Boring

Better Late Then Never

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Finn Dodd (Winona Ryder) is soon to marry Sam (Dermot Mulroney). Only she has doubts. She has trouble finishing a thesis for her master's degree. She has doubts about everything. She asks "If you have to choose between marry a lover or marry a friend. Who would you choose?"The movie takes many flashbacks as it tells the stories of the various women's heart breaking pasts. It's a disjointed form of storytelling. I guess that's the quilt of stories being stitched together. It really disrupts the flow of the main Finn story. The relationship between all the characters in all the timelines can get quite confusing. The whole thing is a jigsaw puzzle of rambling stories. Quilts are patch works, but I would like a story to have better flow.Finn is a mess of neuroses. It's not a pretty character. All the doubts and all the confusion make it hard to root for her. At the end of the day, she has to decide and deal with the consequences. The pontificating on the matter just isn't that compelling. It's the dealing that makes for compelling movie watching. I spend most of the movie wishing Finn would move the story along quicker instead of talking about essentially the same thing over and over again. And quite frankly, I don't know how following a bird is anything more than Hollywood hokum.

I really liked this film, the same way I like the idea of someone in trouble (Finn) going to her country home and there finding a suitable distraction, until she will make her mind around her problems. That distraction was of course the stories of the magnificent women of her grand-mom's quilt making beehive.One thing I didn't like though in the film was how self absorbed and immature the leading character is. I found my self at the end caring more about the secondary characters than Finn! One point in the film that shows how Finn really is as a character is when Sophia Darling brings her the lost pages from her thesis. There, Finn is so typical and indifferent that instantly drove me away from her. This is the only scene in the film where Sophia actually wants to say something personal, to open up, but Finn is actually rude. It's like she's saying to her: "OK, old lady. Thank you for bringing me the pages and telling me I am a good writer. However, this doesn't mean I have to pay attention in whatever you have the urge to say. Actually, I already know your bloody story and I find it just pathetic. Now buzz off and let me be!" I don't have to say that from all the stories, of the "quilting beehive women", I was both drawn and saddened the most by the one of Sophia.Life played her such an unfair game: She wanted to became a diver and so she asked her beau to help her get out of that small town. But, as it usually happens, he got her pregnant instead and she had to get married and having to spend a lot of time home alone being a housewife. That totally killed her spirit and passion and left her a bitter old woman that blamed her husband for her life going wrong.Her husband (finally) realized that and made some efforts to get back together. He did that by building her a pond, in order to remind her her old free self. However, that ironically ended it all, since it was too painful for her to remember how she was (comparing to what she is). That was the saddest thing, to Sophia, since building a pond for someone who loved to dive was ironically sad and showed such lack of understanding, that it was almost disrespectful. And so they argued. She did try to make amends but it was too late. Her husband, partly because of disappointed and partly because of quilt, left her.And something last: If you wanna "watch" more stories about americal quilts that hide really fascinating stories, then you must read the books in the Shenandoah Album by Emilie Richards. There are 5 books in this collection, all best sellers...

Near the beginning of the movie, Finn (played by Winona Ryder) offers this rather drab and depressing observation: "love sometimes dies." Well, sure - and I suppose most of us have been present at its death at some point in our lives, but I don't know that I want to have to be in on the autopsy afterward. Personally, as obviously true as the above statement from Finn may be, I'll still take 1 Corinthians 13:8 - "love never fails." It sounds so much more hopeful! As for this movie, it was just a dismal portrayal of love, marriage - and men, who generally come across here as rather unlovable, adulterous and shallow twits.Much of the movie is told in flashbacks. Finn is a young college student writing a master's thesis who gets engaged and then promptly heads off to stay with her grandma and aunt and their friends for an entire summer while they make her wedding quilt. The movie revolves around the stories of the women's loves - and, for the most part, it ain't a happy story! They've all failed at love in one way or another (or, more usually, the men they loved failed them) and they end up getting poor Finn to the point of wanting to back out on her own wedding.From my perspective none of the performances here were particularly memorable (including Ryder's) and the characters not all that interesting or memorable. The movie ends with what appears to be some attempt at redemption, but you have to be able to stick with it long enough to get there, and then the redemption itself is a sort of qualified one as Finn ends her narration by essentially saying that she and her fiancé Sam might as well go through with this marriage thing because they have as much chance of succeeding as failing, and maybe their love will tip the scales ever so slightly on the "success" side of the scale. Isn't that heartwarming (or pathetic!) 2/10 (and I'm struggling to remember why I decided to go that high!)

Women's own film about love and relationships, commitment and infidelity. Jane Anderson's script (from Whitney Otto's novel) tells of student Finn's sumer holiday with her grandmother and great Aunt, where she carefully considers boyfriend Sam's marriage proposal. Here she learns of the lives and loves of the members of the quilting bee that her grandma is part of.Jocelyn Moorhouse takes this project, a personal passion, to heart. She directs with purpose, giving the film a her own special touch. "American Quilt" meanders along as it tells of each woman's past, while Moorhouse ties it all up with a common theme. The pic only loses its way at the end with a dreadfully concocted, sentimental finale.An ensemble cast deliver some enjoyable performances, led by the fresh, attractive Winona Ryder, and supported by Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, Kate Nelligan, Jean Simmons, Samantha Mathis, Lois Smith, Maya Angelou, Kate Capshaw, Melinda Dillon, Dermot Mulroney, Rip Torn, Derrick O'Connor and Loren Dean. Quite an assembly.Aussie director Moorhouse is backed up by compatriot editor Jill Bilcock ("Evil Angels"), who wields the knife astutely, while Janusz Kaminski ("Schindler's List") wields the camera with equal effect. Thomas Newman compliments the film with a pleasing score.Anderson and Moorhouse have focused the pic on the many choices women face, and the disappointments they have in relationships and matters of love. They fail to give the male players any depth, leaving them rather two dimensional. Story poses the question : How do we ever know if we've met the one person we should spend the rest of our lives with, or if we're ever meant to be with just one person at all? An answer though, is not provided, perhaps because, as this film seems to suggest, there is no one answer.Saturday, August 24, 1996 - Waverley Pinewood Cinema