Late Bloomers directed by Julie Gavras and starring Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt
When the film began, I thought that there was a technical difficulty. Then I realised that the lighting was, I think, designed to create ultra-realism - highlighting wrinkles, blotches and blemishes. The result, with the often too-white backgrounds, was sometimes hard to watch. I was most disappointed, though, with the poor dialogue. It was stilted, self-conscious and blatantly aimed at making statements (cliched ones) about ageing. It was all too sterotypical... and I felt at times as though it were a film made a quarter of a century ago.
While Rossellini and Hurt were OK, the actors who played their adult children were quite awful. The script they had to work with was awkward but their attempts to convey anything like human emotion and behaviour were disastrously unsuccesssful. Leslie Phillips made one of his embarassingly predictable cameo appearances as one of a gaggle of (again) sterotyped senior citizens.
Finally the score .... It was heavy-handed and obvious in its apparent intention of 'mood-matching' and unfortunately there was much "mismatching". It was also so loud and repetitive that it intruded unpleasantly. Pity.
Overall, it was an idea that could have been executed well but, apart from eliciting a few laughs, simply resulted in a film that went nowhere.
The walk was good.
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