LOVE LIZA (Todd Louiso, 2002) R

Reviewed: January 6, 2002

A compelling counterpoint to Morvern Callar, Love Liza takes an even grimmer look at the ramifications of a significant other's unexplained suicide. Philip Seymour Hoffman's central performance as widower Wilson is remarkable in how it never lets you pin it down; capable of detonation at any moment yet not always frazzled, it's a painful coalition of moods, a place where a smile is capable of following an outburst in quick succession, one liable to devour the other at the drop of a hat. Hoffman's achievement is investing his prototypical sad sack with such poignancy; Wilson is easy to pity, too easy to pity actually and that's a problem. Hoffman makes sure we're giving our sympathy sincerely and voluntarily without feeling as though we're being manipulated. This is no small feat, I assure you, since at first Love Liza had me worried it was gonna be Morvern Callar as directed by Meryl Streep's character in The Hours, a repetitive, relentlessly depressing exercise in navel-gazing. Soon, however, the movie wisely lets some joy into Wilson's gasoline-sniffing existence (in the rightly awkward form of remote control vehicles), and during an extended interlude with Wilson and Jack Kehler's (the Dude's neighbor in The Big Lebowski) character set at a weekend-long, outdoor racing tournament, I found myself half-wishing the movie would switch gears altogether and simply explore (in depth) this strange microcosmic portion of humanity. Soon a catalyst strips all of Wilson's happiness away from him again, a decision at first I thought cruelly ill-advised (ditto my feelings on the he-can't-open-his-wife's-suicide-note angle that shoots across the film; for most of the runtime I found myself wondering if we really need yet another reinforcement that a guy who can't stop getting high off gas fumes, quits his job and has virtually no real contact with the outside world isn't over his wife's death yet) but these elements, in conjunction with Love Liza's unflinchingly ambiguous last shot, ultimately carry unexpected grace.

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