I'd heard a lot of praise for Penélope Cruz's performance in this film. It seems she is one of those actresses who acts a lot better when she's not speaking in English. While this is clearly her best performance in English to date, it's not up to the level of her previous work. Instead, her co-star Ben Kingsley quietly steals the show in Isabel Coixet's new film.
The problem is that Cruz doesn't have much to do. At one of Ben's many coffee shop conversations with his best friend (played with style by Dennis Hopper, obviously revelling in a decent little part with a good director) the comment, "Beautiful women are invisible; we're so dazzled by the outside that we never make it inside," is made. Sadly that pretty much sums up Cruz's performance - for 95% of the film all she has to do is look beautiful and Coixet photographs her in a way that ensures that certainly is the case. Her character is so thinly drawn though we never know anything about this woman as a person and that limits what Cruz is able to do considerably. Kingsley though has a fully drawn character and runs with it, playing it with controlled restraint and subtlety.
The problem is that this isn't an Isabel Coixet film, she didn't write it, and that means all of her natural storytelling arcs and characterisations are glaringly missing. Kingsley is the only drawn character, the rest are just shells the actors are asked to fill in the gaps as much as possible. Patricia Clarkson does so very impressively for example as Kingsley's "fuck-buddy" (the term is never used, but let's call a spade a spade) and Peter Sarsgaard doesn't and just snarls his way to a very bland performance in a rather useless subplot as Kingsley's neglected son. In Coixet films, usually, we get fleshed out characters so that when *they* are pushed into very emotional situations the results or revelations can be devastating. In this one though, seeing everything through Kingsley's eyes (and his character being so devoid of almost any likeable characteristics) it renders where they go with it an austere experience.
It's a handsomely photographed film, but is also extremely simplistic and given the characterisation present the lack of understanding of the non-Kingsley characters brings their motivation into question for the audience when we should just be getting on with the story like the director is trying to do. This attempt of a European woman making an American film has a nice contrast with Susanne Bier making Things We Lost in the Fire in that in that case it was a film you could have seen Bier actually writing as that kind of film (intense family based drama) is what she normally does. This exploration of old age and sex though is about as far away as you can get from what Coixet's films like My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words do thematically and emotionally, barring the very end. The trouble is by the time we get to the part of the story that is Coixet's territory so much character has been done contrary to what she usually does that makes these moments successful for her, we are left here with something which is extremely underwhelming and nowhere near as moving as it could or should have been.
By the finish, the film is a complete let down, which is such a disappointment because it's technically well made (very smoothly put together indeed) and on the whole very well acted. It's just a case of the director not fitting the material and the material not fitting the medium - having it so internal may be fine in a book but in a film you need characterisation beyond that. These women keep coming back to him - we have no idea why, Coixet keeps everything coolly detached so as not to judge him but in doing that sacrifices the intimacy the relationships demand in order for them to make sense with where the writers take the film dramatically. A mildly intriguing misfire, not without merit, but far from what its potential would indicate.