Review of “Bonneville”
Loss, memory and the spirit of adventure are themes explored in this nicely cast but poorly directed soap of a feature, one that premiered two years ago but which has struggled since to get a cinematic release – for good reasons.
Jessica Lange plays Arvilla, a romantic soul who’s just lost her life partner Joe, an adventurous anthropologist and writer. They had been together for twenty years and Arvilla is about to keep her promise to Joe to scatter his ashes somewhere – anywhere – symbolic.Enter Joe’s tightly wound up and manipulative daughter Francine (Christine Baranski) who clearly doesn’t like Arvilla and who is in possession of Joe’s will. Francine has other ideas about her Dad’s ashes and demands that Arvilla hand them over so that they can be buried next to Joe’s first wife – Francine’s mother - on the other side of the country. Francine reluctantly agrees, but decides to take the journey slowly in Joe’s 1966 Bonneville convertible, bringing along the ashes and two old friends, Margene (Kathy Bates) and Carol (Joan Allen).
It’s a pedestrian road-movie, hampered by an overwritten and predictable screenplay and some laborious direction. The events of the journey – played out true road-movie style in pit stop cafés, motels, and some beautiful wilderness – are heavily contrived and are rendered on screen with a distinct lack of inspiration. Lange, Bates and Allen, collectively hold 3 Oscars and 9 Oscar nominations, but the combination of the first feature script by Daniel Davis, and first time director Christopher Crowley makes for patchy performances – Allen’s strict Mormon character Carol bouncing from one behavioural extreme to the other, and Jessica Lange’s thoughtful stare into the middle distance severely overworked. Kathy Bates seems to have more fun than the others with her more bubbly character – a wicked widow with one eye out for a new man. Sadly, the most dramatically loaded relationship in the film – between step mother Arvilla and step-daughter Francine – is pushed to the background and reduced to stereotyping – a huge wasted opportunity.
Sixteen years ago Thelma and Louise took a similar journey in a 1966 Thunderbird, but their lives and souls were changed because the things that happened to them on the way taught them some powerful truths about themselves and life. The inconsequential events that come the way of Arvilla, Margene and Carol just bounce off like small road-kill, barely scratching the duco.
SW
Rating:
Leave a Reply