Odor in the court

Noel Vera

Peter Howitt's "Laws of Attraction" has supersuccessful divorce
attorney Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore) facing off with maddeningly
unorthodox and attractive Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Brosnan). Their
first court session opposite each other results in a meeting between
the two (Daniel prefers to call it an "intimate" meeting) in a noisy
Cuban restaurant, a series of "huevos chivos" ("goat's nuts") being
ingested, and bed, with only the faintest memories of how they (or at
least Audrey) got there, sans underwear.

And so the formula goes: Audrey is infuriated and fascinated; Daniel
keeps cool; Sara, Audrey's mom (Frances Fisher) gives Audrey best-
friend advice. Audrey wins some, loses some, takes on a crucial case
involving a rock star (Michael Sheen) and his fashion-designer wife
(Parker Posey), flies to Ireland in search of a castle the couple is
fighting over, finds Daniel a step ahead of her, ends up drinking
some of the local moonshine (the Gaelic equivalent of "huevos
chivos") with Daniel, and yet again wakes up in bed with him, again
sans underwear, this time with wedding rings.

As plots go it isn't too bad, and the main characters' series of
antagonistic encounters that are really a way of flirting all the way
to marriage recalls a special kind of screwball comedy they used to
do in the '30s and '40s, what philosopher Stanley Cavell calls
the "comedy of remarriage"--comedies where the lovers enter a
marriage, divorce or separate, go through a period of struggle where
they eventually realize the only thing left to do is get back
together again. Which is about where Howitt and writers Aline Brosh
McKenna and Robert Harling's troubles really begin, because some of
the best examples--Leo McCarey's "The Awful Truth," George
Cukor's "The Philadelphia Story," Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday,"
Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve," to name a few, are some of the
funniest, most intricately constructed comedies in the history of
cinema. "Laws of Attraction" is at best fitfully amusing and at worse
downright dull, but I'd say it's the filmmakers' fault for even
trying to invite comparison.

For a romantic comedy about love-hate relationships "Laws" is
remarkably short on comedy and relationship--to indicate Audrey's
increasing exasperation and Daniel's growing admiration, Howitt's
content to use a series of montages, where Audrey and Daniel shake
their heads at each others' press conferences (don't people in love
talk to each other anymore?); when dramatic conflict arises (as it
must in all romantic comedies) the filmmakers' sense of humor grinds
to a halt and the cast stares into space, moodily. Contrast this to,
say, "The Lady Eve," where one of the saddest moments in the film is
at the same time the funniest--Barbara Stanwyck's Eve, listening to
Henry Fonda' lovesick fool blather his declarations of love for a
second time, this time with a sense of bitter irony. You wish Howitt
and company had made the effort to actually view these screwball
classics and either go back to their drawing boards to come up with a
more accomplished work, or shake their collective heads and abandon
the enterprise entirely.

You don't even have to have seen the classics to know there's
something wrong. Even compared to something as recent as the Coen
Brothers' "Intolerable Cruelty" "Laws" comes up short--at
least "Intolerable" has visual and verbal wit, a more acerbic tone,
and a more complex plot, elegantly told (What "Intolerable" lacked in
turn was good casting (Catherine Zeta Jones is a convincing rich
bitch, but an unconvincing romantic lead; George Clooney capably
essays a Cary Grant-type screwball hero, albeit of considerably lower
wattage) and that touch of "je ne sai quoi"--magic, inspiration,
insanity, whatever--that differentiates an adequate comedy from a
great one).

Of the lovers Julianne Moore fares better, mainly because she's the
one required to take the emotional pratfalls where Brosnan mainly has
to look cool and amused; when it's Brosnan's turn to lay down his
emotional cards he does well enough, but let's just say no fireworks
were ignited. It's wonderful seeing Moore play something other than
the suffering martyr wife she plays in films like "The Hours" or "Far
From Heaven"--she should do more comedies--but her choices (in
comedy) are questionable. She's game enough in the otherwise
wretched "Evolution," and she throws herself into her role in this
movie, but it's all a lot of sound and fury, signifying methane.
Brosnan, like Cary Grant, is careful not to stretch too far, too
often; he's basically playing his Remington Steele / James Bond
persona here, and with the years he's managed to develop a dryer
delivery. Frances Fisher is perhaps the funniest character in the
movie (which, unfortunately, isn't saying much), dispensing pearls of
emotional wisdom in between bouts of plastic surgery (at one point
she invites friends over to have the fat from their behinds sucked
out and injected into their lips). Talented cast, but to what avail?
You'd think they'd at least take advantage of our more liberal times
to try things the classic screwballs couldn't, show some skin, maybe,
or adopt a more daring, edgier tone, but no--turns out the "huevos
chivos" have maraschino cherries in them, not real testicles, and you
can't help but think the same of filmmakers.

Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday," perhaps one of the greatest comedies
ever made and easily my favorite of the screwballs (mainly because it
didn't start out as a screwball--it was originally "The Front Page,"
a newspaper comedy, only when they switched the sex of one of the
lead characters it became as perfectly screwball as anything ever
made) would have fired off fifteen jokes in thirty lines of dialogue
for every five lumbering minutes it takes "Laws" to produce a joke.
Take this exchange, for example, where Hildy (Rosalind Russell) is
telling her ex-husband Walter (Cary Grant) all about the man she's
marrying:

Hildy: He doesn't treat me like an errand boy either, Walter. He
treats me like a woman.

Walter: He does, does he? How did I treat ya, like a water buffalo?

Hildy: I don't know from water buffalos, but I do know about him.
He's kind and he's sweet and he's considerate. He wants a home and
children.

Walter: Sounds more like a guy I ought to marry. What's his name?

Hildy: Baldwin. Bruce Baldwin.

Walter: Baldwin, Baldwin. Oh, I knew a Baldwin once. A horse thief in
Mississippi. Couldn't be the same fella, could it?

Hildy: You're now talking about the man I'm marrying tomorrow.

It's funny, it's punchy, and it summarizes the kind of relationship
you see in these comedies of re-marriage. It's dialogue working
triple-time, not only to be comic but to develop character (Hildy's a
dreamer, Walter a cynic), relationship (Hildy's leaving, Walter
clinging) and theme (Men and women constantly at odds because they
want and mean different things). It's what romantic comedies are
supposed to be and rarely are nowadays; "Laws of Attraction" doesn't
even come close.

(First published in Businessworld, 8/27/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)