CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: Naomi Watts, Robin Wright Fake It in ‘Adore’
CHICAGO – For a movie that should be about passion, sex, and scandal, “Adore” is surprisingly and depressingly tame. Two great lead actresses are left floating on a dock by a script that doesn’t treat them like real characters and a team that cast two inferior actors opposite them. For “Adore” to work, this tale of forbidden love needs to have an equal playing field. The major problem with this film is that we never see what the leads do in their sexual partners other than physical specimens and the lack of believability at the core of “Adore” leaves it lame.
Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
Roz (Robin Wright) and Lil (Naomi Watts) have been friends for years. Writer Christopher Hampton and director Anne Fontaine set up a bizarrely episodic structure from the beginning as “Adore” will regularly leap forward several years at a time without much change in appearance by its characters, almost as if the filmmakers are trying to confuse their audience but more likely just filmmaking laziness. Lil loses her husband at a young age and raises a strong, healthy young man named Ian (Xavier Samuel, who, for the casting to work, Lil had to have at 15).
Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Adore” in our reviews section. |
Lil & Ian spend summers with Roz and her son Tom (James Frecheville) and husband Harold (Ben Mendelsohn) in New South Wales. Harold takes a job in Sydney, leaving the two mothers and their two sons to frolic in the blazing sun until passion overtakes at least one of them. Lil’s son Ian seduces Roz one night after the latter has a few too many drinks, and, before they can even enjoy their tryst, Tom catches them, spotting his mom coming out of his best friend’s room carrying her pants after their first night tonight. (Movies like this can never let characters enjoy their secret affairs even for a night before being caught.) Tom responds emotionally and then lashes out by seducing Ian’s mom, Lil. The two mothers and their sons are upfront and honest about their unique dynamic from the beginning, being clear with each other about the bizarre situation happening in their beach house but keeping it from the rest of the judgmental world. Of course, that can’t last.
Adore
Photo credit: Exclusive Releasing