Miss M.Streep is never happier than when she hides behind an accent. Here she has a cute Italian one and she cocks her head to one side a lot,smiles shyly,keeps raising her hands to her face and employs bits of "business" that clearly indicate "acting".Mr C.Eastwood on the other hand belongs to the "less is more" school and apart from the occasional wrinkling of the brow to indicate moments of high emotion is happy to rely on our perception of his screen persona in much the same way as that other great American movie invention Mr J.Wayne. Miss Streep is very beautiful(even more so near the end when she has aged realistically)but I found her transition from Italian=American earth-mother/cook/homemaker to flirty middle aged woman willing to risk everything for love decidedly unlikely. Equally Mr Eastwood's spartan independence is rather too quickly cast aside as he reverts to lovelorn adolesence in very short order. "The bridges of Madison County" was a very popular story and obviously somebody was going to make a movie of it.Because that task fell to Mr Eastwood what we have is about as good a movie as could have been made out of it.The faults lie in the original material. It is a film about love rather than sexual attraction,and in that sense is "adult".Women will find it confirms their belief that most men lack the capacity to understand what love is,men will worry that they are unable to satisfy all the criteria required by their partners. There are some lovely songs by the relatively little - known Johnny Hartman on the soundtrack that hopefully will make you go and search him out as I'm sure was Mr Eastwood's intention. He may have his critics as a director,but nobody could say his movies are all the same.
Review of The Bridges of Madison County
