Review of Feast of Love (2007) by Chads. — 12 Feb 2008

Young love, interracial love, adulterous love, loveless love, same-sex love; all accounted for, all made explicit in "The Feast of Love", adapted from the National Book Award-winning novel by Charles Baxter, never satisfies the heart the way it should.

This film about...well, love, had the unfortunate luck of opening after "Little Children", a superior film about...well, love, that was also adapted from a high-profile novel and novelist. Because of Tom Perrotta's involvement with the adaptation(co-written by director Todd Field), we knew exactly who Sarah Pierce(Kate Winslet) and Brad Adamson(Patrick Wilson) were.

The same can't be said about Bradley Thomas(Greg Kinnear), who tells a nurse how much he loved his first wife Kathryn(Selma Blair), despite evidence to the contrary(Bradley couldn't identify his wife's eyes as being hazel).

Because of sloppy writing, Harry Stevenson(Morgan Freeman)'s offer to adopt Chloe(Alexa Davalos) as his daughter is unwittingly open for close scrutinization. He arrives at this decision right after observing a buck-naked, young couple singing their birthday songs in a sixty-nine cinch on football-field grass.

Add May-December love as a latent guest to this feast. Since Morgan Freeman is rarely, if ever, portrayed as a sexual entity on-screen, the screenwriter assumes that audiences wouldn't second-guess Harry's love for Chloe as being something other than a fatherly one.

Because of the advent of Viagra, and other erectile dysfunction pharmaceuticals, not to mention, the hyper-sexual atmosphere that we sometimes find ourselves embroiled in(e.g. the character Jack Black plays in "Margot at the Wedding" reads "Barely Legal" magazine, which may, or may not, have led to an affair with a barely legal girl), you can't readily dismiss the possibility that Harry's libido is still very much alive.