Nurse Betty Saving Grace

...What could go wrong...

...r[iiS uah one of there prayers-" wonderfully besotted Martin Clunes), a 1960s and '70s, with one straitlaced -Harvey Cog, Harvard University befuddled English clergyman, and a character after another losing their inISBN 1-880913-49-6 160 pp 7 x 9 IT S14.9' doltish British "bobby" who turns out to hibitions thanks to the liberating power GUERRILLAS OF GRACE be shrewder than anyone might suspect...

...heavies from out of town have come to tween Zellweger and Greg Kinnear, who Where the title character of Nurse Betty settle a score...

...of cannabis...

...Eventually the bumbling local police and assorted others also track Betty down in L.A., and in good 0ur Western notion of a uni- tomer while never taking her eyes off screwball comedy fashion the many tary, rational self that is con- the television screen...

...keted product than the sincerest form of Twins However, Nurse Betty's ironic games- flattery...

...Betty, unbeknownst to the plays the actor who plays Dr...

...Tm a gardener, and these are sick and well-manicured Cornwall eventual- plants," she temporizes...

...She has aspirations, and she possesses an emotional transparency that seduces...

...Grace is is essentially incoherent, and the double is set in a picturesque seaside village (but known far and wide as a superb gardener, reversals of fate and character at the end in England, not Ireland) where the action and Matthew's earnest efforts to cultivate are mere flummery...

...Pushed out of foreclosure on her impeccable 300-year- their lush, if smoke-filled, garden, Grace www.InnisfreePress.rn old stone house...

...1W break out of all formulas into heart-felt, inundated with down-to-earth types, in- Much of Saving Grace seems like a flashhind-opening, soul-searchingaays of back to the drug-inspired comedy of the cluding the pot-smoking town doctor (a aching to God...

...But even at her most saccharine there is something appealing in her dreamy, upbeat personality...

...You are so real," Kinnear prais- tion...

...A small-town car salesman, Del fancies himself a shrewd operator...

...In its best moments, Nurse Betty makes you want something more for her as well...

...1.800.367.5872 the prospect of destitution, not to mention cheap dramatic tricks...

...to land a role on the show...

...many cultures people have multiple ell, which, like a seven-year-old, she lov- Nurse Betty is not light fare, howevsouls or selves that migrate from one ingly hugs and takes home...

...Asked if Betty wanted more out of life, a coworker says, "No, she just wanted something out of life...

...One could z ill start cr end cue...

...And also like Wak- to Matthew's illegal stash, but she is in a killing, perpetually scowling like a spoiled ing Ned Devine, everyone in whitewashed bind...

...Zellweger is astonishing as she inbody to another...

...Betty's predicaon ment is simultaneously very funny and When it comes to the movies, achingly poignant, even cruel...

...She soon tale literally go up in smoke...

...In her checkered uniform and starched white hat, and with her bubbly good spirits, Betty at first appears to be a familiar caricature of white-bread America...

...kind of parallel metamorphosis to Betty's, their droll tone, to that delightful Scot- No fool, Grace is hesitant to play ER nurse and Rock, impatient to get on with the tish classic, Local Hero...

...Al- have been conceived with Waking Ned her enough cash to pay off the predatory though Zellweger and Kinnear do re- Devine in mind...

...Saving Grace is the munchies, and runs around naked...

...In cutout of the shows star, Dr...

...Traumatized by what she somersault on the high trapeze...

...She exchanges videotapes of the show with girlfriends and can pour a cup of coffee for a cus- California dreamin' Commonweal 1 9 October 6, 2000 course, imagines she is living in the five-year-old...

...imitation usually seems Separating Zellweger's performance is humbling more like the hasty rip-off Conjoined in the way it exposes Betty's suppressed of an already widely marlongings and her fatefully trusting nature...

...beauty...

...First there literature tells us, one toke leads inevitably ABreath of FreshAir from is the recently widowed Grace, played to another, and soon the very proper Grace TED LODER, by the charming Brenda Blethyn, a mid- is up to her eyebrows in a potent strain of "One ofAmerica's Outstanding Creative Preachers" dle-aged housewife with just a hint of Matthew's favorite recreational herb...

...The killers, played by Morgan Freeman and the comedian Chris Rock, surmise that she has abAS THE WORLD TURNS sconded with the goods and set off in 'Nurse Betty' & 'Saving Grace' hot pursuit...

...Then is nothing more enterprising, it seems, than :Vezv fer2000 there is Matthew, Grace's habitually a woman scorned...

...Director Neil LaBute made a name for himself with the misogynists in In the Company of Men...

...She has no marketable and her dotty neighbors simply evapskills, certainly no skills that might garner orate in the end...

...We meet Grace at the fu- Cole raise expectations their story never Human-Divine Struy'le neral of her husband, where she also gets fulfills, letting a promising comic fairyISBN 0-931055.79.2 176 ph -, + I'I+ I a a first glimpse of his mistress...

...There are moments beculture to culture...

...Betty, of in her Kansas hometown...

...Writer Ferguson and director Nigel WRESTLING THE LIGHT Ache and Awe in the A good deal...

...Our unlikely heroine is married to Del, who is crude, belligerent, and unfaithful...

...Like that sly Irish trib- bill collectors...

...They get TRACKS IN THE STRAW learns that her wayward spouse has been the texture and manners of small-town Tales Spun from the Manger just as unreliable with his money...

...Our heroine is faced with drug trafficking without resorting to from Innisfree Press...

...er...

...Soon she is speeding off to fronts them "in character" in an effort counter of the Tip Top, a popular diner California to find him...

...Both films, naught...

...Morgan Freeman takes shape around a prospective wind- a small marijuana crop have come to and Chris Rock have especially difficult fall acquired by illicit means...

...Ravell...

...If Betty, played with mesmer- and murder...

...David Rav- letting all hell break loose...

...Matthew is shad- ly amusing episodes in which the staid Prayers far Our Lives owed by his lady love, the down-to-earth local populace tokes up, giggles, gets f .odcr's newest gutsy', grace-filled prayers Nicky (Valerie Edmon...

...Kinnizing intensity by Renee Zellweger (Jerry has seen, she escapes completely into ear (As Good As It Gets) and the other Maguire), doesn't exactly possess a mi- the fantasy world of her soap opera, cast members of the soap opera assume gratory self, she certainly seems to have imagining herself the long-lost love of Betty is an aspiring actress who conmultiple souls...

...Commonweal 2 0 October 6, 2000...

...She starts off behind the Dr...

...The slightly addled Matthew markable things, the larger arc of the story ute to good-humored larceny, this film also has immediate need of cash...

...On her birthday, frayed ends of this story are resolved fined to one body is far the Tip Top staff gives her a life-size by getting everyone into one room and from a universal given...

...There (4Btionol Ohserverf mischief to leaven her decency...

...As a philosophical hit man, "real" world of "A Reason to Love," " and Freeman does a riff on Samuel L. Jackcoming next issue: is finally being reunited with her dream son's Bible-quoting assassin in Pulp Ficlover...

...LYSAUGhT al-the performance is...

...Where a person starts Fate also has a birthday present in sinuates herself-or at least one of her and ends," the anthropologist Mary store for Betty...

...In fact, Freeman's entire performance, like much of this movie, seems to have ThEKESE es Betty's unflinching self-presentation, little knowing just how real-or surre- quotation marks around it...

...The film's motto seems to Prayers for the Battle All in all, an agreeably dissolute group be the Beatles' preachment, "I'd love to ISBN o 9iin+s-114-n 1.i61 S., a ea S14.9i inhabiting a place of almost timeless turn you on...

...credi- life just right, but can't disentangle their is l3ti 1-SSI)<111 29 1 7:f, P1, fi x 5 I'S tors present her with bills of nearly half a heroine from the darker implications of Available from your local bookseller or million pounds...

...Betty is also speeding off with half a million dollars in cocaine hidden in the Paul Baumann trunk of Del's car...

...M1 Hrstltl' MY HEART stoned "gardener," played by the film's What follows is a succession of bareIN MYMVUIH I N MY MOUTH writer, Craig Ferguson...

...He is anything but, and Aaron Eckhart's performance is a model of how to elicit repugnance from an audience...

...As it turns out, Del is selves-into the actual production of "A Douglas tells us, varies a great deal from selling cocaine as well as cars, and two Reason to Love...

...Ravell, starts and ends is also something of a killers, witnesses the brutal shakedown that are the actorly equivalent of a triple mystery...

...Saving Grace, whether through manship with what is real and who Betty poor timing or honest homage, seems to really is remains a strained conceit...

...With her nightmarish marriage and dead-end job, Betty turns to the TV soap opera "A Reason to Love" for emotional sustenance...

...He hopes that Grace's green assignments, with Freeman undergoing a in fact, bear a resemblance, especially in thumb might rescue his anemic shrubbery...

...As the drug abuse ly gets drawn in on the scam...