Three Films Make A Post: This movie is so real it makes every other movie in this town look like a movie.

Playing It Cool (2014): Meta genre films are difficult, for you really need to have something interesting to say about a genre if you want to get away with deconstructing it (at least a little) while still staying inside its lines. Otherwise, a film will end up looking embarrassed being part of the genre it is in, satisfying no one, most certainly not an audience going into a genre movie because they actually like the genre it operates in. Which is a bit of problem. In parts, this dreadful fate does strike Justin Reardon’s film. It has its funny moments, its short flashes of interesting insight, but mostly, it really doesn’t seem to want to go for the big tearful emotion, and isn’t really as clever as it thinks it is to make up for that. Adding to the problems is that the film is – like a lot of the more male centric romantic comedies – really not interested in romance so much as in its male lead Chris Evans’s character learning to stop being a complete dickhead, with the supposed partner Michelle Monaghan really not being fleshed out terribly well. Which again doesn’t exactly scream romance to me.

La délicatesse aka Delicacy (2011): In the same genre is this French movie directed by David Foenkinos and Stéphane Foenkinos about Nathalie (Audrey Tautou) losing her husband and much of her joy in life until she rather randomly romances her mildly weird, not terribly pretty (that’s a plot point, though one rather curious in a film from the country that treated Gerard Depardieu as pretty damn hot) colleague Markus (François Damiens). It’s just as genre conscious as Reardon’s film but where the American movie seems a bit embarrassed by the whole thing (and really not terribly interested in being romantic, like a slasher movie without murders), this one steps into clichés, traditions and regular plot beats with wild abandon, discarding the bits it doesn’t like, wallowing in those is does, adding an honest appreciation of the weight of pain, as well as general whimsy, and otherwise trusting in Tautou’s natural awesomeness. Or more precisely, her ability to go through emotions from bereft to confused to adorable (that’s an emotion, right?) with full conviction, changing tracks at the drop of a hat, while actually producing effective chemistry between her and her not exactly obvious romantic partner Damiens.

The Hearse (1980): It’s easier to go from that last film to this horror film starring Trish Van Devere than you’d think, seeing that both concern a female main character coping with loss, badly. Just that Van Devere’s Jane stumbles upon a mix of late 70s/early 80s supernatural horror clichés from ghosts over Satanic conspiracies, to bad love, reincarnation and (sort of) an evil car instead of love. Unfortunately, director George Bowers (or the script, for that matter) never manages to get a grip on the material, turning what should by all rights be at least an entertaining grab bag of horror fun into a tame little film that never amounts to much – not even a decent ending.


It’s too bad, for Van Devere certainly applies herself with conviction, but apart from two, perhaps three creepy scenes, she seems to be the only one involved. Unless you count Joseph Cotten chewing the scenery outrageously (and tone deaf) as an impossibly rude lawyer.