Review of Take This Waltz (2011) by Mike J — 03 Jul 2012

Many people have said this before, but I agree: this one feels more like Sarah Polley's first, rather than Away From Her. But that doesn't make this film any less interesting. What I really appreciated about "Take This Waltz" was that it doesn't waste any breath trying to make us like Margo, Lou, or Daniel.

They are people who act merely as (mostly) wordless characters in this tone poem of illicit desire and feminine independence. Yet there are legitimately human, realistic moments in this film that we can blushingly recognize from our own relationships, notably Margo and Lou's cloying alien speak and their bizarre ritual of "I love so much I want to gauge your eyes out with a melon baller" dialogues.

And the silent dinner on their anniversary, oh my goodness. Having sex because there's nothing else to say. Oof. It's a kinda messy and fractured sort of film but I rather like its amateurish style - I don't like overtly stylized films when they're dealing with simple themes.

And it reminded me a little bit of Drake Doremus's "Like Crazy" and its fairly simple message on relationships - only "Like Crazy" was totally gorgeous and totally empty (in an awesomely tolerable way, though) and "Take This Waltz" is slightly less gorgeous and much less empty.