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- In Search of a Midnight Kiss
- Away from Her
- Sarah Polley Interview
- Reasons to Go to the Art House
- The Painted Veil Review
- Bobby Review
- Casino Royale
- Stranger Than Fiction Review
- Babel Review
- Death of a President Review
- Little Children
- All The King's Men
- All The King's Men Review
- The Protector
- The Illusionist
- The Quite
- The Quiet Review
- World Trade Center
- My Super Ex-girlfriend
- My Super Ex-girlfriend Review
- The Heart of the Game Review
- Loverboy Review
- Inconvenient Truth Review
- The Da Vinci Code Review
- Cavite Review
- Tribeca Film Festival
- One Last Thing Review
- Drawing Restraint 9 Review
- Our Brand is Crisis Review
- Firewall Review
“You should never speculate on the life of a woman,” says one character in Rodrigo Garcia’s “Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her.” That film, which was released in 2000, starred Calista Flockhart as a fortune teller with a dying lover (Valerina Golino), Cameron Diaz as a romance-seeking blind dependent on her detective sister (Amy Brenneman), Glenn Close as a depressed doctor, and Holly Hunter as her promiscuous patient. You couldn’t tell a thing just by looking at any of them.
Told in a compelling series of vignettes, “Nine Lives” offers an even more effective examination of its female protagonists. Everything seems simple from the onset. We know these women, or we think we do:
Sandra (Elpidia Carrillo), the frustrated jail inmate, Diana (Robin Wright Penn), the pretty pregnant woman listlessly pushing her grocery cart through a suburban supermarket, Holly (Lisa Gay Hamilton), the straightforward hospital nurse. In ten minutes- sometimes less- writer/director Garcia reveals past histories and creates riveting climaxes, much the way short fiction should.
Unlike in Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” or the sunnier “Playing by Heart,” these stories aren’t interwoven. Garcia (son of famed novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is a filmmaker with his finger firmly on the pulse of real life, and his approach is subtle and evocative. Several actors do show up in multiple storylines, but re-appearances serve to deepen characters, not tie the film together.
“Nine Lives” might not have a conventional dramatic arc, but it works in its own right, and is dream material for actresses. It’s not surprising that several of the “Things You Can Tell” cast– Close, Carrillo, Hunter, Brenneman, Kathy Baker- have returned in very different roles.
Actors aren’t slighted either. “Things” may firmly be a chick flick, but this time the husbands, boyfriends, and fathers (played by, among others, Jason Isaacs, Aidan Quinn, and Joe Mantegna) are equally complex.
Grade: A
By Jenny S. Halper
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