Touching family drama.
Two estranged sisters (Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep) get to know each other in the context of an elderly, unwell father and a troubled teenage son (Leonardo di Caprio).
It’s based on a play by Scott McPherson, and you can tell because the writing is so strong. Each of the characters is extremely well drawn and the relationships between them are explored with depth and empathy. Keaton is particularly strong as a woman with leukemia.
Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) is a womaniser in his sixties who only dates women half his age. Then he meets his girlfriend’s mother, the successful playwright Erica Barry (Diane Keaton), and discovers a deeper connection that surprises him.
Keanu Reeves is passable but underdeveloped as the doctor who also falls for Keaton. Frances McDormand is oddly underused as Keaton’s sister. And Amanda Peet is the weak link as Keaton’s daughter, with a narrative arc that’s all over the place. For example, she’s distraught to learn that her father (Paul Michael Glaser) intends to remarry, but then this is never mentioned again. Indeed, Glaser’s character seems to have been pretty much edited out of the film – or never written into it in the first place.
In some ways it’s as formulaic as its title, with daft slapstick and several improbable moments. But Nicholson and Keaton are such pros at this kind of thing that they make the most of the flimsy material and it ends up being highly watchable.
It’s shot in black and white, so the shots of New York (often at night) look stunning – elegant vistas of architecture and light. These scenes are given an additional stately grandeur by the music of George Gershwin.
There are funny lines, as you’d expect, and the usual, masterfully handled tangle of interconnected relationships. Given the various allegations about Woody Allen’s private life, the age-difference narrative stands out as being awkward. It appears that he’s deliberately playing with taboo. And to his credit, he certainly doesn’t write a very nice character for himself.
All of the acting is remarkable. Meryl Streep is excellent as one of Allen’s two ex-wives. Keaton is funny as a self-conscious intellectual. And Hemingway is quietly magnetic as the emotional centre of the film – the one character you really care about and who seems motivated by love rather than personal gain.
Surprisingly, Francis Ford Coppola’s direction doesn’t seem especially notable. I far, far prefer the vision he brings to Apocalypse Now and Peggy Sue Got Married.
The drab, washed-out visuals are presumably deliberate, but these are another turn-off.
My loss, I know.
