p.s. (2004)

Brief: Louise Harrington (Laura Linney), who works for Admissions at the Columbia School of Fine Arts, happens upon an application from a young man, F. Scott Feinstadt (Topher Grace), who shares the name, lexicon, and voice of her deceased high school sweetheart. When she invites him in for an interview, she discovers that he also shares his face and his talent. Louise immediately embarks on a sexual relationship with F. Scott (as he is called, for reasons ridiculous). Her best friend, Missy (Marcia Gay Harden), appears to test this discovery of Louise's. At the same time, she deals with revelations from her ex-husband (Gabriel Byrne) and her recovering addict brother (Paul Rudd).

I feel like I am finally out from under the heap of uninspiring movies that has been plaguing me for some time now. It's not that I've stopped watching movies, but I have stopped consuming them with the same ferocious appetite that I used to, mostly because the movies I was seeing were just too dull to merit mentioning. I had to dive back into some of my old favourites (e.g. say anything) to keep from giving up entirely. Alas, I had already reviewed the ones I watched, so we were stuck in a state of reviewing limbo.

How quickly a trip to the Bytowne can change all of that! I watched two good movies this week-end, and enough of another to whet my appetite for a trip to Blockbuster.

Linney delivers another fantastic performance. It made me want to shout, "Give her the damn Oscar already!", although she strikes me as the kind of actress who doesn't worry about things like that. Sure, her performance here isn't as Oscar-worthy as, say, her work in 2000's You Can Count on Me, but I think she just deserves one by now. Linney can be so hard and brittle one minute, and her eyes can fill up with a long forgotten innocence the next. She gets me every time because, despite her tiny movie-star frame and stunning beauty, she always, above all, seems like a real woman, with real emotions and reactions.

Where has Grace been hiding? Under some forsaken sitcom rock? Let him out, casting agents! Another performance that made me want to shout - although, in this case, I wanted to shout, "Eat it, Kutcher!" (thanks, Em!) because Grace is just so much better. I think neither he nor director/writer Dylan Kidd put much thought into the idea that F. Scott might be using Louise to get into art school, which is a sub-plot or counter-plot that could have given his character more emotional weight. He was capable of much more depth than has been previously imagined, although his delivery was a little too sitcom-y at points. Even so, bonus points for the hotness of two different coloured eyes.

Marica Gay Harden. I had to use her whole name there to send that message across. What a fantastic talent she is. She can seem so emotional fragile in one movie (last year's glorious Mystic River), and here she is a towering giant of a woman. Missy isn't the best best friend, but you can quickly see what Louise sees in her.

Two things occurred to me when I saw this movie:

1) Gabriel Byrne is possibly the poor man's Sean Penn. At least he seemed that way to me in the scenes he shared with Linney (again, see Mystic River to understand where I am coming from).

2) Arm cuffs/wrist bands - or whatever you call them - are just the lazy costumer's way of indicating that the character is an agnsty/misunderstood artist/bad-ass. Witness Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me, Ryan on the o.c., or Jess on Gilmore Girls. I'm going to be watching very closely come Thursday to make sure that the o.c.'s Alex is sporting one. Honestly, though, I haven't thought of arm bands/wrist cuffs as anything short of mainstream for about four years now. Costume designers have got to get out sometime to see what the kids are wearing these days. Or just keep using leather jackets, à la James Dean. No one's on to that one yet.

Overall, as much as I enjoyed the movie while I watched it, it didn't stick with me longer than half an hour. Dylan Kidd's good, but he's not quite great yet. B+