Review of Feast of Love (2007) by Carlos Z — 18 Jun 2008

Esther Stevenson: "How was your walk? Did I miss anything?

Harry Stevenson: A cool breeze, a softball game, and two women falling in love.

Esther Stevenson: With each other?

Harry Stevenson: And one of them's married. The funny thing is, no one noticed. Not even the husband, two feet away.

Esther Stevenson: I'm sorry I missed that.

Harry Stevenson: I imagine he will be too.".

Feast of Love revolves around Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby), a damaged university professor spending a good deal of his leave of absence hanging out at a small Portland coffee shop run by his good friend Bradley (Greg Kinnear, As Good As It Gets). Harry's remarkably perceptive: he can see Bradley's marriage falling apart long before it happens, just as he can see Cupid's arrow strike Bradley's sole employee Oscar (Toby Hemingway, The Covenant) in the ass the moment Chloe (Alexa Davalos, The Chronicles of Riddick) walks in the door. But all of his insight into others might just be to void looking at himself. Added to the mix of lovestruck adventurers are Bradley's sexually awakened wife Kathryn (Selma Blair, Hellboy), a wealthy real estate agent (Radha Mitchell, Silent Hill) and her married lover (Billy Burke, Ladder 49), and Oscar's alcoholic?and psychotic?father (Fred Ward, Tremors). Much coupling, uncoupling, and recoupling ensues. Feast of Love pulls off an impressive balancing act of stretching realism for the sake of telling a good tale while never losing its sense of grounding. Feast of Love strives for, and more often than not achieves, emotional truth, and with that goal in mind such things as realistic timeframes give way to unlikely coincidences, yet we never stop buying into the story. Kinnear's Bradley is the heart of the film. The character could have easily been turned into a joke but with Kinnear in the role Bradley, despite all the tribulations heaped upon him, he becomes the film's tower of strength and its emotional compass. Kinnear's glance conveys a world of love lost and love gained. The film does start off with the well-worn cliché about the gods inventing love for their amusement, but at least the people here learn that life, for all its heartbreak and pain, is short and love can fulfill their very human needs.