About midway through “She’s So Lovely” when the men in the white jackets come for Sean Penn’s character, Eddie, you think, “Wait, he’s insane?” His subsequent actions show that indeed he does have a screw plus several nuts and bolts loose, but the general loopiness on screen is so casual, so matter-of-fact that you just accept these characters and the world they inhabit at face value.
Scripted by the late John Cassavetes and directed by his son Nick (“Unhook the Stars”), “She’s So Lovely” is an offhanded, dizzy tale of uncompromising love in a wobbly world. Its main characters often can’t see or stand up straight, but they never lose sight of that one person who occupies their hearts.
The dilemma, at least in the second half of this idiosyncratically structured film, is that the love is divided among three people when there’s only enough for two. Maureen (Robin Wright Penn) has divorced Eddie while he was institutionalized and is living affluently in the suburbs with her second husband, Joey (John Travolta), a hot-tempered construction contractor. The couple is raising three children, including the eldest daughter fathered by Eddie.
When Eddie is released, he has little sense of how much time has passed. All his scattered brain knows is he wants Maureen back. Maureen, meanwhile, has never lost her feelings toward Eddie, and Joey isn’t about to let her return to him and her former booze-fueled, one-foot-from-the-gutter life.
If you know anything going into “She’s So Lovely,” it’s probably that it’s a love triangle rendered by three powerhouse actors; that’s been the logical marketing focus. But given the premise, the movie doesn’t go where you might expect.
Other filmmakers would have shown how the abandoned wife is wooed by and falls for another man, and then, when husband No. 1 returns to claim her heart, they’d play up her confusion and the poignancy of the second husband’s position. But John Cassavetes wasn’t that kind of string-pulling writer or director, and Nick stays true to his father’s emphasis on the unpredictable nature of his characters at the expense of traditional dramatic structure.
The first time you see Joey, Maureen’s been married to him for nine years, and they’ve settled into an uninspiring life. She looks refined and suburban, with brown hair offsetting her impossibly blue eyes.
When “She’s So Lovely” opens, Maureen has bleached-blond hair and dark roots that match the mascara and circles under her eyes, and she anxiously is awaiting Eddie’s return from an unexplained disappearance. With cigarette in hand, she insists she doesn’t smoke, and her similar protests about drinking result in her sharing whiskey and a dance with a burly man, Kiefer (James Gandolfini), in his room down the hall of their hotel.
He turns out to want more than just pleasant company, but when she emerges bruised and bloodied the next morning, her primary concern is what Eddie will do to Kiefer when he sees her. Eddie, when we finally meet him, at first seems an island of stability next to the manic Maureen, albeit one with a balmy poetic streak.
When she feeds him a bogus explanation of how her face got bruised, he complains, “That’s all I ever get: fables to cover foibles.” Later, he tells a pal at a bar, “You can’t see my obscurity.” But Eddie turns out to be a character who indignantly denies he’s a tough guy one second and starts pummeling someone the next.
The movie works as a series of contrasts and parallels: the grotesqueness of Maureen’s and Kiefer’s liquored-up dancing and slow-motion laughter compared with the sweetness of Maureen’s and Eddie’s ballroom twirl to Cole Porter’s “It’s De Lovely”; blond Maureen pining after brown-haired Eddie in the first half before newly blond Eddie pursues his now-brunet ex-wife in the second; the grim but lively city scenes followed by broader comedy amid suburban sterility.
Father and son Cassavetes have made interesting choices, and the price they pay is on the emotional-impact end. The extent of Eddie’s lid-flipping in the first half doesn’t prepare you for his institutionalization, and when he emerges, you don’t know what to make of him.
Penn, who won the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor prize for this portrayal, is always compelling and establishes Eddie’s passion for Maureen as his one constant. But Eddie remains essentially elusive, which perhaps is by design except that Maureen becomes harder to latch onto as well.
“She’s So Lovely” begins from Maureen’s perspective, and she’s the story’s (and title’s) focal point. Wright Penn, who’s married to Sean, effectively establishes Maureen’s wiggy passion from the start and makes sure you can see her old persona behind the suburban version’s eyes.
In a sense you see too much of the old Maureen in the new Maureen. After 10 years she has come full circle, and maybe the Cassavetes’ point is that her tremendous life shifts haven’t changed her. But some dramatic impact is missing, and you can’t help wonder where, for instance, her careless attitude toward her kids comes from.
Travolta, meanwhile, turns in a lively, foul-mouthed performance as Joey, who’s also a bit of a nut but remains firm about his own priorities: his kids, whom he swears at and offers beer, and Maureen. The supporting cast, led by Harry Dean Stanton and Debi Mazar as Eddie’s best friends, also manage to be grounded and somewhat screwy — just like the movie itself.
”SHE’S SO LOVELY”
(star) (star) (star)
Directed by Nick Cassavetes; written by John Cassavetes; photographed by Thierry Arbogast; edited by Petra Von Oelffen; production designed by David Wasco; music by Joseph Vitarelli; produced by Rene Cleitman. A Miramax release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:42. MPAA rating: R. Language, violence.
THE CAST
Eddie ………………. Sean Penn
Maureen …………….. Robin Wright Penn
Joey ……………….. John Travolta
Shorty ……………… Harry Dean Stanton
Georgie …………….. Debi Mazar
Miss Green ………….. Gena Rowlands
