'She's So Lovely' in cinematic testimony to Penns' love

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): The new film by Nick Cassavetes, She's So Lovely, opens with a bird's-eye view of an average industrial town. Mediocrity more than smog obscures the unexceptional skyline.

Call it ordinary, call it plain -- but these credit shots are trademarks of the director's late father, John Cassavetes, whose films (A Woman Under the Influence, Faces, Gloria) defined modern realism years before Travis Bickle became Taxi Driver.

Cassavetes loved the beauty and horror of everyday life, expressed in everyday language with everyday angst. Few filmmakers, even now, match the improvisational madness and low- brow honesty that actor-director Cassavetes invoked in his films.

At times, Cassavetes' films risked becoming a collage of frantic speech rather than a storyboard. But this is what feeds the Cassavetes cult, which keeps art house cinemas in New York busy with his retrospectives. Perhaps his acting training set him apart, but Cassavetes compensates for his erratic sense of story with a powerhouse flair for character.

His father's shoes are imposing, but the young Cassavetes seems determined to fill them. She's So Lovely is an actor's movie -- it's three parts acting to a quarter plot. If Nick Cassavetes sought to do justice to his father's screenplay (the senior Cassavetes was going to make the movie shortly before he died), he's done well.

The first thing he did right was keeping Sean Penn (Dead Man Walking, Colors). Penn was instrumental in the project, having joined the film when Cassavetes first pitched it. When John died, Penn turned to director Hal Ashby. Then Ashby also died. Penn tried to direct the film himself, but couldn't get funding.

Enter Cassavetes junior, praised for his debut Unhook the Stars. A deal was signed, cameras started rolling. Penn had only one demand: that his wife Robin costar.

She did, and the results are startling. Penn won this year's Best Actor award at Cannes Film Festival for his tough-but-tender portrayal of Eddie, the film's short-tempered conman. But it is Robin Wright Penn who steals the screen as Eddie's drunkard wife Maureen.

Booze and flooze

First, the plot, what there is of it. The story starts with bleached-blond Maureen waking up in an empty bed. Eddie has left her again, only this time she's pregnant. Her search for Eddie doesn't get her farther than the neighborhood bar, her home away from home, but it does lead to trouble. Soon Maureen is kissing crazy Eddie goodbye from behind a jail cell.

Fast forward 10 years. Maureen is now a brunette and a suburban housewife tending to three daughters, two of whom she had with her new husband, played by John Travolta. Everything -- the wall-to-wall carpet, the tended gardens, the smart-aleck kids -- spells matrimonial bliss. But there's grime in this household, and it's not just on the dishes Maureen so expertly washes.

The grime quickly surfaces when it's revealed that, according to his psychiatric warden (Gena Rowlands), crazy Eddie is no longer crazy. As she never kept in touch with her institutionalized first husband, Maureen is understandably tense about Eddie's return. Here the film's title becomes relevant.

Maureen is apparently so lovely that men will kill for her love. The violence in She's So Lovely isn't the explosive kind that boosts action films, but it's still hard-hitting, especially on Maureen. In fact, this story of a dysfunctional family seems inappropriate for the Christmas and Idul Fitri season.

Regardless of the title, the film, and Maureen, isn't pretty. In the first half of the film, she's all bruises and dirty hair, the price of a night's boozing.

Yet there's no arguing of Wright Penn's talent. She started in soap operas -- her teens were spent swooning on Santa Barbara -- as Robin Wright, actress-model. Her big-screen debut in 1987, at 21 years old, was playing the princess in Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride.

Back then, Wright was a shampoo bottler's dream, with long silken hair the color of marigold. Hollywood named her the next Grace Kelly.

But Wright refused to be molded into an aristocratic beauty, and instead starred in offbeat films that hardly anyone saw -- State of Grace, The Playboys and Moll Flanders. The box-office exception was Forrest Gump.

In State of Grace, she played against Sean Penn. She battled with him off-screen too during their many years together slipping in and out of love. They finally married last year -- hence the name Wright Penn -- after having two kids together. The reconciliation proved to be a career-saver. Now Wright Penn can focus on her work, not her rocky relationship.

Indeed, Wright Penn's screen presence is on par with her more celebrated husband. She doesn't have the grand gestures that her contemporaries exploit (observe Julia Robert's big smile, Sandra Bullock's sheepishness, Demi Moore's striptease) but is instead a sum of modest movements. It's her transparency that's heartbreaking, how her blue-blood beauty masks a not so steely vulnerability.

She's So Lovely is a departure from the gentlewomen of Wright Penn's repertoire. Here she's trailer trash, stumbling in too- high stilettos and slurring her lines in a painful Noo Yawk accent. Watching her is a revelation, especially since Wright Penn reverts to her more elegant self in the film's second half, without really losing the squeaky voice or awkward bearing. It's award-worthy material.

The film itself, however, is not as stellar as the acting. Nick Cassavetes is technically accomplished; his moody lighting and slow-motion inserts set the film on a surreal pace. Cassavetes also mustered the same kind of nervous energy from his actors that his father was famous: they are so intense that they almost jump off the screen.

But that's no surprise as these are actors devoted to the late Cassavetes. The Penns, indie stalwart Harry Dean Stanton (as Eddie's best friend Shorty), 1970s star Travolta and the electric Rowlands, Nick's mother and John's wife. She starred in most of Cassavetes' films and was invaluable in making his name.

What the story lacks, and this is surprising for a realistfilm, is believability and cohesion. Though conversation is core to a Casssavetes film, here there is too much talk without purpose, and much of it is monolog. Eddie's rantings and ravings, for example, wander off into irrelevant tangents that betray his supposed obtuseness. The same can be said of Maureen: is she a proud drunk or a sorry one? Does she really love Eddie, and if so, why does she discard him so easily?

When Travolta enters the scene, he too becomes subject to the chaos. They're supposed to be this normal suburban family, but he turns into a gun-toting lunatic at the drop of Eddie's name. Perhaps this was Cassavetes' point (as it usually is in his other films), that even the most seemingly mundane people and situations can stir sinister actions.

In the end, these messages are served in indistinguishable cotton wool. What you do remember are the Penns, languishing in inebriated mutual adulation -- the scene of them dancing is movie magic. They're great together, and you can practically smell their love as they wrap around each other onscreen.

The movie may not have much of a point otherwise, but as a display of just how much Sean Penn loves his wife, She's So Lovely is lovely indeed.