‘She Came To Me Review: Not Even Anne Hathaway Can Liven This Dull Romantic Drama

Admin

6 Oct, 2023

‘She Came To Me Review: Not Even Anne Hathaway Can Liven This Dull Romantic Drama

Considering that the cover of It Come To Me is drenched in raspberry liquid, you might think writer-director Rebecca Miller's latest film (in theaters October 6) would be a romantic drama. The film turns out to be more of a red herring than red wine, as it uses too few pedestrians to lure the audience into an image that is completely unbefitting of their charm and talent. Even the great Anne Hathaway, no stranger to being the best part of a horror film, can't save the horror by simply standing by as the film spins helplessly in circles. The result was the biggest failure of the year.

"She Came to Me" shows great promise in its surprisingly bizarre plot: an opera composer's (Peter Dinklage) therapist wife (Hathaway) encourages him to explore the town, only to find inspiration at the hands of a sleazy boat operator (Marisa Tomei). ) But it soon became clear that Miller wasn't sure what to do with his bizarre idea. Characters and plots intersect randomly, and the different outcomes of their interactions make the film quite unsettling. Although Hathaway manages to use a small dose of charisma in the film's only convincing performance, she is occasionally hampered by an uninspired script.

When we first meet Dinklage's Steven Lodham, he's hiding from his colleagues, trying to avoid questions at an industry event. This is not entirely surprising, since his last opera was such a failure that he fell into a deep depression. Now he can't find the motivation to finish the poster for his next show, which takes place in just two weeks. His neglected wife, Patricia, does her best to help him, even as she worries about his private therapy practice and his college-age son, Julian (Evan Ellison), from his first marriage. What you can do is encourage Steven to get out and walk the city streets to see what ideas he can come up with.

Miller seems to see Come to Me as a New York film, but the film does little to capture the energy of one of the world's greatest and most romantic cities. When Stephen meets Katrina, the captain of Tommy's tugboat, their chance meeting doesn't excite much, despite Tommy's commitment to his accepted love interest. Perhaps this is because Katrina's days at the Brooklyn Navy Yard seem utterly foreign to any viewer unfamiliar with the layout of New York's outer boroughs, which I suspect is most people. Their juxtaposition with the classic New York story that Miller's film is trying to convey feels too forced and random. In addition to interior shots, some exterior shots, and shots of the brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, it was probably filmed on location in the United States.

Despite this, Katerina and Stephen have a brief relationship and she becomes his fat muse. While this is happening, a parallel plot develops involving Patricia's daughter Julian, Stephen's new housekeeper Magdalena (Joanna Kulig), and her lover Theresa (Harlow Jane), complicating Stephen's life and the film. Miller fails to reconcile these intersecting storylines, allowing one to take precedence over the other for too long until the viewer forgets who the film is or what the film actually is.

Cinematographer Sam Levy's skillfully composed shots, rich colors and brief moments of stunning natural composition create elegance, giving Come At Me at least something interesting. But although the film looks good, Miller's confusing stylistic choices undermine the film's most compelling qualities. The aspect ratio changes frequently, with "romantic" scenes being shot in tighter frames than everyday widescreen dialogue scenes. This resolution never changes, and the frequent jumps between proportions are annoying, breaking up the film once the audience starts buying into what Miller is selling.

The actors seem to no longer be so self-aware, constantly oscillating between the boundaries of their characters' personalities for no apparent reason. It speaks to Hathaway's talent that in 90 minutes she can play a stereotypical caricature of a therapist one second, a neurotic idiot the next, and finally a psychosexual nun (yes, really). However, the screenplay describes the character's compulsions and motivations as "This is modern love in 2023!" It makes you wonder why he's so unpredictable, plus he doesn't have much to explain. Miller doesn't know how to extract humor from situations, even though everything is intrinsically funny. There are so few jokes in Come to Me that even the slight laugh in all the silence feels like a joke.

Dinklage, Tomei, and Kulig, despite being central characters in the increasingly complex plot, feel particularly out of place as Dinklage and Kulig are paired with creepy, one-tone characters. Everything but Hathaway is fundamentally flawed, and even she, who can keep her camera in focus and draw three-dimensional renderings out of flat material, suffers from Miller's wooden dialogue. The best scene in the film is Stephen's opera, which revolves around a boat sailor who kills people and eats them. There is no anger or humor in it.

Miller felt determined to make a film that could poignantly comment on how people change the way they express romantic love as society changes further. While there's a lot to be said about love these days, Miller manages it succinctly without saying a single word. Any chance of thoughtful observation disappears almost immediately, leaving instead a cloud of tasteless pandering for the few who might enjoy this screwball comedy-drama.