Nine Lives (2005), written and directed by Rodrigo García, is a film that doesn't make use of the enormous talents of the actors it stars. The film consists of nine episodes in the lives of women. (More than nine women are featured, because several episodes have more than one female lead.)
The cast is impressive: Amy Brenneman, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Joe Mantegna, Mary Kay Place, Aidan Quinn, Sissy Spacek, and Robin Wright Penn. These are fine actors, and they perform up to their usual standard of excellence. (Unfortunately, Glenn Close is miscast as the mother of a girl who appears to be about ten. Ms. Close looks and acts like her grandmother, not her mother.)
An actor with whom I'm not familiar--Elpidia Carrillo--does an superb job as a prisoner in the L.A. County jail, subjected to the constant small and not-so-small humiliations inherent in her status.
The problem with the movie is that the episodes are unrelated to each other. Each is a vignette, interesting in itself. However, none of the stories fits together with any other story in a cohesive fashion. It's true that the protagonists of one sequence may appear in another sequence, but, even when that happens, nothing organic connects the sequences.
The film's balance is thrown off for another reason: the most powerful episode--in my opinion--is the first. During the other eight episodes I kept waiting for the level of intensity to equal that of the first episode, but that never happened. Usually a director will save his or her best for last, but not in "Nine Lives."
A new book by gifted author Alice Mattison, entitled "In Case We're Separated," presents 13 short stories. All of them are connected in some way, even though this connection spans time, place, and generations. This is a book waiting to be made into a screenplay. If that happens, I hope Rodrigo Garcia will direct it and will bring together a similar highly talented cast.
The cast is impressive: Amy Brenneman, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Joe Mantegna, Mary Kay Place, Aidan Quinn, Sissy Spacek, and Robin Wright Penn. These are fine actors, and they perform up to their usual standard of excellence. (Unfortunately, Glenn Close is miscast as the mother of a girl who appears to be about ten. Ms. Close looks and acts like her grandmother, not her mother.)
An actor with whom I'm not familiar--Elpidia Carrillo--does an superb job as a prisoner in the L.A. County jail, subjected to the constant small and not-so-small humiliations inherent in her status.
The problem with the movie is that the episodes are unrelated to each other. Each is a vignette, interesting in itself. However, none of the stories fits together with any other story in a cohesive fashion. It's true that the protagonists of one sequence may appear in another sequence, but, even when that happens, nothing organic connects the sequences.
The film's balance is thrown off for another reason: the most powerful episode--in my opinion--is the first. During the other eight episodes I kept waiting for the level of intensity to equal that of the first episode, but that never happened. Usually a director will save his or her best for last, but not in "Nine Lives."
A new book by gifted author Alice Mattison, entitled "In Case We're Separated," presents 13 short stories. All of them are connected in some way, even though this connection spans time, place, and generations. This is a book waiting to be made into a screenplay. If that happens, I hope Rodrigo Garcia will direct it and will bring together a similar highly talented cast.