Bilgi :Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.
Review:
With its characters trapped in lives of quiet, loud, funny bitter, traumatized, confused, and loving tumult, Rodrigo Garcia's Nine Lives has loads of compelling material to work well with, but so, so much to mess up. And yet, surprisingly, the film affects the former over the latter: It's both a fruitfully bold experiment and an unpredictably rich study of character.
Unpredictably rich because the characters are sketches—nine lives of nine different women, told vignette-style, shot in real time, and in a one-take tracking shots. Some of the women's stories intersect on significant levels; some more mysteriously. Other characters never cross paths, but you can feel their tales within the other narratives, and beyond the potentially trite "we are all psychically linked" sort of way.
But as you settle into Nine Lives, there's rarely a trite moment. There are weaker vignettes and, at times, some obvious writing, but the film's structure is so beguiling and the actresses are so stellar that their everyday existences feel simultaneously real and highly unusual—you rarely see characters and situations like these on screen. Beginning with a shriek, the first story leads the film on a worrisome path. Will it be this histrionic for the entire run through? Well, no, and the character makes sense as the film goes along. Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo) is in prison (though her jail duds read "LA County Jail," so we're not entirely sure how locked up she is). As she mops the floor, she eagerly awaits the chance to talk to her visiting daughter. When the phone doesn't work and the guards can't help her, she flips out. Screaming and kicking, her despair is palpable. And that's about all we learn—at first.
From that prison emerges another sort of prison, this time a high-end grocery store in Bel Air. In one of the film's finest sequences, the married and very pregnant Diane (Robin Wright Penn) scans the aisles, only to see her old, and most likely, true love (Jason Isaacs), a man she's not laid eyes on in five years. The mundane conversation mingling with obvious chemistry, bitter confrontation and, finally, abject sadness (we get the feeling he really hurt her) is so beautifully handled by Wright-Penn that even the sound of her shopping cart speeding and slowing down matches her staggered feelings.
There's not enough space to discuss every story, but some of the highlights include an uncomfortable visit Sonia (Holly Hunter) has with her dysfunctional and morbidly hilarious boyfriend (a terrific Stephen Dillane) while dropping by with some posh friends. There's also teenage Samantha (Amanda Seyfried), whose house seems incredibly small as she bounces between her funny, wheelchair-bound dad (a great Ian McShane), whom she adores, and sweet, advice-giving mom (Sissy Spacek—who continues in her own story later), with whom she speaks impatiently. There's also Lorna (Amy Brenneman), the ex wife of a deaf man (William Fichtner) who, perhaps foolishly, attends the funeral of his new wife. The ex is still in love with Lorna, and mourners look at her with scorn. The deceased had committed suicide, presumably, with Lorna in mind. What marks this sequence as so atypical is how it unfolds comically, at first, and then sexually. Another remarkably touching vignette involves a woman (Kathy Baker) readying for surgery, angry that one of her breasts will be removed, and taking it out on her patient husband (Joe Mantegna). How he just lets her get it out, and the longstanding bond between the two, is remarkably presented—sweet without being sappy, bitchy without being grating. Within 10 minutes, you genuinely care about these people. The movie closes, ever nicely, but with tinges of darkness as mama Maggie (Glenn Close) has a picnic at a gravesite with her charming daughter Maria (the unstoppably talented Dakota Fanning).
Energetic and truly alive, Nine Lives weaves through terrain that could have played melodramatic—the stuff of Lifetime. But thanks to Garcia's vigorous camerawork, startlingly in-depth touches, guile and, importantly, a stable of top-notch actresses, and actors, the picture remains fresh and unexpected.
Kim Morgan |
