Review: The Face of Love

 

Widowed Annette Bening meets an artist (Ed Harris) who she believes looks identical to her deceased husband and is drawn to him. Robin Williams plays Bening’s concerned long-time neighbour (and fellow widower), Amy Brenneman is Harris’ friendly ex.

 

A good cast nearly gets you through the lumps and bumps in this 2013 romantic drama/fantasy from director Arie Posin (“The Chumscrubber”) and co-writer Matthew McDuffie (“A Cool, Dry Place”). I didn’t even know the film existed until now, and now having seen the film I suppose I can understand why it flew under the radar despite the Oscar-calibre cast involved. For a while I was mostly on board with it in spite of one bit of unconvincing casting (which I’ll get to in a minute). However, after a while it starts to crumble and become too silly and contrived.

 

The idea is interesting and the combined efforts of Annette Bening and Ed Harris carry it a fairly long way, but the execution is ultimately wobbly. It’s capped off by a really lousy, seemingly incomplete and rushed conclusion. The film worked…until it didn’t. As for that one piece of unconvincing casting, it’s the one person I was most looking forward to seeing in the film: Robin Williams. The late, great Williams never quite convinces playing Bening’s clingy neighbour, it seems more like Robin Williams is Bening’s clingy neighbour instead of playing the fictional character. Also, it sometimes comes off like Williams was only available for a limited time and they never quite got around to filming all of his scenes. Something felt incomplete there.

 

Terrific performances by Annette Bening and Ed Harris are the chief assets of this lumpy romantic fantasy. For a while it’s quite enjoyable but eventually the wheels start falling off before the whole thing crashes. A frustrating near-miss at best.

 

Rating: C+

 

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