Writer/director Sarah Polley makes things perfectly clear from the very beginning of Take This Waltz. As Michelle Williams and her feet shift in and out of focus while making blueberry muffins during the opening credits, I felt like Polley was speaking directly to me. She was saying "I have no interest in entertaining you. I made a film that satisfies my creative vision and if you enjoy it, great. If not, suck it".
I liked Polley's take on how the desire of the moment transforms into the reality of the rest of your life. Williams and Sarah Silverman get gratuitously naked, which is always welcome. Seth Rogan also demonstrates that he could be a pretty good dramatic actor if he worked at it. Everything else about this movie left me sucking it.
Margot (Williams) and Lou (Rogan) are a young married couple who are very much in love, but Lou no longer fulfills Margot's yearnings for passion and won't give her a child as compensation. Enter Daniel (Luke Kirby), a young artist/rickshaw driver who Margot meets and flirts with on a plane and then turns out to live right across the street. As Margot and Daniel slowly dance the dance of seduction around each other, the seams of Margot and Lou's marriage even more slowly split apart. Margot eventually leaves her husband and, in what is absolutely the best part of the story, we see that her "happily ever after" winds her up in exactly the same place she was before.
The montage where Polley shows us how the burning lust of soulmates turns inevitably into tedious domesticity is some great filmmaking. That sequence alone justifies her as an artist. Another montage where Rogan goes through 6 months of post-breakup emotions in one morning, however, shows that Polley has a long way to go as a craftsman. Take This Waltz is too long, too scattered and contains too much stuff that doesn't connect.
Take the Rogan montage, which could double as his screen test for any dramatic role for which he might ever audition. Rogan does a nice job handling the acting up to that scene, but the limits of his skill show through in the montage. What is obviously supposed to be a defining moment in the film falls flat and what makes it worse is that the montage is superfluous. There's no need to feature the character of Lou so prominently. This is overwhelmingly Margot's story. No other character really gets that kind of showcase moment against Lou and he already has a smaller bit that does everything necessary to tug on the audience's heart strings. The montage doesn't pay off anything we've seen of Lou leading up to it. It doesn't lead to any plot or character moments after it. It's isolated and arbitrary and may very well have been inserted into the script for the sole purpose of enticing a star like Rogan to take an otherwise meager part.
Another isolated and arbitrary scene is where Williams, Silverman and other women of various ages and shapes are showering together in a locker room. They're completely naked and there's nothing comedic or titillating about any of it. Polley is clearly trying to make some kind of statement about women's body types and the exploitation of female nudity in cinema. That statement has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else in Take This Waltz. The dialog from the scene could have been spoken in any other setting and neither female body issues nor meta-textual commentary of film are even vaguely alluded to in the rest of the motion picture.
And while Polley does a good job at making Margot and Lou into reasonably believable human beings, Daniel is a construct. He has no thoughts, emotions or existence beyond serving the plot. Additionally, there's a subplot about Silverman's character being an alcoholic where Polley doesn't appear to understand the difference between being a drunk and having a mental illness, like bipolar disorder. Either that or alcoholism is simply illegal in Canada.
Take This Waltz isn't a disaster. It did need someone to step in and persuade Polley to make it as a 40 minute long film festival entry. That didn't happen so I'd advise all but the most devoted lover of art house flicks to wait for the next dance.
I liked Polley's take on how the desire of the moment transforms into the reality of the rest of your life. Williams and Sarah Silverman get gratuitously naked, which is always welcome. Seth Rogan also demonstrates that he could be a pretty good dramatic actor if he worked at it. Everything else about this movie left me sucking it.
Margot (Williams) and Lou (Rogan) are a young married couple who are very much in love, but Lou no longer fulfills Margot's yearnings for passion and won't give her a child as compensation. Enter Daniel (Luke Kirby), a young artist/rickshaw driver who Margot meets and flirts with on a plane and then turns out to live right across the street. As Margot and Daniel slowly dance the dance of seduction around each other, the seams of Margot and Lou's marriage even more slowly split apart. Margot eventually leaves her husband and, in what is absolutely the best part of the story, we see that her "happily ever after" winds her up in exactly the same place she was before.
The montage where Polley shows us how the burning lust of soulmates turns inevitably into tedious domesticity is some great filmmaking. That sequence alone justifies her as an artist. Another montage where Rogan goes through 6 months of post-breakup emotions in one morning, however, shows that Polley has a long way to go as a craftsman. Take This Waltz is too long, too scattered and contains too much stuff that doesn't connect.
Take the Rogan montage, which could double as his screen test for any dramatic role for which he might ever audition. Rogan does a nice job handling the acting up to that scene, but the limits of his skill show through in the montage. What is obviously supposed to be a defining moment in the film falls flat and what makes it worse is that the montage is superfluous. There's no need to feature the character of Lou so prominently. This is overwhelmingly Margot's story. No other character really gets that kind of showcase moment against Lou and he already has a smaller bit that does everything necessary to tug on the audience's heart strings. The montage doesn't pay off anything we've seen of Lou leading up to it. It doesn't lead to any plot or character moments after it. It's isolated and arbitrary and may very well have been inserted into the script for the sole purpose of enticing a star like Rogan to take an otherwise meager part.
Another isolated and arbitrary scene is where Williams, Silverman and other women of various ages and shapes are showering together in a locker room. They're completely naked and there's nothing comedic or titillating about any of it. Polley is clearly trying to make some kind of statement about women's body types and the exploitation of female nudity in cinema. That statement has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else in Take This Waltz. The dialog from the scene could have been spoken in any other setting and neither female body issues nor meta-textual commentary of film are even vaguely alluded to in the rest of the motion picture.
And while Polley does a good job at making Margot and Lou into reasonably believable human beings, Daniel is a construct. He has no thoughts, emotions or existence beyond serving the plot. Additionally, there's a subplot about Silverman's character being an alcoholic where Polley doesn't appear to understand the difference between being a drunk and having a mental illness, like bipolar disorder. Either that or alcoholism is simply illegal in Canada.
Take This Waltz isn't a disaster. It did need someone to step in and persuade Polley to make it as a 40 minute long film festival entry. That didn't happen so I'd advise all but the most devoted lover of art house flicks to wait for the next dance.