Review of She's So Lovely (1997) by Aaron F — 01 Nov 2009

She's So Lovely (1997) Good movie about bad people. I mainly rented this because it was John Cassavettes son Nick producing and directing his fatherâ??s last script. I have long been fan of John Cassavettes movies even though they are not main street movie fare.

Maureen is pregnant and her husband Eddie is missing. Nervous, Maureen shares a couple of drinks with neighbor Kiefer, who tries to rape her and then beats her. When Eddie returns and finds his wife bruised, he goes ballistic, shoots a paramedic and is put in a psychiatric institution.

Ten years later, Eddie is released and finds that Maureen has divorced him and is remarried with three children, one of whom is his little girl Jeanie. Eddie goes to reclaim his wife. Ebert made point that it helps going into this movie to realize in advance that the two main characters are "mad" or "insane" Sean Penn said this was one of his best works never seen.

He won the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his hot-blooded and heartfelt performance as Eddie Quinn. The movie can be seen to be about the power of love. Those of a more practical mind may see it as a sad depiction of a woman unable to escape completely the lure of sex and self-abuse (from an insane man).

I see this movie as kind of a comic-romance. The movie is choppy and spirals downward to nowhere in the last half. This is an ok movie but not a masterpiece. Both Penn's are fantastic in their roles but the storyline and time line in the movie sucked.

There's nothing wrong with works that deal with ugliness, even celebrate it. The most profoundly moral of films may be the most disturbing. But when writers/directors/producers trivialize ugliness, turn it into light, ironic comedy, make it nothing more than an occasion for throwaway style comedic/anger improvisation, the film becomes ugly itself.

This film was only intermittently enjoyable. three stars.