She's So Lovely<br /><br />Beyond Promises, But Not Beyond Hope<br /><br />Cassavetes the younger's She's So Lovely is proof there's a culture gap or a perception gap or something out there. Few films get such starkly opposing reactions from ordinary viewers. Worst movie they've ever seen? Wow, I don't agree at all...but the movie is a litmus test, a continental divide, a knife's edge. Sometimes, one aspect to a movie, a single quality, can set off a viewer so they just hate (or more rarely, love) a movie.<br /><br />I'm guilty of tilting against a movie like that--Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was so horrible to me I had to shut my eyes through half of it (and so I can't review it). I really hated it. But I know that there were aspects to the movie that were remarkable. If I did venture a review (I can't imagine trying to see it again for any reason, but let's pretend I did), I would try my best to find those things that did work, and to rise above the gut level repulsion I had for it. Because, in the end, I need to be able to find balance, to appreciate the best in a troubling movie--the filming of Triumph of the Will, for one obvious example. <br /><br />Can She's So Lovely, a movie that has stellar acting, good filming, a plot that holds water (and rain, lots of rain), and strong emotional content, really be terrible? Even if the content grates on the viewer so badly they can't stand watching it? People are reacting against the movie, because it's troubling, depressing, and raw. It has characters with flaws so big you can can't always see their virtues. <br /><br />And that isn't the fault of either of the Cassavetes men, the dad John who wrote the script or the son Nick who retrieved it after his father's death. In family tradition, real life wife and mother Gena Rowlands has an affecting role as a release counselor, and this is curious because John Cassavetes used Rowlands long ago to scuff up stereotypes of mental illness in the difficult and penetrating A Woman under the Influence, among other films. I wonder if people who had trouble watching She's So Lovely would have trouble with the earlier movie? <br /><br />There is another side to seeing a movie that is unbearably emotional or depressing. And that is learning what it is that makes it so for the viewer. For me, why exactly did I find the violence so impossible to watch in The Passion? Was it the violence itself, or the fact that the violence seemed so wrong, or inaccurate, or gratuitous? Would I watch a movie where someone horrible was being tortured that way, say Hitler? (The short answer: no.) The point being, a movie that is so affecting might have something to teach me.<br /><br />And what is it in this Cassavetes film that works the viewer over, for good and bad (there are as many positive reviews as negative ones)? Maybe it is the entry into a very real world that isn't so extreme or unusual--though we are shown an especially awful and pivotal moment in that world--a milieu present in every small city, and common in a big one. We can really feel that scene, and the players inside, and that alone makes the movie compelling. Give us five or so great performances, from the two Penns in love in the first half to John Travolta in the sunny (and shorter) second half, and you have something that really gets under your skin. Isn't that what makes a movie valid? Don't we want intensity over entertainment? Sometimes?<br /><br />Now to the best part: humor. It arrives in small ways throughout, but at the end there is that chaotic comic nonsense in the front yard? It's the worst of all possible situations, a mother willfully walking away from her three kids and decent if goofy husband, but it gets violent in silly spurts as they tussle on the grass. Is that supposed to soften the facts so we don't melt down totally? Or is it saying that the whole film is a little, just a little, tongue and cheek? Surely the excesses earlier might be excessive. I mean, how many dance hall ticket takers are so nice they not only let the couple in for free but loan them money on top of it? Or just after that, does the couple really arrive at an old friend's flat in the middle of the night and have a beautiful family meal prepared for them, an idealized cliché of the Italian mother feeding everyone? <br /><br />Is this movie really about true love or about something mistaken for it, an obsessive attachment, almost an animal bonding where the two of them need each other, even when it's bad for them. Blame the drugs, blame the bad brain chemistry, blame the poverty, they do cling together when they shouldn't. They cling even ten years later, leaving her new husband out of her heart, that convincing suburban dad (Travolta), imperfect and yet successful, who has given his life to her. Would you really prefer stability and superficial happiness over depth of feeling? And true love?<br /><br />I bought the whole package. The direction was flawed, maybe a result of inexperience more than anything. But what really works, really works. For me. I don't want to be them, I'm not jealous in any way, even of their attachments, but I like these for their best parts. And I like the movie for its best parts, too.