Full of Grace
Throughout P.S. , a thoughtful, self-possessed film from director Dylan Kidd (Roger Dodger), there is a sense of the disaster it could have been. A 39-year-old woman, divorced and emotionally shuttered, meets an adorable young man who is a replica of her high school boyfriend — the one who painted her portrait, left her for her best friend and died in a car crash. This new boy not only looks like the one from high school but also paints like him, talks like him and is one letter short of sharing his name. The woman falls in love again — and gets a chance to right the wrongs of 20 years before.
It sounds like a cheap romantic fantasy contrived to make a chunk of change off single (or merely wistful) women pushing 40. In fact, P.S. is a character-driven drama, concerned more with its protagonist’s emotional life than with her romantic one, though it uses the latter as a way of getting at the former. Yes, the film skirts sentimentality, and once or twice it indulges, but for the most part it has other plans. You know what else it has? Laura Linney. Which is to say: This movie is not fucking around.
Linney (You Can Count on Me, Mystic River) plays Louise Harrington, the starched (and bitter) protagonist, with her usual genius for nuance. Louise is tightly composed, absent of any visible passion, though she works in the art department at Columbia University, presumably a locus of expression. Her ex-husband (Gabriel Byrne), also a professor, is a friend; early in the movie, as they discuss their 10 years of marriage, she calls him her “only friend.” It’s an interesting admission considering that Louise is frequently on the phone with her “best friend” Missy (Marcia Gay Harden), a tart-tongued mother and housewife languishing somewhere in the suburbs.
Louise’s life takes a sharp turn (inward) when she receives an application from F. Scott Feinstadt (Topher Grace), an aspiring artist whose admissions essay professes a desire to avoid a “just-add-water” life. At first, it’s not apparent why Louise invites the boy for an interview; all we see is a level of need rising in her and then emanating from her. She wears cleavage to the interview and hardly speaks; instead, she stares hungrily at the boy across her desk. Then she takes him home for a drink, and they have sex on the couch.
It’s a great move — for the film, if not for Louise. By getting the sex out of the way so early, P.S. can be about more than that and instead look into who Louise is. Also, the scene itself, played with little fanfare and no music, is fabulous. It’s impossible to tell whether either party enjoys it. Louise looks nearly rabid; F. Scott is simply stunned. When it’s over, anything can happen.
In time, we learn the reasons for her attraction to F. Scott, and we come to understand the extent of her pre-F. Scott trouble, just how stuck and how blind she had become. Most of this is handled with intelligence and grace, though the exchanges between Louise and Missy slip into an ill-fitting talk-show bitchiness.
The film wants to end happily, so it gives Louise and F. Scott a chance. F. Scott is full of light and energy, and Grace’s performance is delightful. But what the characters have is infatuation, and it can’t last. A braver movie would have followed Louise to an even deeper place, where she has to take her time awakening back to life, most likely alone.
There is still plenty to like about P.S. , including its smart humor and its surprising ability to absorb. Ten minutes after it starts, it ends — though your watch, strangely enough, has advanced nearly two hours.
