This film takes the idea of The Summer of Love way too far, but not inthe way you might expect. Everybody seems to act out of compassion for
one another, even though they sometimes do "bad" things. The film
assumes that, given the opportunity, people will treat each other with
compassion, which explains why the Kosovar Albanians in my theater
attempted to urinate on the screen from the back row where NATO had
relocated them.
Director Tony Goldwyn and screenwriter Pamela Grey are obviously some
sick and twisted people. While in the Catskills in 1969, Pearl
Kantrowitz (Diane Lane) cheats on her husband, Marty (Liev Schreiber)
with the blouse man, Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen). Instead of siccing
a fleet of lawyers on Pearl and hacking Walker Jerome into little
pieces, Marty simply has an intense internal struggle with his emotions
(known to the layman as "brooding.")
Instead of bitch-slapping Pearl, Marty's mother-in-law, Lilian (Tovah
Feldshuh) provides sage wisdom. Instead of running away from home after
seeing her mother with another man, Pearl's daughter (Anna Paquin),
forgives her. And instead of laughing as young Daniel Kantrowitz (Bobby
Boriello) is stung by bees, Walker comes to his rescue.
The story isn't exactly what you'd call surprising either. Pearl goes up
to the Catskills and Marty goes back to his job as a TV repairman,
visiting periodically. Then Pearl comes across the only guy without a
wife and visible back hair and sleeps with him. That, of course, happens
just after Pearl has said something along the lines of "I feel as though
I'm missing something, being a married woman in the 1960s." She could
have run naked through Folsom prison with a sign on her back that said
"ravage me" and been about as subtle as to the impending plot twist.
