Featured Movies
Partners
Moonlight Mile
Donnie Darko's Jake Gyllenhaal shares the screen with Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman in this polished tale of bereavement
The first thing that strikes you in writer-director Brad Silberling's Moonlight Mile is just how articulate (if initially repressed) his three main characters are about their feelings. Set in New England in the early 70s, Silberling's story begins as Benjamin (Hoffman) and Jojo Floss (Sarandon) and their son-in-law-to-be Joe (Gyllenhaal) prepare for the funeral of their daughter, Joe's fianc?? Diane, who was shot dead in the sleepy town's diner a few days earlier. Moonlight Mile teases strangely offbeat performances from Hoffman, Sarandon and Gyllenhaal as they talk about their grief with a flippancy borne out of shock and sadness. Fielding calls from sympathetic friends, while coping with the legal demands of the district attorney's office and their own aimless sense that life must go on, these characters make the first act a beautiful judged treat. Playfully using Gyllenhaal's quiet angst to echo Hoffman's seminal performance in The Graduate - during the wake, various mourners offer Joe pointless advice for his future, much as Hoffman's Benjamin was once advised to take a career in plastics - Silberling creates an engrossing, character-driven drama. Yet, as the story progresses, Moonlight Mile moves away from the quirky relationship between Hoffman, Sarandon and Gyllenhaal in favour of Joe's increasing involvement with a local postwoman and barmaid Bertie (Pompeo), who has suffered her own loss. As this romance unfolds, Moonlight Mile gradually unravels, degenerating into a saccharine love story full of the same heartstring-tugging audience manipulation as Silberling's previous movie, City of Angels. Making little of its 70s setting - the period is so anonymous as to be almost unnoticeable until Vietnam is mentioned - and trading on the talents of its three leads, Moonlight Mile coasts by on the luminous status of its Oscar-calibre cast. It never expands its remit beyond a highly-polished, but all too obvious weepie that eventually makes the similarly-themed Ordinary People look downright restrained in comparison. Verdict A well-meaning but flawed attempt to deal with bereavement. Moonlight Mile's lack of emotional honesty ends up squandering its impressive cast and moments of insight in favour of formula. |
