Movie Review - The Face of Love

The Face of Love *½ (PG-13) Admittedly, I’m not part of the target demographic for romantic dramas among the AARP set, despite having reached that age range. But I still think I can spot a dud, even when it’s not in my wheelhouse. Annette Bening has been joyfully married to architect Ed Harris for 30 years. While vacationing in Mexico, he drowns. Five years later, she’s moping around in the lovely home he’d designed for them, finding partial solace in her grown daughter and the solicitous widower across the street (Robin Williams). The two couples had always been close. Williams silently yearns for something beyond platonic to emerge from their shared losses. She’s still mourning her lost love too much to get enthusiastic about anything.

One day Bening sees her late hubby’s apparent Doppelganger (also Harris), who turns out to be a painter and art professor. She essentially stalks the guy until they start dating. He’s been divorced for a decade and falls hard for her. But as Bening spends months doing all she can to keep him in the dark about why she pursued him, the relationship grows ever more creepy. Harris #2 is an incredibly nice fellow who deserves the truth about why she’s always looked at him so lovingly from the get-go. We’re not sure of the extent to which she’s depressed from prolonged grief, delusional, or even dangerous.

At times the film feels as if a Brian de Palma is setting us up for something tragic, along with the suspense element of whether and how new Ed will discover her motives, and how he’ll react to it. The brooding tale drags annoyingly, seeming much longer than its 92 minutes, as Bening’s prolonged deception makes her ever less sympathetic. The ending rings false and forced, as if someone decided in mid-production which way they wanted to end it, all preceding content notwithstanding.

The best news may be that Harris, after earning an Oscar nomination for his compelling portrayal of artist Jackson Pollock in 2000, has now learned how to pretend to paint actual objects! Hone that craft, dude, but don’t forget to aim for scripts that deserve your talents. (3/28/14)