(I talk around spoilers so my reviews are spoilish sometimes.) I've seen a zillion movies. Like you I know all the big names of big directors. Love movies by Kubrick, Spielberg, Woody Allen -- the classics. But for some reason my wife and I really bonded with two movies by a director we had never heard of: Guy Green.
In our living room hang two framed pictures of LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA and A PATCH OF BLUE. Guy Green's best films, the latter a masterwork. My wife loves Piazza. She's not alone. It's been turned into a musical. My heart is with PATCH. Both movies are about people finding each other that desperately need each other.
I just joined FILMSTRUCK -- an online streaming version of TCM. It offered up this film, Guy Green's A WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN. Had to see it.
Again -- we have two people finding each other -- but this time the desperation isn't so desperate. Ingrid and Anthony aren't utterly alone. They're married. So it's the land of infidelity this time -- which is an entire different ball of wax that PIAZZA and PATCH.
One of the other reviewers on this page touched upon a central problem. Almost everyone in this cast was miscast. Quinn simply doesn't pull of a Tennessee mountain man. He's CLEARLY someone who moved to these mountains from Europe and it could have taken all of 2 minutes of dialog to fix this central flaw. It would have helped the story as well -- to learn he was more of a traveler type but that got stuck because of his wife and kid.
The actor playing his son? Beach boy from Malibu. Quinn's wife? They overdid her Christian country backwards thing. We simply don't believe he'd 'settle' for her based upon his reaction to Ingrid. I mean if he's such a man of the world and elements what attracted him about this doorknob of a person? Contrived.
Another reviewer above mentioned how 'pushy' Quinn is. And it's true. Out of the gate he makes it clear he'd do Ingrid. Practically in front of her husband. And so we cringe half the time in this movie. You even had to wonder if he was going to rape her -- considering how pushy he was in his flirting.
And so Quinn is where this entire feature misfires. He's doing a fine job of being himself but the script forgot to write him in properly. And there was absolutely no nuance here that is all over the similar and way better BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. If you told me BRIDGES was offered as a rewrite of this I'd believe you.
No, seriously. Do you remember the last scene in BRIDGES? It spoils nothing to say there's a lot of rain. Well... where's the rain in this movie? THE WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN? Nowhere. Did it get edited out? I suspect that pivotal scene where Ingrid walks up that sandy road was where the rain was supposed to be. Maybe they were counting on rain which never showed and had no money to fake it. But then why call this movie that poetic title without delivering the visual poetry. I mean what if BRIDGES didn't actually show you any bridges? Right? This bumpiness hampers what could have been a far better movie. It's not so bad as to avoid. And it's better than most movies today in many ways.
That's the kind of bumpiness that's here.
In our living room hang two framed pictures of LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA and A PATCH OF BLUE. Guy Green's best films, the latter a masterwork. My wife loves Piazza. She's not alone. It's been turned into a musical. My heart is with PATCH. Both movies are about people finding each other that desperately need each other.
I just joined FILMSTRUCK -- an online streaming version of TCM. It offered up this film, Guy Green's A WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN. Had to see it.
Again -- we have two people finding each other -- but this time the desperation isn't so desperate. Ingrid and Anthony aren't utterly alone. They're married. So it's the land of infidelity this time -- which is an entire different ball of wax that PIAZZA and PATCH.
One of the other reviewers on this page touched upon a central problem. Almost everyone in this cast was miscast. Quinn simply doesn't pull of a Tennessee mountain man. He's CLEARLY someone who moved to these mountains from Europe and it could have taken all of 2 minutes of dialog to fix this central flaw. It would have helped the story as well -- to learn he was more of a traveler type but that got stuck because of his wife and kid.
The actor playing his son? Beach boy from Malibu. Quinn's wife? They overdid her Christian country backwards thing. We simply don't believe he'd 'settle' for her based upon his reaction to Ingrid. I mean if he's such a man of the world and elements what attracted him about this doorknob of a person? Contrived.
Another reviewer above mentioned how 'pushy' Quinn is. And it's true. Out of the gate he makes it clear he'd do Ingrid. Practically in front of her husband. And so we cringe half the time in this movie. You even had to wonder if he was going to rape her -- considering how pushy he was in his flirting.
And so Quinn is where this entire feature misfires. He's doing a fine job of being himself but the script forgot to write him in properly. And there was absolutely no nuance here that is all over the similar and way better BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. If you told me BRIDGES was offered as a rewrite of this I'd believe you.
No, seriously. Do you remember the last scene in BRIDGES? It spoils nothing to say there's a lot of rain. Well... where's the rain in this movie? THE WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN? Nowhere. Did it get edited out? I suspect that pivotal scene where Ingrid walks up that sandy road was where the rain was supposed to be. Maybe they were counting on rain which never showed and had no money to fake it. But then why call this movie that poetic title without delivering the visual poetry. I mean what if BRIDGES didn't actually show you any bridges? Right? This bumpiness hampers what could have been a far better movie. It's not so bad as to avoid. And it's better than most movies today in many ways.
That's the kind of bumpiness that's here.