Rabbit Hole

Today I saw Rabbit Hole, starring Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart.

Becca (Kidman) and Howie (Eckhart) have lost a son. Their beloved 4-year-old Danny chased their dog into the street and was struck and killed by a car. This was eight months ago.

Today their world is dismal. They don't make love, don't agree on ways to heal (he likes group therapy; she hates it) and have several problems communicating as a result. To top it off, Becca's irresponsible sister is knocked up and Becca can't help but be jealous and judgmental about the new baby.

Sound like fun? Well, of course not, but it's not quite as hard to watch as it sounds.

Sure, Becca is draped in depressing grays and exhibits the loss of energy any of us feel when experiencing pain of that magnitude, but there is a merit to what's happening on-screen.

The relationship Becca develops with Jason (Miles Teller), the teenager who was driving the car that killed her son, is tender and tragic—as if each time she looks at him she sees an age that her son will never reach.

Becca and Howie are angry, but they're not malicious toward one another, though their marriage is crumbling at every turn.

Gaby (Sandra Oh) is a friend Howie makes in group therapy and her presence seems appropriate and comforting in light of the circumstances. She's hurting too, and as the saying goes: misery loves company.

There is resolution without closure here, and it's done gracefully thanks to director John Cameron Mitchell. This 'slice of death' story could have been a blatant sob-fest if it had fallen into the wrong hands, but thankfully it did not.

Really, the only thing wrong with it is Kidman's inability to hold her American accent during outburst scenes. But that is forgivable in such a well-written, enveloping film.

~~~

Shortbus

Today I saw Shortbus...what was supposed to be an innovative exploration of sex in cinema, but instead was a weak story played out in the lives of pretentious characters.

I wanted to like the film—I really did. I think that our American society is far too close to its Puritan roots with our attitudes toward sex in film, music and general media. And I was hoping that this daring venture would take a bit of the fear from audiences and prove that sex, like eating, sleeping, working—breathing—is simply a part of everyday life.

But then the writer/director (John Cameron Mitchell) had to go in and create ridiculous caricatures of people (an identity-starved dominatrix, a sex therapist that can't have an orgasm, gay partners who are alternately suicidal and unimaginably irritating, etc.) to demonstrate 'normal' problems and somehow justify money shots and porn-store toys to illustrate them.

I was not amused (or aroused).

And that's another problem I had with this movie. I was constantly playing 'hunt the genre' wondering every few frames whether or not this was intended to be a comedy, a drama, a mockumentary or an adult film. All I concluded was that it was definitely not an adult film because the sex wasn't remotely sexy.

I appreciate what Mitchell was trying to do, but to have an audience connect with his intentions, he should've invented people that everyday moviegoers could relate to (or at least believe in).

I hope this doesn't discourage other hopeful filmmakers from attempting similar feats because if the box office returns were disappointing, it wasn't the subject matter's fault, it was the story.