexplicably, but totally and completely slows down.  Everything that has happened before or will happen after doesn't matter.  Self help gurus have made this turn-of-phrase sound like bullshit, but you truly live for that moment.  Except you don't even realize it-you might think about it later and understand that that moment was complete and total, unmanufactured bliss.  It wasn't something that you forced meaning onto like a wedding or an engagement-it was something that just sprang up organically.  It was a moment that only you know the true meaning of, that only you can completely understand.  For me, that moment happened one March weekend a few months before I turned 21.  And I never saw anything that quite captured that effervescence, that enchantment on screen until I happened upon Before Sunrise.

To say that I merely loved the film would be a disservice (and totally obvious at this point).  It moved me.  It had the sort of rhythm and feeling that's why I began to love the movies in the first place.  I'm not going to give away much of the plot, because the film, quite frankly, has very little plot on paper.  It's about an American man named Jesse (Hawke) who meets a young French woman named Celine (Delpy) on a train, and they decide to throw caution to the wind and spend one long, sleepless night in Vienna.  During that time, they confess and laugh and eat and drink and kiss and find a connection.

The film seems so organic it's hard to fathom that there was a script behind it (though I'm sure Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan would beg to disagree).  The principle performances are by Delpy and Hawke (the only two named characters in the film), and each one plays their character with a complete understanding.  If either of these two are method actors, it would explain a lot, because you could most definitely feel the lived-in quality of the performances.  Hawke, obviously the more famous of the two at the time, finds in his character this wonderful unsure quality.  I love the way Jesse asks questions that he wants to answer, the way that his intentions of whisking away Celine are so apparent and you can tell when they change throughout the movie.

The film is so honest about what falling in love at first sight can be like, and in particular falling in love on a ticking clock.  Other films have of course captured this effect, and are equally magical: Lost in Translation, Once, and Weekend all come to mind (you ever get dumped by someone, these four movies in rapid succession with a bottle of wine and several bags of M&M's will certainly do the trick).  With Linklater's film, though, I find that the difference is that there's so much knowledge between the two characters.  With the other films (again-BRILLIANT movies, so don't take this as disparaging), the characters are just as much learning about themselves as they are falling in love and meeting their soulmate.  Here, the film is more interested in the amour.  Of course, as you reflect on the film afterwards, you find that the characters have been altered, that they clearly know something more about the person that they are than they did during the opening scene.  That's not the main point, though.  The main point is capturing that moment, the magic of falling in love.  Few films take that time fleshing out one true burst of emotion.  That Before Sunrise is able to capture it and watch it glow is truly incredible.  Critics so abuse the word perfect that I'm loathe to bring it out, ever, but I'm damn tempted right now.

I know that the movie has two critically-acclaimed sequels, one of which is sitting in a Netflix envelope on top of my television (it is taking everything in me not to pop it in right now, but I want Sunrise to get its moment before I switch to Sunset).  As a result, the ending of the film, which leaves us with such a euphoric question of "did they meet again?" will not remain unanswered (to keep some mystery alive, I'll leave my story from the top paragraph open-ended instead).  But this first film will be very difficult to displace as my favorite, as it is, as Celine might say, parfait.

Muriel's Wedding (1995)

Film: Muriel's Wedding (1995)
Stars: Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, Gennie Nevinson, Daniel Lapaine
Director: P.J. Hogan
Oscar History: No nominations, but it was clearly close-it got BAFTA and WGA nominated for its screenplay and Toni Collette nabbed a surprise Best Actress nomination at the Golden Globes.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The films of P.J. Hogan consistently defy expectations.  Who would have, for example, cast Julia Roberts as a husband-stealing vixen in My Best Friend's Wedding rather than as the eventual romantic victor?  And who could have retold the story of Neverland just as well as J.M. Barrie in one of the most underrated films I've ever seen, his magnum opus Peter Pan?  So I went into Muriel's Wedding knowing the cleverness of Mr. Hogan, and yet still found the unexpected.

Muriel's Wedding is the tale of one Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette), a girl who has lost her way in life.  She sits around, listening to ABBA songs and being the brunt of the jokes from her "friends" and daydreaming about her perfect wedding.  Anyone who has been single past the age of about 25 knows that there are days when you feel just like Muriel-wondering where exactly your life is headed and willing to do just about anything to make it look like you dreamed it would at fifteen.  After being dumped by her so-called friends, she steals several thousand dollars from her parents and goes on a vacation, where she runs into an old classmate named Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), a firecracker who likes Muriel and doesn't give a crap about anyone's opinion of her.  She tells off the frenemies and they start an adventure together.

Here's where the realism of P.J. Hogan takes place.  In a traditional, more studio-centric storyline, we'd see Muriel fall for some hard-on-his-luck guy and eventually learn that she can stand-up to her high school mean girls.  However, Hogan decides to throw us two loopholes-one is that Griffiths character has cancer, and eventually has to have surgery which will sever her spine, making it impossible for her to walk again.  Secondly, we find that Muriel will indeed get her wedding, though not as she had ever planned-she becomes a green-card bride, marrying a blond swimming Adonis and essentially abandoning her newfound sense of self in favor of what she had always dreamed of-that big white, Princess Diana gown and the man of her dreams and the mean girl bridesmaids envying her.  Though it doesn't qualify as a twist, it's interesting, because, let's face it, this is how real life would work.  In real life, we get very tunnel vision-y about our goals and dreams, and are willing to take a facsimile if the perfect vision doesn't come to fruition.

It's in this storyline that Toni Collette, a Grade-A actress who has not always gotten the opportunities to shine, excels.  Collette doesn't play Muriel as a saint, or as unselfish, or as any of the stock character traits we expect from the quiet, picked-on wallflowers we so often see transformed by throwing away their glasses.  She's greedy, and silly, and willing to lie to get her end goals.  Her wedding shop confessional, where she confesses to Griffiths that she just wants to get married, that's all she ever wanted, is such a real depiction of those desperate moments in single life that as a viewer you half wish that this wasn't a comedy so it would stay and explore that not-often-discussed more melancholy part of your twenties.  However, you know that even in the capable hands of P.J. Hogan, we'll still be getting some version of the happy ending because that would be too dark for a film this seemingly light.  Collette is playing an imperfect version of many of us, who want so desperately to have that perfect wedding or perfect house or perfect job that we've forgotten the "why" behind why we wanted those things in the first place.

The film gets off its rails after that wedding a bit, and mostly because I don't think that the film stays true to the characters, particularly Muriel.  Collette is still sublime, but her decisions to abandon her faux husband just as soon as he starts showing an interest in her seems to ring very hollow to the nature of her character; it's a sweet depiction of what we wish we would do in that situation (abandon our dreams to be better, truer people), but I don't think it's in accordance to the darker places which the script was illuminating so well in the film's middle.  We get to see Muriel reunited with Rhonda, but even then she can't tell off her mean girl friends-it's selective backbone for her character, and I think a bit of an easy out for the daring Hogan.


That being said, I have to say I enjoyed it, even if I couldn't love it because it didn't stay true to its nature.  Collette was four years out from enjoying international stardom with her Oscar-nominated performance as Lynn Sear, and yet, at a mere 22, she showed the womanly acting ability that would carry her through films like The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, and Little Miss Sunshine.  Griffiths is also fine, and would later enjoy a surprise Oscar nomination for her work in Hilary and Jackie (but would eventually give my favorite of her performances on television, rather than film, in Brothers & Sisters).  The actual dialogue is a down under treat (there's a reason that script was cited so frequently by precursors).  But I can't help feeling that, had Hogan had more films under his belt, he may have taken the film to the darker places it hints at, but never seems to venture into full throttle.