2021 - September
The Four Seasons (1981) 3/4
The Crimson Rivers (2000) 3/4
The Brontë Sisters (1979) 2.5/4
The Reckoning (2002) 2/4
Devotion (1946) 1.5/4
The Crimson Rivers 2 - The Angels of Apocalpyse (2004) 1.5/4
The Crimson Rivers (2000) 3/4
The Brontë Sisters (1979) 2.5/4
The Reckoning (2002) 2/4
Devotion (1946) 1.5/4
The Crimson Rivers 2 - The Angels of Apocalpyse (2004) 1.5/4
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- DirectorAndré TéchinéStarsIsabelle AdjaniMarie-France PisierIsabelle HuppertIn a small presbytery in Yorkshire, living under the watchful eyes of their aunt and father, a strict Anglican pastor, the Bronte sisters write their first works and quickly become literary sensations.03-09-2021
André Téchiné's "The Brontë Sisters" is a biopic of the titular authors made as if they had written it themselves. Poetic, melodramatic, occasionally torrid and drenched in their characteristically gloomy, moorish atmosphere. This is both a notable feature and the film's ultimate downfall as Téchiné doesn't quite manage to wrestle the humanity of the sisters out of what proves to be a very mannered and frequently languorous production.
Mood is the main aspect of "The Brontë Sisters" and not the characters, so I shall begin with the successful aspects of the film, most notably Bruno Nuytten's stunning, painterly cinematography reminiscent of John Alcott's work on "Barry Lyndon". Very far from realism, the film's visuals are primarily poetic and evoke the writing styles of the sisters. There are beautiful shots of horses propping on the moors, Isabelle Adjani stomping on white flowers against the black skies, and water flowing wildly between sharp and treacherous rocks. Like in "Barry Lyndon", all this is accompanied by selections of classical and opera music which is, to say the least, excellent. Téchiné keeps his camera mostly steady and in long shot, lingering on these well-composed and stunningly lit images.
Despite the film's title most of the runtime is dedicated to the Brontë brother Branwell, played by Pascal Greggory as a perpetually moody and hard-done-by wannabe artist. It is a very good performance, believable and lively without ever descending into the cliche territory of the tortured artist. He seems less like someone who's failed to find his way in life and more like someone who actively avoids it. Whenever given the opportunity to make something of himself he seems to deliberately ruin his chances.
More of a cliche is the portrayal of Emily (Isabelle Adjani), the wild child of the family. A wistful tom-boy who spends her days running around the moors dressed, horror of horrors, in a pair of pants. She is the best-rounded character of the three sisters but still remains thinly profiled despite an excellent performance from Isabelle Adjani, one of her career-best.
A sharp contrast to the two of them is Charlotte (Marie-France Pisier), the eldest sister who seems to naturally assume the role of mother to her wilder siblings. Despite receiving arguably the most on-screen time of the sisters, Marie-France Pisier fails to make much of her character who, in the end, comes across as doting and frigid.
Isabelle Huppert, doubtlessly the best actress in the film, is sadly relegated to the dullest part, that of the youngest sister Anne who, in the film, is little more than a wallflower, an observer to the antics of her more character-endowed siblings. Still, Huppert, makes the most of a bad role and the few close-ups she gets contain staggering emotional power. A proof, as if needed, of her immense talent can be found in the excellent and deeply affecting scene in which Charlotte and Anna bathe the dead Emily. Huppert never says a word in the whole scene but her stern, teary eyes speak volumes.
The film concerns itself very little with the literary pursuits of the sisters. I suppose the process of writing is not very exciting nor beautiful on the screen. In Téchiné's film, it appears that the novels appeared in the Brontë's minds magically and were transcribed immediately onto the page. He cuts to their publication before they're ever mentioned.
As can be deduced, this is not a film of characters and the three titular sisters remain little more than cyphers, tragic characters at the heart of what is really a series of evocative images. The script by Téchiné and Pascal Bonitzer can be called episodic even though it would be more accurate to say it leaps from set-up to set-up. It is a curious experience as each scene seems to be a short film of its own, set in a different time, a different place, and with a different subtext. Hundreds of such small set-pieces make up this film. And yet Téchiné never manages to string them together into a cohesive narrative. I was frequently confused about where in the story I was, what time period, and where exactly. The film leaps wildly from England to Belgium and back without any internal logic the same way it leaps between time periods. If you don't already know the story of the Brontës it can be a taxing watch.
Apparently, the film was recut against Téchiné's wishes from three hours to just under two. Perhaps all the connective tissue was lost, I can't say for sure more than it is sorely lacking.
"The Brontë Sisters" is a film of great beauty and overwhelming atmosphere but it fails to deliver the one thing I expected of it. Namely, it fails to make these famous and tragic sisters into relatable, human characters. They exist in the landscape of Téchiné's film more as symbols, statues, ideas than fully-rounded people with their own wishes, desires, emotions. The result is a series of breathtaking episodes which don't connect into a very enlightening film. I found it frequently disorienting and languorous to the point of exhaustion. However, I would love to see it on the big screen, regard it not as a story or a movie but as a piece of visual art. As such, it is quite an effective experience.
2.5/4 - DirectorCurtis BernhardtStarsOlivia de HavillandIda LupinoPaul HenreidGenius authors Emily and Charlotte Brontë fall in love with their curate as they seek to get their work published.03-09-2021
1.5/4 - DirectorMathieu KassovitzStarsJean RenoVincent CasselNadia FarèsA murder detective must follow the footsteps of a brutal killer within the secrets of a classist college.17-09-2021
A nude corpse of a mutilated man is found strung up on a mountain, 50 meters above an elite French university. His hands have been chopped off and his eyes removed, their empty sockets filled with acid rain. Stumped, the local police call Paris for help who in turn send them Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno). "They said they'll send a unit," asks the local chief of police. "I am the unit," replies Niemans without a hint of irony.
He is Paris' super-cop, a fearless, head-first investigator with the kind of dogged determination that unquestioningly puts his and anyone else's life in danger. With his quiet, bullish demeanour, no-nonsense attitude and lone-wolf tendencies, he quickly makes enemies both with the local cops and in the hallowed halls of learning where fit young intellectuals are quick to display their egos. "Healthy minds in healthy bodies," summarises Niemans with more than a hint of irony.
Several towns over, a completely different kind of cop is bored stiff. Max Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel), an uncouth child of the streets, is spending his days as the lead detective in the backwoods smoking joints with braggart toughs and antagonising local skinheads. With a joyful disregard for the rules, no manners or sense of tact he is the kind of cop who feigns ignorance at the mention of warrants, picks locks and even steals a car when his stalls on the way to a suspect's house.
To break the monotony of his small-town existence, Kerkerian devotes himself fully to investigating the desecration at the local graveyard. He doesn't buy the story that the skinheads are to blame and soon he connects the desecration to a mysterious theft of records at the local school. Then he finds out that the young girl whose grave was desecrated and whose school photo was stolen was born at the same university where Niemans is hunting for a serial killer whose ritualistically mutilated bodies keep turning up buried in the ice.
Kerkerian makes his way to the university where his arrival is not greeted with enthusiasm by lone-wolf Niemans. "I work alone," says the Paris super-cop. "That makes two of us," replies Kerkerian. But this is part-and-parcel of buddy cop films and soon enough the two become inseparable in their quest for a dangerous killer and his motive which ties to the death of a young girl some 20 years ago.
"The Crimson Rivers" is based on a complicated and utterly preposterous novel by Jean-Christophe Grangé which combines ritualistic murders, elite boarding schools, and eugenics into an uneven mishmash of thriller cliches. In the hands of any lesser director, such material would have doubtlessly resulted in a dour and predictable gorefest but Mathieu Kassovitz approaches it with a vivacious sense of humour and unobtrusive stylishness. His film is full of cheerful horror homages with such shots as lightning bolts striking above a creepy old mansion and faceless hooded killers stalking through the night. He never, for a second, takes any of Grangé's ludicrous plot twists seriously and the result is a viciously witty and doubtlessly entertaining movie. The kind that throws logic to the wind and bombards you with scene after scene of pure, unadulterated movie fun. There are crazy car chases down snow-bound windy roads, shootouts on top of mountains, visits to monastery catacombs and a hilarious fistfight between Kerkerian and two skinheads complete with "Street Fighter" music and Hong Kong sound effects. Kassovitz is having mad fun with this nonsensical material and boy is it infectious.
I love how alive his scenes are. He fills the background with realistic, vivid action. Notice, for instance, how while Kerkerian is interrogating a snooty mother superior, his two uniformed sidekicks are trying to pick up a pair of beautiful novices. See also the suspicious looks the students give Niemans while he walks through their cloistered halls. There's also a superb scene in which Niemans questions a local ophthalmologist (Jean-Pierre Cassel) while the latter changes in his office. Such scenes are truly the mark of a great director.
The film has a slick, flashy look to it, full of dramatic crane shots and ambitious Steadicam work. Thierry Arbogast's atmospheric cinematography is more than commendable and the mix between Kassovitz's handheld naturalism and Arbogast's Luc Besson-style flashiness proves to be more potent than expected. Supported by first-class Bruno Coulais music, "The Crimson Rivers" is a joy to look at and listen to. Coulais is one of those composers who make even bad movies worth watching and here he provides one of his best scores. Moody, with a pumping rhythm and dramatic horns, it sounds like a Bernard Herrmann score for the techno generation.
But the film doubtlessly lives or dies on the performances of its two leads. Thankfully, here we have France's best leading men of the 1990s. For most actors, the role of Max Kerkerian would be career-defining. For Vincent Cassel, it is merely yet another in a gallery of fleshy, energetic performances. It helps that Kerkerian seems very much like a character who could inhabit the world of "Hate", Kassovitz's 1995 masterpiece which also starred Cassel in what would, for most actors, be described as a career-defining performance.
Jean Reno is less impressive as the dogged Niemans but this is mostly because his role is less fleshed out. Unlike Kerkerian who is an unusual, completely alive creature, Niemans is more of a thriller cliche, the same outsider cop character you see in every serial killer movie. Reno still does a fine job in the role, lending it his trademark charm and gravitas, but Kerkerian is the character you'll remember when you leave the cinema.
"The Crimson Rivers" is complete and utter nonsense. Its story is so convoluted and badly plotted you'll be scratching your head over it for weeks to come. But it is such a delight to watch because Matthieu Kassovitz is aware of its shortcomings and willing to revel in them. "The Crimson Rivers" looks and quacks like a conventional serial killer thriller but it is more than that. It is a movie unafraid to laugh at itself, a movie full of irony, good humour, and which never takes itself seriously. Combined with some breathtaking visuals, a pounding score, and a brilliant performance from Vincent Cassel, it's impossible not to have a great time diving into its depths.
3/4 - DirectorOlivier DahanStarsJean RenoBenoît MagimelChristopher LeePierre Niemans faces the threat of the apocalypse while investigating a series of ritual murders.17-09-2021
There are two reasons why "The Crimson Rivers" was a successful movie. The first was director Matthieu Kassovitz who took a nonsensical screenplay and imbued it with a delicious sense of irony, self-parody and gleefully refused to take its dour serial killer plot seriously. The second reason was Vincent Cassel whose lively, witty, and utterly convincing performance as Lt. Max Kerkerian was one of his many, many career highlights. Without these two superb artists, "The Crimson Rivers" would have collapsed under its own self-importance and inane, cliche-ridden screenplay, so when I saw that neither of them returned for the sequel I knew I was in trouble.
The second clue was the sequel's laughably grandiose title, "The Crimson Rivers 2 - The Angels of the Apocalypse" which betrays, completely accurately, that this film is everything its predecessor avoided becoming. It is pretentious, dour, utterly lacking in self-awareness and completely collapses under the clunky construction of its inanely plotted screenplay.
Written by Luc Besson, the story of "The Angels of the Apocalypse" is an idiotic mixture between the gruesome grittiness of Jean-Christophe Grangé and the more outlandish aspects of Dan Brown's worst novels. Jean Reno returns again as the dogged Paris super-cop Pierre Niemans. "When there's a bizarre case, guess who they call," he says to his new sidekick Reda (Benoît Magimel). Reda is Max Kerkerian in everything but name which leads me to assume casting plans changed last minute. He too is a rough-and-ready street boy turned cowboy cop who takes life-threatening chances, engages in extravagant kickboxing fights with gang members, and makes inappropriate jokes. But Benoît Magimel is no Vincent Cassel and his take on the character is more annoying than lively and believable.
The plot is so complicated and overwrought it would take pages to explain properly (if such an explanation is even possible). Suffice to say it begins with the series of ritualistic murders of people with the same names and occupations as the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ. The perpetrators of the murders? Faceless parkouring monks impervious to pain and with seemingly superhuman strength. I kid you not. And once you see a sinister monk do a cartwheel making his hood fall exposing woollen socks underneath all credibility goes out the window.
If that is not enough, Christopher Lee pops in playing a mysterious German diplomat spouting such lines as "Hide your emotions. Don't be so impressionable. Don't overplay the faith". He is hoping to cause the apocalypse and thus bring about the birth of a new Europe. (Don't overthink it.) Thankfully our dynamic cop duo is able to work out when the apocalypse is going to happen with the help of a "religion expert" (Camille Natta). How do they figure it out you ask? Well, hold on to your garters cause this is a belter. "Jesus died April 7, 30 A.D.," she explains. "And if you count 730,730 days from then you get November 27th this year".
The first "Crimson Rivers" was an intentional self-parody. This sequel, however, gets as many laughs seemingly without ever being aware of them. By trying desperately to be taken seriously it is one of the funniest films of the year. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure this was not
the intention of either Besson or director Olivier Dahan.
Everything from Alex Lamarque's distractingly stylized photography to Colin Towns's screechingly old-fashioned score betrays a dull seriousness at work. Dahan approaches the material in a heavy-handed, overly earnest manner shooting scenes such as the above-outlined monologue about the date of the apocalypse with grave seriousness.
The actors too seem to have been encouraged to sell their lines with absolute conviction and you can frequently see the strain on their faces as they struggle to keep them straight. Jean Reno gives a boring and bored performance in a part he's played dozens of times before, Benoît Magimel is woefully unconvincing as a tough Parisianne copper, and Camille Natta hardly gets any space to be noticed. Her performance fades into the background, overshadowed by cartwheeling monks and a miserable looking Jean Reno. Finally, there's Christopher Lee doing what he does best in the world, delivering clunky exposition in a menacing manner. However, even he seems to be playing the part half-heartedly without any zest or humour. Still, it is impressive seeing him deliver a relatively convincing performance in French.
There's nothing really to recommend about "The Crimson Rivers 2 - The Angels of the Apocalypse" unless you wish to view it for a laugh. It is quite shockingly inept with its ludicrous screenplay, half-hearted performances, and drearily serious direction. I'm not even sure that Matthieu Kassovitz could do much with Besson's plot which is so awful and grounded in the worst possible horror cliches that it might just be impossible to parody. Its sheer existence is parody enough.
1.5/4 - DirectorPaul McGuiganStarsWillem DafoePaul BettanyMarián AguileraA priest on the lam takes up with a traveling band of actors, who then discover a murder has occurred and try to solve it by recreating the crime in a play.18-09-2021
It's surprising to me that more historical mysteries haven't been filmed. The genre has been popular in literature for decades giving rise to such popular series as the Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters. Furthermore, the genre offers possibilities for two of cinema's favourite pastimes. Dressing up in fancy costumes and solving bizarre, arcane murders. But then, so few of the cinematic attempts at the genre have been successful that perhaps those who would have tried it were discouraged.
One such noble failure is "The Reckoning", Paul McGuigan's adaptation of Barry Unsworth's novel "Morality Play" set in 14th century England when, as we are informed by an opening title card Norman barons rule their domains with absolute power. While this isn't strictly true the film does a great job of evoking its period setting, at least in the sense that it evokes the mid ages in the way we know them from other movies. Filth-covered peasants dressed in rags with faces straight out of Hieronymus Bosch paintings mull about miserable and ill in their claustrophobic, torch-lit wooden houses. There is a sense of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" at work here, but McGuigan envelopes the film in an effectively oppressive, sickening atmosphere, more than apt for the kind of story he's telling.
Our heroes, appropriately filth-covered and grumpy, are a troupe of travelling actors recently joined by Nicholas (Paul Bettany), a former priest on the run after he "lay with a woman from his village. Another man's wife". "I thought that went with the job," ask the other actors. There's a deeper mystery to Nicholas but he's not telling, at least not yet.
There has been a recent shift in the power dynamic of the troupe. The former leader has died and now his son Martin (Willem Dafoe) has taken over, but Martin's more modern ideas and dictatorial leadership style aren't embraced as openly as he expected especially not by the older and cynical actor Tobias (Brian Cox) who feels, perhaps rightly, he should be the new leader.
One of Martin's new ideas is to broaden their repertoire. You see, in medieval times, acting troupes only performed so-called morality plays, short, pantomime-style recountings of texts from the Bible. But the audience is bored of these plays and the troupe's income is floundering. So Martin comes to the idea of creating a new play for each town they visit. One based on recent events, events fresh in the minds of their audience.
This is an aspect of "The Reckoning" I found most interesting and to his credit McGuigan's recreations of their plays, though sadly all too brief, are vivacious and fascinating. Their debates on Martin's suggestion also do a great job of exposing just how theatre worked and what it meant in the 14th century. From the way they're handled in the film, one gets the idea that these matters are what attracted both author Barry Unsworth and director Paul McGuigan to the story before they got entangled into a rather conventional and lame thriller story.
This aspect of the film begins with the troupe's arrival into a small town ruled with an iron fist by the Norman Lord de Guise (Vincent Cassel) and his oily Sheriff (Mark Benton). As they arrive they witness the sentencing of a young mute woman (Elvira Mínguez) for the murder of a boy named Thomas Wells. This event has rocked the community and instilled mistrust and suspicion among them. What better material for Martin's little experiment. So with audible reluctance from certain actors, the troupe re-enact the murder of Thomas Wells for the shocked locals and are promptly run out of town by the unamused officials.
This sows doubt in Nicholas' mind and he decides to return to town covertly and dig deeper into the mysterious murder uncovering a medieval conspiracy protecting a vicious serial killer of children, corruption in the church and all that jazz. I'd describe more of the mystery plot but it is so perfunctory and thin it wouldn't really stand up to a detailed retelling. It is badly constructed out of well-worn thriller cliches merely disguised in medieval language to make them seem more exotic and innovative than they really are. The mystery plot in "The Reckoning" is nothing more than dead weight drowning the genuinely interesting aspects of the film which are its portrayal of medieval theatre and its well-drawn if sadly frequently sidelined characters. Especially good are Brian Cox, Simon McBurney and Gina McKee as the only woman in the troupe and the only member not allowed to perform.
Paul Bettany makes for a good lead even if his character is somewhat messily written. Screenwriter Mark Mills doesn't seem able to juggle all the aspects of Nicholas, the former priest turned penitent fugitive turned wannabe actor turned amateur detective. Somehow, all these characters never convincingly blend into one and Nicholas ends up looking more like someone suffering from multiple personality disorder than the conflicted and complex man he is supposed to be.
Far less successful is Vincent Cassel's turn as the villainous Norman baron. He constantly seems ill-at-ease with his overwritten dialogue and ends up sneeringly overacting especially in the over-long climactic scene in which he engages in a laughable verbal duel with Paul Bettany. "Do you believe in fate?" "I believe in a fallen bridge that drove us westward." "But that's not fate, but poor workmanship." And so on and so on.
Such woeful dialogue plagues a lot of "The Reckoning", a film already full of self-righteousness. "You soothe your conscience with grand phrases," says Nicholas to an ineffective lawman, "but it's a weak, contemptible man who trades in the lies of others." This is the kind of writing more suitably put in a fortune cookie than the mouths of good actors.
There is good acting in "The Reckoning", picturesque cinematography by Peter Sova, a haunting score by Adrian Lee and Mark Mancina, and a lot of good and interesting ideas, but they never come together in a satisfactory manner due to a clunky screenplay which spends far too much time regurgitating thriller cliches and spewing fake pearls of wisdom. There's a fascinating film to be made out of the material on medieval theatre troupes and the relationships of the actors in them and what's more, I'm sure Paul McGuigan would have been happy to make it, but "The Reckoning" is not it.
And as for the question of historical mysteries on screen? I think they'll start working once when they unburden themselves of fake archaic dialogue and dumb thriller cliches and gain the sense of humour and lightness of touch which made Jean-Jacques Annaud's "The Name of the Rose" one of the few successful films of its genre.
2/4 - DirectorAlan AldaStarsAlan AldaCarol BurnettLen CariouThree couples vacation together every season. After one divorces, feelings of betrayal and more spawn criticisms of one another, but the things that keep them together are stronger than those which might pull them apart.19-09-2021
Pitched somewhere between Cassavetes' "Husbands" and Alan Ayckbourn's "Norman Conquests" with some pretensions towards Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage", Alan Alda's directorial debut "The Four Seasons" doesn't quite nail the landing but remains an insightful and refreshingly honest take on that most valued and most complicated ship of all, friendship.
Alda's screenplay locks itself into the strict formula of taking place on various holidays that seven friends take together over the course of a single year. One in the spring, one in the summer, one in the fall, and one in the winter. It is a slightly sitcomy premise but Alda's sharp and well-considered writing saves it from such trappings. Still, it does seem to me that in choosing such a strict formula Alda severely limited his possibilities to explore not only the group dynamic of his nine characters but also the effects the events of the film have on them individually. A certain lack of intimacy plagues the film and stops the characters from evolving into truly three-dimensional creations.
The seven begin originally as six. Three couples who holiday together four times a year. The first couple is Jack and Kate Burroughs (Alan Alda and Carol Burnett), a pair of successful suburbanites, him a successful lawyer with a propensity towards amateur psychology and her a magazine editor with a good sense of humour and dry skin. The second couple is Danny and Claudia Zimmer (Jack Weston and Rita Moreno), an OCD suffering dentist and his Italian yenta wife. Finally, there's Nick and Anne Callan (Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis). She's a housewife and he's bored. Bored of her, her lack of ambition, her ineffectiveness, her dourness. And yet none of their supposed friends notice this. Perhaps because they're too self-obsessed or perhaps because they don't want to see it. Because they want everything in their lives to remain the same, safe, and comfortable. "When I get old, I'd like you all to still be there," says Kate. For her friendship is like an anchor or a safe harbour in the madness of existence.
But the safe harbour experiences a severe storm when Nick finally divorces Anne. Unable to live with her gloomy shadow over his life, he announces his intentions first to his best friend Jack. "I'm not a divorce lawyer and if I were I'd represent Anne," is his friend's reply. And the others agree with Jack. "I can't ever forgive him for what he did to Anne," is a refrain throughout the film, a sentence badly masking the true sentiment which is "I can't ever forgive him for what he did to us". For Jack having friends means having test subjects for his little psychological experiments. "I want to get to the bottom of this," he frequently says without ever getting to the bottom of his own self-righteous, moralistic personality.
The worst in them all is brought out when Nick marries Ginny (Bess Armstrong), a beautiful young woman half his age whose youth and peppy attitude expose the insecurities and resentments in this group of friends. But while they mock her behind her back, ignore her, and pine for the old days when Anne was there, they fail to see just how happy Nick finally is.
This is not a friend group I'd really want to be a part of. They are miserable, judgemental people, the kind of people now popularly referred to as Karens. Their unwillingness to deal with their own insecurities (fears of abandonment, death, ageing) make them aggressive, arrogant and cynical all of which threatens to ruin the friendship they've built up over the years. Unable to confront each other's failings they chit chat about insignificant things and make resentful jokes as the tension builds and builds.
The cast is excellent and most importantly feels like a real friend group. Especially admirable is the performance of Bess Armstrong whose character could have easily become a goofy, sexy bimbo. Ginny is none of those things. She is whip-smart, self-aware and far more mature than the others who are now, quite unwillingly, having to pretend to be her friends. Her relationship with Len Cariou's character is filled with love, joy, and good humour unlike his complicated relationship with his friends.
Also wonderful is Jack Weston as Danny playing a character who seems one-note and thin until almost the very end when he gives a moving monologue about his fear of death which is met by laugher and irony. Some friends he has...
"The Four Seasons" is a far more difficult and intelligent movie than it may seem at first. It is not about nice people having an easy, fun-filled friendship. It is an observant, smart drama about real human relationships with all their frailties, bumps, and selfishness. As Ginny eventually remarks in a cathartic speech, all of them are demanding and unforgiving. And people do get that way when they take things for granted when they take other people for granted which is exactly what has happened here. In a carless but revelatory moment, Kate defends her laughing at Danny's fears. "When people have been friends as long as we have, it's not such a terrible thing to kid somebody out of a depression." What she should have said is "When people have been friends as long as we have, they forget to be considerate".
Will they learn? Alda gives a few too many simple answers in the end for my liking but the questions he poses are complex and intriguing. This is the strong suit of "The Four Seasons". What it lacks can be blamed on Alda's inexperience as both a writer and a director. It is simply not tough enough on its characters. It lacks the biting satire and merciless clarity of the best works by John Cassavetes and Alan Ayckbourn. But it does show great intelligence and observation of human relationships and it showcases several wonderful performances.
3/4