Unforgettable performances in a forgettable debut film
By BRETT MICHEL | May 8, 2007
VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Away From Her. |
“I never wanted to be away from her. She had the spark of life.” She’s Fiona (Julie Christie), a radiant woman whose luster has diminished through the unkind embrace of Alzheimer’s. Her devoted husband, Grant (Gordon Pinsent), a retired university lecturer with a less-than-devoted past (something Fiona hasn’t forgotten), has just painfully deposited his wife at an assisted-living community. Actress Sarah Polley’s feature-directing debut boasts outstanding performances, but in adapting fellow Canadian Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came over the Mountain” — a short story of memories lost and unexpected loves found — she’s confused Munro’s elegantly straightforward structure: Polley adopts a fragmented narrative approach that’s not unlike her heroine’s fractured thoughts, and she burdens her film with flashbacks and visual representations of spoken metaphors. Christie and Pinsent, however, remain unforgettable.
Related:
Magic tricks, The Oscars go to Hell, 2009: The year in books, More 
- Magic tricks
You have to give a seventysomething writer credit for daring to begin a book with “He’d lost his magic.”
- The Oscars go to Hell
Maybe it’s just as well if the writers’ strike forces a cancellation of the Oscars show.
- 2009: The year in books
Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best books the Phoenix reviewed in 2009.
- Lions and lambs
The season is notable for the return to bookstores of canonical names like Atwood, Ginsberg, Kinnell, le Carré, Munro, Pynchon, and Vidal plus a fair share of younger lions like Eggers, Julavits, and Muldoon.
- The Boston Phoenix–Alumni Film Critics’ Poll
It’s true, the Boston Phoenix has never won an Oscar.
- Country for gold men
All kinds of voting has been taking place lately — for presidential candidates, for union contracts, for Oscar nominees.
- The girls of summer
It’s summer, so no one’s surprised at the onslaught of sequels, adaptations, or even movies based on toys. But films with Oscar-caliber women’s roles?
- Are we grading on a curve?
It’s a solid B, which isn’t bad considering the vagaries of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
- Glower power
It’s a mysterious career. To Whitehead’s credit, it’s not a career in the normal sense at all.
- Beowulf & Grendel
Icelandic director Sturla Gunnarsson treats the Old English epic about a foreign warrior enlisted by a broken Dane king to rid the land of a scourge with both respect and irreverence. Watch the trailer for Beowulf & Grendel
- Backstage masterpiece
As much as I adored The Sopranos , I have to wonder about the rush to anoint it the best television series ever.
- Less
Topics:
Reviews
, Alice Munro, Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, More
, Alice Munro, Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Sarah Polley, Less
