A Few Reviews

I'm not really feeling any long, philosophical review right now, so I'll keep these short, sweet, and to the point... Okay, fine. If you're dead set on a long one, I'll toss out my review of my own personal Sundance TwentyTen favorite, Welcome to the Rileys.

It has taken me a few days to wrap my head around this film-- not because I didn't get it or because I didn't know whether I liked it, but because I needed time to figure something out. Namely, I needed to find the root of my attachment to this film before I could understand why I was so touched by it.

No, I've never been an orphan or a stripper, and I've also never lost a child. These are the broad plot points that we already knew long before Sundance. But, I have been a little girl, and I have known people who have become lost within their own lives, and these are the more important underlying themes of "Welcome to the Rileys."

There have been and will continue to be people who pick the story apart, saying that this part should be longer, or that part should be eliminated altogether. Those people are wrong. I usually buy into the whole, "everyone is entitled to their own opinions" malarkey, but not in this case.

"The beginning seems to drag," says one reviewer. I suppose that life would seemingly drag if you were twenty-nine years into a marriage to an agoraphobic Stepford who blames herself for the death of your fifteen-year-old daughter. And if that house-bound wife passed the hours until death by pre-purchasing your headstones and longingly painting the mailbox at the end of the drive, you might find that your only solace was in your standing Thursday night affair with a friendly waitress at the Pancake House. And if you arrived one Thursday to find that your friendly waitress, just like your fifteen-year-old daughter, had been taken from you all too soon, you might then say that your life, and thus, the first twenty minutes of a film about your life, might seem to drag.

On a long-standing business trip to New Orleans, our aforementioned husband, Doug Riley, finds himself lost in the thoughtless squabbles of a regional plumbing convention. As exciting as the mindless talk of sprinkler repossession may be, Doug needs a break. A walk down the green-lit streets of New Orleans leads him to a sparsely marked doorway-- a doorway that might very well belong at the front of a suburban house. But the faraway beat of a dance tune from deep within leads Doug past the two flickering sconces into the underbelly of the seedy establishment. It is here that our hearts break.

Deep in his own thoughts, Doug's pen scratches against a note pad. Perhaps he is already making notes for a change of life, or maybe he is simply trying to organize his jumbled thoughts. But before he cane finish, the music shifts. Suddenly, there is the tap, tap, tap of a white platform on his table. Doug lifts his head to find the face at the opposite end of the intrusion. The face is lovely-- or it might be if not for the inch of black eyeliner attempting to hide the sad soul beneath a set of sunken eyes. The pair exchanges pleasantries, and even though young Mallory claims to be "real good," we know otherwise.

I won't go any further into the plot of the film-- it's something that everyone needs to witness for themselves. What I will say, however, is that these actors-- James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, and the incomparable Kristen Stewart-- will touch you in a way that you may not have expected.

You might find that, what you thought was the tale of a couple and their run-in with a stripper, is actually the story of three corpses-- lifeless bodies in need of rescue. These three characters work together like a forgiving mother, gluing back together the pieces of their tattered lives, though never fully closing the gaps of the original break lines.

Will you leave the theatre satisfied? No. Nothing in life is ever finished, and this tale is no exception. What you will find is that the story will leave the characters much further from the end of their tale than where they all began. And that, my friends, you will find satisfying.

More to come,

Laura