Amores infieles

Paul Haggis both wrote and directed this very long movie (137 minutes) that plays with our minds in a way not dissimilar to his most famous similar film CRASH. The quilted story takes patience and close attention to paste each of the three running stories together – three (at times augmented) couples whose lives are altered in some way by a child – drowning, abusive by placing in a plastic bag, a conveniently imagined child – and it all ties together with slips of paper, pages of novels, paintings and other threads spread around Paris, Rome, and New York.

'Michael (Liam Neeson) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction author who has sequestered himself in a hotel suite in Paris to finish his latest book. He recently left his wife, Elaine (Kim Basinger), and is having a tempestuous affair with Anna (Olivia Wilde), an ambitious young journalist who wants to write and publish fiction. At the same time, Scott (Adrien Brody), a shady American 'clothing designer' businessman, is in Italy to steal designs from fashion houses. Hating everything Italian, Scott wanders into the Café American with barkeep Marco (Riccardo Scamarcio) in search of something familiar to eat. There, he meets Monika (Moran Atias), a beautiful Romanian woman, who is about to be reunited with her young daughter. When the money she has saved to pay her daughter's smuggler Carlo (Viinico Marchioni) has stolen, Scott feels compelled to help. They take off together for a dangerous town in Southern Italy, where Scott starts to suspect that he is the patsy in an elaborate con game. Julia (Mila Kunis), an ex-soap opera actress, is caught in a custody battle for her 6 year-old son with her ex-husband Rick (James Franco), a famous New York artist. With her support cut off and her legal costs ruinous, Julia is reduced to working as a maid in the same upscale boutique hotel where she was once a frequent guest. Julia's lawyer Theresa (Maria Bello) has secured Julia one final chance to change the court's mind and be reunited with the child she loves. Rick's current girlfriend Sam (Loan Chabanol) is a compassionate onlooker.'

With a cast such as this the film works as well as it can with such obtuse twists and turns involving each of the three couples. The film 'feels' like it wants to be wonderful, but it just plods along too slowly to make us care very much about this odd groups of maladjusted misfits.

This is not the movie for everyone, but I loved it. The acting is superb and the story is not your formula Hollywood blockbuster. It is a unique and interesting story, that will hold your interest the entire time, always unsure of the outcome.

The subject matter is a bleak but the characters are true and real. Kim Basinger after hearing something that would drive most women away, asks her husband to come home. Twists, turns, but in the end, it all makes sense.

Not the movie for just anyone. If you want a schlock Hollywood feel good movie, go see the delightful new Rob Reiner film 'And so it goes'

but as for me, this is head and shoulders over that.

Phooey to the bad reviews

*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***

Paul Haggis has a heavy burden after winning Best Picture at the Oscars with "Crash," as high expectations have soon formulated any time he creates an interwoven story. Third Person, with its stellar cast and beautiful scenery, amplifies the hype, but unlike its predecessor, it doesn't deliver.

Third Person tells three love stories, featuring unrelatable caricatures. Liam Neeson is a Pulitzer-prize winner author, who smokes cigarettes in darkness and slams his Macbook when ideas don't seamlessly flow to him (people do that?). Olivia Wilde is a charming though emotionally-detached single-in-the-city gal. Adrian Brody is an American in Rome who detests the culture yet thrives in stealing. James Franco is artist-son of wealthy New Yorkers… really? The characters often lack chemistry and their development often seems forced to fill the 'love du jour' trend of love-then-fighting-then love again. The performances are uninspiring, with the exception of Mila Kunis, who plays an ex-soap opera star and single mother trying to get her life back together.

Haggis spent many years crafting this film, but he had to verbally inform the audience of many of the interwoven intricacies. The film will appeal to the New York liberal intellectual crowd who thrive on 'complex' characters, but ultimately, this movie is all sizzle, no steak.

After the TIFF movie premiere, Haggis candidly stated that for the film he had difficulty attaining financing until the last minute. Perhaps this was an omen.

Paul Haggis did it again. At least for me he did. Obviously judging by the low rating, it hasn't had the same effect on others here. I really loved the movie, the intricacies, the connections and of course the "resolution". There might be a better word for the ending, but one thing is for sure: The movie demands more than one viewing. You can watch it with different eyes (your own, just a matter of speaking) and see things in a new light.

There's also trademark Haggis dialog, pointing in one direction, making fun of it, by almost straying away, than going full throttle on the first assumption you made. You may or may not like that, but it's what Haggis can do very good. And he has the actors to pull anything off, he gives them. It's a great movie with little hints here and there, that make sense in the end. Even if you don't get everything the first time around, it is a rewarding (viewing) experience

Liam Neeson plays Michael, a writer. His eyes are curiously and deceptively filled with feeling and warmth even as his character plays out as a "sociopath" who has trouble feeling anything genuine toward other people. Yet, he is obsessed with the creation of emotion, as if the suspension of love in mid-air between two people is his home and friend. His mind is similarly disembodied. He feels need for love, especially when he is deprived of his lover's presence, but the actual presence of that body works to quickly diffuse the passion that is powerful in theory but thrives on it's staying in that theoretical strata. Michael has found a way, through his writing, to cope with this absurd existence. He finds the answer to his addiction in the creation of fiction using people in real life. He lets life naturally play out around him, provoking into being both the subtle and blatant forms of passion, romanticism, divine emotion and drama, then filters these experiences onto paper, choosing only the best parts, and throwing away the rest. Including any irrelevant parts of himself. In this way, he chooses to live his own life in a half-existence, desperately clinging to the divinity of love while denying the bitter absence of his ability to express it genuinely. 'Genuinely' is the key word here. Surely delivering hundreds of white roses to the bedroom of his lover Anna, (played by Olivia Wilde), is beyond romantic. But for Michael it is an act of intellect, not passion. It is a tool used to evoke the necessary catalyst, letting life display action, and funneling the magic into his own words.

Anna is a woman and entity that is completely unique in relation to anyone else in the movie and expresses a shade of mentality that I've never seen in a film so clearly. Within the life spans of each character prior to the timeline of the film is a catastrophic event involving either children or themselves as children. This is a line of storytelling that is evenly and thoroughly paved, on which it is typically easy to carry an audience. Because of such and such event in one's childhood, this character turned out to be this and this. The audience willingly nods to almost any such explanation that follows this logic; the more messed up, the more believable. Anna's case certainly gives her some degree of excusability in this story, though that concept is for another time and another debate. Incredibly, this event, though strong and controversial, does not outshine the vivid expression of her mentality through her actions prior to the unveiling of this childhood/adulthood disaster. She is blunt, cold and incredibly sadistic when it comes to attacking Michael. She is spontaneous, child-like and in considerable anguish. She is excited by the same game that Michael is, and this is what holds them together through the poisonous collisions with the sterility of every-day life. There game is fun, sexy. The fact that in their spontaneous role-play they are acutely aware of the other's true mentality builds a mutual sexual excitement; they can't wait to see how the story will turn out this time, whether it leaves Anna naked in the hallway of a hotel, or hundreds of flowers left in her empty room. The plain of existence could go on exponentially from here in satisfaction for Michael, but for Anna there is a step further down that makes her existence with Michael inhospitable. She is aware and ashamed of her acidic behavior towards Michael, and she has settled into a resolution of consistent punishment for those actions; at least she is trying very hard to. Michael makes this wish impossible in his equally consistent forgiveness for the sake of not losing his muse. As a result, Anna is catapulted into despair as she does not receive the intake of pain and rebuke she expects, resolute that she in no way deserves forgiveness or love; both of which she has long since destroyed within herself. Confronted with a room full of roses, she is helpless to respond in any way other than crawling, slowly and humbly, back to her indestructible lover...

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