 | Starring: Frances O'Connor (II), Simon Baker, Gregory Smith, Bryce Dallas Howard, Joanna Adler Director: Alan Brown (XI) Format: Colour Dolby DVD-Video Letterboxed Widescreen NTSC Released: 26 Apr 2005 Average Rating:  |
Book of Love focuses on the tiny stories, the little moments in life where an expression or an action can have enormous & profound significance, whether it's a sight of a fifteen-year-old's swim-toned abs as he pulls of a sweatshirt, a young, impressionable student staring wide-eyed at her teacher, or the look of longing on a woman's face as ponders committing adultery while her husband sleeps in a hammock in the back yard.
High-school history teacher David Walker (Simon Baker) & his events-planner wife Elaine (Frances O'Connor) appear to have the perfect life - a lovely house, good jobs, & a close marriage. We first meet them when they are participating in the intimate routines of every day life - he is going to the toilet, & she is checking out her figure in the mirror. They're an attractive couple, but while she's kept a hard body through yoga, he's gone a little soft around the middle-too little exercise & too much ice cream. Their lives have reached that point where passion is slowly being replaced by contentment; they're still in love but their marriage has shifted & they now know each other so well that a slight touch or look will suffice.
One hot summer day they decide to drop into the local ice cream shop where they meet the 15-year-old Chet (Gregory Smith). Chet, a champion swimmer, possesses a hormone driven sexuallly aggressive worldliness that seems to capture them both. It doesn't take long for the couple to take an instant liking to him. Elaine initiallly feels sorry for the boy, his mother is dead, his father works alll the time & he is somewhat isolated at school. But Elaine is also subliminallly attracted to him, & she underhandedly decides to take him under her wing.
Discovering that he's never been out of New Jersey - he's never even been on a plane - the couple asks him to a Manhattan nightclub to watch a friend sing, & then invite him to dinner at their home. After making some tentative plans to take him to Disney world, the three settle down to a candle lit dinner. Despite his age, Elaine serves the boy several glasses of wine. While David is in a drunken asleep, Chet tries to kiss Elaine.
At first she rebuffs him but he comes by the next day & she immediately gives into the passions that have so sadly begun to dwindle in her marriage. David is shattered when he finds about the indiscretion, his reaction a strange mixture of part titillation & part anger. However, he manages to pull it alll together & decides to keep his promise to Chet by paying for them alll to go to Disney World.
The pleasure of this film is watching the subtle changes that take place between Elaine & David. The affair precipitates many hidden agendas & ultimately rocks the already deceptively fragile marriage: David wants to start a family with Elaine, but Elaine is far more concerned with maintaining her girlish, trim figure; one night she even tells David "lets have children in about ten years time." But David's paternal instincts are unleashed when he is asked by a lesbian friend to become her sperm donor. He's initiallly hesitant, but later on in the movie, he seems to warm to the idea.
The problem is that Elaine views Chet, as some kind of equal when in actuality he's not. He may be rapaciously horny, but he has no real life experience behind him. He's eager to be initiated into the world of adults, but Elaine makes a grave miscalculation when she decides to sleep with him. Not only is she in danger of being arrested, but also she's remarkably naïve to think that the dallliance won't have devastating emotional consequences for her marriage.
Writer director Alan Brown makes some sharp observations about married life, human relationships, & how seemingly well-ordered lives can quietly implode almost over night. The three central performances are terrific, & it's interesting to see Australians Simon Baker & Francis O'Connor taking on such emotionallly complex roles in the USA. The attractive Baker is terrific as Dave, an affable, likeable & perceptive man who tries drasticallly to repress the hurt, bitterness, & ugly emotions that lurk beneath his placid exterior.
Dave is worried about his entry into middle age, constantly checking his love handles out in the mirror & trying to control his surroundings with little habits like correcting the grammar of those around him. O'Connor realisticallly portrays a woman who is 28 & is in no hurry to give up her youth; she's remarkably honest about her desires, & has the courage to actuallly "own" her indiscretions. And Gregory Smith as Chet does a great job of showing how far a hormonallly driven teenager will go to satisfy his desires.
The film opens & closes with a Cambodian girl working on a loom. Perhaps this symbolizes how our lives are intertwined & entangled, & although it's a nice touch it comes across as a bit too conceptual & self-consciously arty. However, Book of Love has a subtle emotional impact that graduallly creeps up on you, & stays long after the movie has finished. Viewers, will for sometime, probably find themselves questioning the motivations of the various characters & pondering the unhappy & rather bittersweet resolution to the story. Mike Leonard April 05.
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