Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

I really loved this movie.  Bradley Cooper shows a depth that I have failed to see in his earlier work, and Jennifer Lawrence proved that she is even more flexible as an actress than I previously gave her credit for (and I have liked her work since she blew me away with her performance in "Winter's Bone").

The movie opens with Pat (Bradley Cooper) being discharged against medical advice to the care of his mother (Jacki Weaver).  She is a woman who seems quite adept at walking on egg shells and we soon see why--her house is volatile enough with just her husband (Robert DeNiro).  Add to that her grown son, who is completing a hospitalization in lieu of incarceration and you have quite the powder keg.  Pat got into big trouble when he came home one day to find his wife in the shower with another man--so upset that he beat him to within an inch of his life.  Now he is out of the hospital, ambivalent about taking his medication, obsessively exercising to keep his wieght down to please his now ex-wife Veronica, who has a restraining order against him.  Given that he is an optimistic manic, he is not dissuaded that his marriage can be repaired by all the signs that it has failed--including that his wife was having a raging affair before all this happened.

Pat's father, also names Pat, makes it clear that Pat Jr. comes by his bipolar disorder naturally.  His father is an irritable manic rather than an optimistic one, and the house with the two of them in it is a powder keg waiting to explode.  Enter Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence)--she is the sister of Pat's best friend's wife.  Her husband was killed as a pedestrian by a car, and she has not coped well with it--there are some powerful reasons for her to feel guilty, which makes the resolution of grief all the more complicated.  Her way of denying she is in trouble is to sleep around, but she is trying to get a handle on that.

Pat seems like a train wreck to the viewer, but Tiffany sees him as a possible way out of her misery.  She makes a dela with him--she will get a letter to his ex-wife (defying all restraining order restrictions) and he will be her partner in a dance competition.  Already you can see that the plot is believable, simple, and fraught with potential trouble for everyone invovled.  Add to that Pat Sr.'s ritualistic and superstitious reltionship with professional sports and gambling, a disasterous bet, and a chance at redemption, and you get a movie that has a lot of sharp edges, many of them exposed and played out over the course of the movie, and an ending that gives you hope for both Pat and Tiffany.