Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
A
Tale of Two Bodies
(The Holiday, 1/1/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Nancy
Meyers's The Holiday is the kind of comedy that demands a large
leap of faith: the faith that charismatic people who look anything like
Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet have ever spent a minute of their lives
being ignored by the less attractive, less fortunate mortals around
them. The key to the film's vague likeability is that it succeeds on
this score—sort of.
The Holiday is the latest
in a growing genre of romantic bon-bons with trans-Atlantic scope (think
of Love Actually, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones with its American
star, et al.). Here, Amanda (Diaz) and Iris (Winslet) are lonesome losers
at the game of love. The former is a workaholic cutter of movie-trailers
who suffers a messy breakup with a rationalizing schlub played by Edward
Burns; the latter is a mousy weddings-and-funerals announcements editor
at a big-city newspaper, strung along in unrequited love by a caddish
coworker (Rufus Sewell). Deciding simultaneously that a vacation is
in order, the women connect over the internet and decide to swap houses
for two weeks, with Amanda taking Iris's cottage in the English countryside
and Iris Amanda's mansion in Beverly Hills. For neither girl is the
real estate—or the local men—what they bargained for.
Meyers's script is nothing if not
predictable. Amanda meets Iris's improbably available brother Graham
(Jude Law), a widower with two young daughters who, although English,
has no discernible dental flaws. Iris meets Miles (Jack Black), a film
composer engrossed by a selfish actress. As the sparks fly and the music
swells, the little obstacles to the final embrace align like hurdler's
gates on a racetrack. It scarcely qualifies as a spoiler to disclose
that all ends as it should, with the characters assembled for a climactic
brie-and-merlot party that promises nothing less than eternal bliss.
Of course, in such cases predictability
is not necessarily a drawback. The appeal of big, honking pieces of
cheesecake, cinematic or otherwise, is never a matter of surprise. Sure
enough, Diaz and Winslet have a knack for making themselves seem like
the set-upon everywomen they patently aren't. Jude Law, for once, manages
to be authentically sympathetic. That Jack Black does the same, despite
all the smirking and the sarcastic crooning that have become his trademarks,
is no small accomplishment. All are fetching enough in their roles to
make The Holiday mildly diverting.
But I didn't respect myself in the
morning, when it occurred to me that all the hot 'n heavy stuff in the
movie were with Amanda and Graham, with poor Iris left with nothing
more than an accidental "boob graze" at a sushi bar. While
Meyers consigns Winslet to doing good deeds for the retired screenwriter
next door (Eli Wallach), she lets Diaz and Law steam up the windows
of their borrowed cottage. So what gives?
Whatever is it, it isn't an accident. Despite Winslet's new Cosmo-girl
self, and notwithstanding the fact that she's the star of the highest-grossing
romantic epic in movie history (Titanic), one wonders if somebody
at Columbia Pictures got a visual of her ampleness coupled with the
less-than-ripped Black—and balked. Indeed, the casting choices
begin to seem all too calculated, with the modelesque Diaz matched with
the chisel-jawed Law, and those not quite so svelte left to fend for
themselves. So much, then, for the transformative power of love! Though
romance will redeem broken hearts in Hollywood, soft bodies will always
be another matter.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
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