It’s Complicated
I have to say, over the past ten years, writer-director Nancy Myers has become one of my favorite romantic comedy directors. Call me a sap for admitting to a weakness for the “chick flick,” but when they’re as consistently surprising and entertaining as “What Women Want,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” and “The Holiday” are, well, you’d have a hard time not admitting a filmmaker’s talents also. Remember that she started her directing career with the Disney remake of “The Parent Trap,” itself pretty good as well.
Her latest one is probably her best also (although “The Holiday” is still the one I enjoy the most). Meryl Streep is at her lovely and funny best as Jane, a chef and mother of three who’s been divorced from Jake (Alec Baldwin) for ten years. As their son Luke is getting ready to graduate from college, the awkwardness when the three are together is palpable, but when it’s just Jane and Jake, well, there’s still a bit of a spark there.
More than a spark when they’re in New York together for said graduation (Jake’s wife is back in Los Angeles with smart ass son Pedro), and, well, let’s just say they hook up after a great night out. To say it becomes complicated when they both make it back to L.A. is an understatement, especially when Jane starts seeing Adam (Steve Martin), the architect redesigning her house and her new add-on.
More than any of her other films, what really makes this film work for Myers is the fact that it’s focus is less on a concept than on the characters themselves. Don’t get me wrong, she’s always be more character-centric than most rom-com filmmakers (and “The Holiday” just would not have worked with any other filmmaker…or actors), but here, it’s just less about the a high-concept idea like trading lives with people for two weeks or a man who can hear women’s thoughts. It’s about, well, life, or something like it.
And that life has moments that hurt. Moments that are complicated, whether it’s for a middle-aged woman whose love life suddenly has complications she couldn’t have expected, grown-up children who had to get over a divorce already, now having to wonder whether their parents are getting back together, or a divorcee (Martin, is a wonderful performance unlike any we’ve seen of him recently) who has finally found someone he likes, but now has to figure out whether he wants to wade out the drama.
The divorced with benefits couple dazzles. Streep is never really bad, and Myers gives her a terrific character to work with- stressed, sexy, and emotionally thrown when her and Jake throw themselves for a loop when a night out turns into a nearly-impossible situation. And Baldwin matches her every step of the way with his suave and smitten Jake, whose mid-life crisis just hit Defcon 1. I don’t know that Myers has gone through anything so crazy herself, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she knows someone who has. Here’s a big-studio romantic comedy that does more than go through the motions- it goes through your heart, straight for the gut. Nancy Myers knows how to do that just about better than anybody.
