Screen:
O'Brien, Tom
DOWNHILL JOURNEYS QUEEN OF HEARTS' & 'IN COUNTRY' In my time as film critic at Commonweal, I have often wanted to invent a new prize: overrated foreign film of the season. My current candidate is...
...Except to date it from her high school graduation, director Norman Jewison (A Soldier's Story, Agnes of God, Moonstruck) doesn't really explain why Lloyd's interest in Vietnam comes to a head...
...And as the nation sped on past us, swifter than memory, I could only think: God bless the dead...
...Although the cafe scenes are at first lively, the narration drags...
...In Country giveth and taketh away, interesting us in these plot lines, then dropping them...
...Rosa's mother, Madama Sibilla, provides some relief...
...Suddenly they make a fantastically lucky but utterly realistic escape...
...Would the whole film had one-tenth of its power...
...Lloyd's mother (Joan Allen) proves likable despite her initial insensivity and her desire to live only in the present and future...
...TOM O'BRIENad...
...The problem isn't just over-sentimentality...
...it could have used more of her Sophia Loren-like beauty and serenity...
...her farm scenes are straight from the myth of a lost continent called integrity...
...Director Jon Amiel (of the BBC's "The Singing Detective") never again achieves that blend of the real and the unexpected...
...And you start rooting for the enemy...
...Judith Ivey-sashaying about with her usual buoyant energy-bubbles up as Willis's old girlfriend, then disappears...
...But her refreshing crankiness soon becomes routine...
...It's a beautiful moment-and a dangerous one for the rest of the film...
...it's a meandering story line that makes Nonno's irresponsibility and Danilo's romanticism irritating...
...TOM O'BRIEN...
...she is also made to lose whist games to Nonno's father after he follows the ensembles to London...
...In Country does well to drape itself over its mute volume...
...He corners them in the tower, pulls out a knife, and salivates at the moment of revenge...
...There is, at last, the pilgrimage to the Vietnam War Memorial...
...On the Metroliner from Washington recently, a young woman sat down next to me...
...her innocent search for answers is complemented by a perfect face, which combines baby fat, nascent glamour, and a glowing, alert, quick-witted intelligence...
...And Lloyd (still in her teens) gives it a steady drive...
...A brilliant conception, both trendily abstract and traditionally representative, a granite enigma and mass tombstone, the Vietnam Memorial is perhaps the finest work of public sculpture in America...
...a mini-cult hit, it's cutely advertised as a "tale of romance, revenge, and cap-pucino...
...I don't know Mason's novel firsthand, but one feels this film version must be only skimming the surface...
...People praise a movie like this for some good reasons, perhaps, but also one bad: at least-they say-it had no chase scenes...
...Willis, who became annoying with his smart-aleck mannerisms on TV's Moonlighting, does enough with the limp screenplay to suggest some of the suffering many vets still feel...
...Although strong and affecting, these closing scenes don't really grow out of the emotions that the plot evokes or any inevitable design in the drama...
...she said she went because of her father who had died in Vietnam before she was born...
...Her desire and determination to dig into the past carry the film to its conclusion at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington...
...Until Platoon, critics often asked when we would get great Vietnam movies...
...She was wearing a souvenir beltbag from a preview of Casualties of War...
...Although she has lived with her uncle for at least a decade, she suddenly wants to know everything...
...When Barbarricia-the jilted fiance-arrives, now suave but still intent on revenge, you know Nonno's romantic irresponsibility is going to cost dearly...
...she knew the Coppola family and Cher...
...The movie doesn't do much with the monument...
...After they escape to London and have children, the rest of the story is told from the point of view of Nonno's and Rosa's youngest son, Danilo (Joseph Long...
...The remark occurs in a bedroom scene between the heroine (Emily Lloyd) and a girlfriend...
...it probably could have been better photographed...
...they flee as her wedding to another man approaches, running through the narrow streets and alleys of a small Italian city, eventually scrambling to the top of a tower while being pursued by the plump but vindictive intended, Barbarricia (Vittorio Amandola...
...Many viewers love its warm-hearted family storytelling, its magical realistic mode, and its quirky, lyrical characters...
...I am so rarely a curmudegon that readers will have to forgive me this time, but the film bored me no end...
...The opening is certainly thrilling...
...That's it for the sparkle...
...It never regains that power and speed, or the bright and gorgeous allure of the Italian cityscape...
...And it was the best scene in the movie...
...She was, it turned out, an actress (with a bit part in the cult hit Hairspray...
...My current candidate is the Anglo-Italian Queen of Hearts, which has been winning plaudits from critics and cultured audiences this fall...
...But it did...
...maybe they were looking for art from the wrong medium...
...Though it has a decent framework, the film never builds to anything...
...Fortunately, the cast provides some incidental pleasures...
...In Country, based on the novel by Bobbie Ann Mason, has (surprisingly) only one good line: "this town," a teenager laments, "is nowhere without a mall...
...In 1989, romantically lyrical irresponsibility is a tiresome, tedious theme...
...At least, it (along with the current, less successful, Welcome Home) tries to provide more sympathetic treatment of vets on screen, where they have often been depicted as militarists (Bruce Dem in Coming Home) or maladjusted kooks (as in First Blood, Taxi Driver...
...Rosa is too little on view in the film's middle...
...she's played by British character actress Eileen Way, a vet of Poldark (his Aunt Agatha), By the Sword Divided (an old crone), and films going back to the Kirk Douglas/Tony Curtis whammer, The Vikings (which she spoils for Rosa's family by giving away the ending when it plays on TV...
...the "Lucky Cafe" where he peddles his special brew of cappucino...
...Danilo just doesn't have the same edgy appeal as the youthful narrator, say, of My Life as a Dog...
...She also has a great scene in a confessional...
...they are moaning about the limits of Hopewell, Kentucky, and yearning for the bright lights and big city of Paducah...
...With another surprise deliverance, Nonno acquires the money to start (what else...
...Lloyd's paternal grandmother (Peggy Rae), stands out as a hefty, down-home icon of all-American bounty, serving up heaps of potatoes before leading dinnertime grace...
...Two young lovers, Nonno (Vittorio Duse) and Rosa (Anita Zagaria), are separated by a feud between their families...
...Lloyd (a young English actress, from Wish You Were Here) manages a Kentucky accent and her larger yearning nicely: she wants to know more about Vietnam-"in country," as grunt lingo had it- where her father died and her uncle (Bruce Willis) became a nervous wreck...
...We talked generally about films, then I asked her how she liked Casualties...
...I wondered at how young she was, how young he must have been, what sadness her mother must have felt, and by what justice I-and not her father, my contemporary-sat there discussing her career...
Vol. 116 • November 1989 • No. 19
