'Serena' - Review

Adapted from Ron Rash’s novel, Serena is the latest film to feature Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper as the leading couple. Set against the backdrop of the Smoky Mountains of Carolina in 1929, the film follows the trials and tribulations of businessman George (Cooper) and Serena Pemberton (Lawrence) as they come up against early environmentalists, business competitors and the law.

Shot way back in 2012 and after nearly eighteen months in the editing room, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the result would be a neatly trimmed, finely tuned labour of love, but in fact what you are left with just reeks of anti-climax. For all its pretentions to be about the titular character, her struggles, her personality and her fall from grace, the film is absolutely in love with Bradley Cooper, regardless of how much we like or dislike his character. The frame is constantly full of his perfectly groomed face, asking us to sympathise with his plight, wanting us to love him and his magic hands which he uses to pleasure his wife in some of the most boring sex scenes I have ever seen.

Cooper himself puts in a mediocre performance with an accent that wanders from incomprehensible to lazy, but Lawrence – as usual – is the greater of the leads, despite the rather ripe dialogue she’s given to work with. When she’s actually allowed in the frame, she works her usual magic of immersing herself within a role, but even her talent is eclipsed by Toby Jones as the town sheriff, who acts circles around everyone else. Rhys Ifans shows up from time to time as the shadowy Galloway and projects a gritty and more realistic southern façade than almost anyone else.

In plot terms, it’s centrally a very simple story but feels horribly episodic: plot strands are forgotten for twenty minutes at a time then picked up again in a hurry, and the film as a whole seems to drag. Considering the extensive editing process, perhaps I should be grateful that the already stretched 109 minutes wasn’t much longer, but the final twenty minutes feel so languorous that it’s difficult to forgive.

The cinematography is mostly bland but interspersed with single static shots of the incredible landscape, the score is decent when it can be heard above the film screaming for awards, and I spent a greater time of the filler scenes wondering: why should I be concerned about these people who live in ludicrous wealth? How does Bradley Cooper emerge bone-dry from a thunderstorm? Why am I supposed to dislike the sheriff character that is by far the most moral of the bunch? In the end, I realised that I just didn’t care.

With solid performances, brief moments of visual splendour, and a central female character who is the equal or greater of the men surrounding her, there should be much to celebrate about Serena. But the flat dialogue, narrow focus and unhealthy obsession with one lead over the other results in little more than an unmemorable, drawn-out melodrama.

2 stars