★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Here’s a peculiar morsel from Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée. Jake Gyllenhaal finds
some middle ground between the wiry disconnect of Nightcrawler’s Lou Bloom and the hefty grief of Southpaw’s Billy Hope as Davis Mitchell,
an investment banker struggling with the recent loss of his wife. When informed
by the doctor that she has passed, Davis retires to a closeby vending machine
that fails to deliver his request. Frustrated and desperate to find an outlet
for his confusion, he begins a series of letters to the vending company that
become increasingly confessional, catching the eye of customer service rep,
Karen (Naomi Watts), with whom he forms an odd connection.
No-one could ever accuse Gyllenhaal of accepting roles that
are ‘samey’, especially in the past three or four years. Just as characters
like Bloom or Hope demand a physical change, Davis Mitchell requires a facial restraint
that needs to convey the appropriate apathy (one moment sees him attempting to
fake tears in the mirror), without teetering over into the realms of pure
unlikability. Even if we cannot understand his lack of an ‘acceptable’ emotional
response (a stance ratified by Chris Cooper’s bulldozing performance as Davis’ heartbroken
father-in-law), we like him enough to feel intrigued, as Karen does.
Watts’ role begins as an undemanding ‘unhappy housewife’
placeholder but is enlivened by the gradual introduction of Judah Lewis as
Karen’s young son, Chris, in a plot thread that smacks of a more developed mirror
of Bill Murray and Jaden Lieberher in lesser Watts vehicle St. Vincent. It’s a gentler remedy to the concurrent development of
Davis, whose annoyances with the creaking of cubicle doors or the flickering of
a lightbulb lead him to start deconstructing household objects (picture an
episode of James May: The Reassembler gone
wrong).
The narrative structure of the film flits from Davis’
delicate attempts to find solace and his abrasive inner monologues, detailing
his letters to Karen. It’s a difficult balancing act that will succeed or fail
with an audience entirely on the basis of two lines of dialogue: “Everything
has become a metaphor”, Davis muses, at the sight of an uprooted tree that
calls to mind the state of his relationship, and “We’re taking apart my
marriage”, as he switches from delicate disassembly to rampant destruction of
his own home. If you can accept either without an irritable sigh, there’s a
chance you’ll be thoroughly engrossed, even with the caveat that what you’re
involved in has no real direction and is littered with motifs and vignettes
that don’t quite mesh. A strand centred on Heart’s Crazy on You can be judged as superficially diverting at best and run-time
padding at worst.
