Review of The Shipping News (2001) by Alison O — 02 Jan 2006

Best in Show: Kevin Spacey.

One for the future: Cate Blanchett.

Stand-out scene: House attached to cables.

Brainer or no-brainer: Brainer.

Stands up to one viewing or repeated?: One.

DVD commentary any good?: n/a.

DVD.

Often bad word of mouth can scupper the box office fortunes of movies that appear on the surface to be posturing as Oscar material. This was the case with this movie, which features a career best performance from Kevin Spacey. Playing a character unlike any i've seen him portray before, the actor stretches his wings and displays a breadth to his acting range that previously has been subsumed by a series of samey roles. Author E. Annie Proulx sold the rights to her novel on the condition that the Newfoundland setting would feature in any big screen version of the story and here the chilly conditions of that region provide an welcome extra dimension to the tale. Unfamiliar with the story, I found it an absorbing yarn about Quoyle, a man with low self-esteem who has drifted through life in a series of unfulfilling jobs (I sure know how that feels - the unfulfilling jobs not the low self-esteem). A chance meeting leaves him hooked up with a girl called Petal (the worst character name since Kate Winslet played Bitsey Bloom in The Life of David Gale) Cate Blanchett in another chameleonic turn and the two have a child, Bunny (no comment). Petal soon proves herself to be as flakey as a 99 and she leaves the dull Quoyle with Bunny in tow. After making a deal to exchange her progeny for greenbacks (what a mother!) Petal soon removes herself from the equation. When his mentally abusive father dies, Quoyle is persuaded by an Aunt (Dame Judi Dench) to travel with her back to their family home in Newfoundland, with Bunny back in her father's care. There the likes of Rhys Ifans, Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn and Julianne Moore ('Wavey' - were these names picked out of the dictionary at random, or what?) further furnish the impressive cast. A slow burner for sure but as a fan of Lasse Hallstrom since seeing My Life as a Dog, I was expecting this to be an absorbing character piece and it did exactly what it said on the tin.