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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Take This Waltz (2011)

Sarah Polley is one of my favorite actresses (see 'The Science of Words' and then tell me you don't love her), and this is the first film that I have seen that she has directed.  It is a bit painful to watch, but it is a very good movie to mull over.

Margot (Michelle Williams) is married to Lou (Seth Rogan).  She meets Daniel (Luke Kirby) on a plane and finds him likable and attractive--and then it turns out that he lives directly across the street from her in a charming Toronto neighborhood.

So it is a classic triangle movie, but the marriage of Margot and Lou leaves a lot to be desired.  It is not that they are not likable as a couple--they are.  And they have fantastic friends (really, their parties seem impossibly wonderful.  Lou is working on a cookbook, so he cook constantly and serves chicken 20 different ways to all his friends--but the music is wonderful, and their house fills up with people I would love to sit next to at my next dinner party).  But they are unbelievably immature, despite 5 years of marriage.  This detracts greatly from the issues that are probably supposed to be central to the movie, which I think is the issue of romance.  Daniel is romantic, Lou is not.  Margot is unhappy, and she doesn't seem to realize that changing men is not going to be a solution to that problem.  That is the movie, in a nutshell.  The thing that makes it work is that there is no real resolution.  The acting is great, the cinematography is spectacular, and the story is memorable.

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