![]() ![]() ![]() About the only original touch is how the script, by Ms. When Jade and David do make love, it’s on the floor in front of a fireplace they also hold hands when they jump off a pier into some water. It isn’t that people in love don’t sometimes run ecstatically into the wind, but that the image, like so many shots and so many of the emotional moments, is so canned. Feste responds accordingly and shoots Jade twirling and running as if she were in a commercial for an exciting new product. Wilde mostly just suggests the supermodel next door. Shields, whose status as a preternaturally sexualized child star imbued her with an otherworldly, almost celestial air (the celebrity who fell to Earth), the coltish Ms. Jade is supposed to be 17 and sheltered, having spent most of her high school years giving comfort to her parents, Hugh and Anne (Bruce Greenwood and Joely Richardson), after the death of a son. Pettyfer are very pretty (both have worked as models), and they’re certainly pleasant to look at, even if they’re also, often distractingly, too old for their roles. That partly explains why this “Endless Love” falls so flat, registering as more neutered than even the kitschy 1981 version with Brooke Shields directed by Franco Zeffirelli, now best remembered for those newcomers Tom Cruise and James Spader.ĭirected by Shana Feste ( “Country Strong”), this new “Endless Love” doesn’t have enough going on to make it memorably terrible: Banality is its gravest sin. By contrast, American movies today often roil with orgiastic violence that’s a conspicuous substitute for sexual desire. In a superb film like “Gun Crazy,” which was made under strict industry self-cen6sorship, desire is expressed through innuendo, smoldering looks and the sublimating violence of erotically, ecstatically discharged guns. One problem with this love is that it’s been difficult for filmmakers to translate it to the American screen, which has long been locked in the grip of a stultifying, Eros-killing Puritanism. ![]() A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way. The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards Season The Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. This is the love, or should be, of Antony and Cleopatra, Scarlett and Rhett and the couple in the 1950 film noir “Gun Crazy” who look at each other like “wild animals.” This is the love, or should be, that burns, consumes and spurs Friar Laurence to warn Romeo: “These violent delights have violent ends./And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,/Which as they kiss consume.” Based on the 1979 Scott Spencer novel of the same tantalizing title (is “endless” a happy vow or a threat?), the movie relates what is meant to be the kind of feverish love that sends people into shudders of ecstasy. Shallow, timorous and unbelievable, alas, end up being more like it. Closely enough to suggest that he’s been long nurturing a passion, perhaps an obsession - something deep, troubling and real. ![]() From the way he talks, he seems to have been watching her closely. It’s a high school graduation somewhere in Atlanta, and as the camera picks Jade out of the celebrating crowd, David reminisces about how he’s been watching her for years. There’s a promising edge to the opening of “ Endless Love,” which begins with a young man, David (Alex Pettyfer), speaking in voice-over about a young woman, Jade (Gabriella Wilde). ![]()
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