Laurel Canyon: Review – Premiere.com

Posted on 03. May, 2010 by in Laurel Canyon: Press, Press

Premiere.com
Howard Karren

Stories about overprivileged, overeducated, sexually attractive white people in the United States are difficult to praise. Why should anyone care about these folks? They have what everyone else ought to have or wants. Lisa Cholodenko, the writer-director of the revelatory High Art, is apparently undaunted by this moral stance. Her second effort, Laurel Canyon, is a poshly bohemian dramedy of manners, which follows the sexual foibles of five characters-a psychiatrist fresh out of Harvard, played by Christian Bale; his fiancee, a brilliant, uptight doctoral candidate, played by Kate Beckinsale; the psychiatrist’s mother, a fiercely self-involved, bisexual record producer, played by Frances McDormand; the seductive lead singer of a rock band she’s producing, played by Alessandro Nivola; and a fellow doctor the psychiatrist befriends, played by the strikingly beautiful Natascha McElhone. The young shrink and his girlfriend have come to Laurel Canyon, an upscale neighborhood in the hills of Los Angeles, to stay at his mother’s house while he does his residency, not expecting her to be there. But she is, producing a record with Nivola’s band, and as a consequence, the young couple is quickly drawn into a web of temptation and, of course, betrayal. As a filmmaker, Cholodenko has an extraordinarily assured hand; the subtle and detailed touches with which she sets each scene force you to take her characters seriously, no matter how superficial and contrived their plight. And her ensemble of actors are breathtakingly good, except perhaps Beckinsale, whose character is a tad underwritten. Laurel Canyon is a bittersweet and thoroughly human film, and no matter how one might try, difficult to dismiss.

Laurel Canyon: Review – The New York Times

Posted on 03. May, 2010 by in Laurel Canyon: Press, Press

The New York Times
Stephen Holden

An Aging Hippie, Making Both Love and War

Leonine in T-shirt and jeans, her frizzy, blondish hair streaming below her shoulders, Frances McDormand in Laurel Canyon may be the ultimate screen embodiment of a recently evolved species: Rock ‘n’ Roll Woman of a Certain Age.

Her character, Jane Bentley, is a pot-smoking, Champagne-swilling, free-loving Los Angeles record producer pushing 50 whose walls are plastered with platinum and gold records. That Ms. McDormand is as comfortable and convincing as an aging rock sybarite as she was playing the worrywart mother of a teenage rock fan in Almost Famous is further evidence of her exceptional dramatic range. It’s encouraging to see this handsome, dimpled-chin actress, who at 45 does not fit the prototype of a pneumatic Hollywood babe, emit the sparks of a sultry-eyed screen siren.

Through much of the film, which opens today in New York, Jane is hard at work (and at play) completing an album with a British rock band whose members are a decade and a half younger than she. Jane, who has a history of sleeping with the musicians she produces, is seriously involved with the band’s lead singer, Ian (Alessandro Nivola), a sexual athlete with a sly smile and carnivorous eyes who relishes luring third parties into bed with them. Jane, who has loved women as well as men, doesn’t mind a bit.

As she sashays around her luxurious home (which houses her recording studio) in the rugged, woodsy Los Angeles nook known as Laurel Canyon, a composite image of the 70′s pop goddesses Joni Mitchell and Carole King comes to mind. The character may be more than a decade younger than those legends are today, but Ms. McDormand’s Jane is a dead-on personification of a proud, post-hippie roustabout who is not about to be anybody’s doormat. The hedonistic world through which she prowls is photographed with a sensual eye that portrays the neighborhood as an intoxicating lotus land whose resident voluptuaries greedily savor the delights of their little paradise.

Laurel Canyon was written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, whose finely observed 1998 film High Art starred Ally Sheedy as a high-strung, heroin-sniffing New York art photographer with resemblances to Nan Goldin. Even though her new movie shamelessly fudges the era (its folk-rock-flavored music feels more late 1970′s and early 80′s than today’s harder-edged hip-hop), it reconfirms the filmmaker’s talent as an acutely observant chronicler of upscale bohemian subcultures.

While celebrating the accomplishments of successful, creative women who live by their own rules, neither movie turns a blind eye to the downside of such autonomy. If Jane is smart, sexy, talented, rich and refreshingly honest, she can also be overbearing, arrogant and insensitive. How much longer she can remain a player in this youth-oriented culture is anybody’s guess, but time seems to be running out fast. Jane, by her own admission, was a neglectful mother to her now-grown son, Sam (Christian Bale), whose childhood wounds still smart, and beneath her bravado is an undercurrent of guilt.

The heart of the film is the generational clash between Jane and Sam (the grown-up product of a casual liaison), who brings his fiancee, Alex (Kate Beckinsale), home to stay in his mother’s house until the couple can find a place of their own. Jane had been planning to move to her beach house, but at the last minute gave it to a recently dumped boyfriend.

Sam and Alex are both graduates of Harvard Medical School pursuing different areas of medicine. Sam, an aspiring psychiatrist, takes a job in the mental ward of a Los Angeles hospital. Alex is completing a paper on the mating habits of the fruit fly. The same bitter conflicts between hip and square that inflamed the popular culture of the late 60′s and early 70′s are replayed in Laurel Canyon, but more gently, and with the roles reversed. As in the British comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, the square, hard-working younger generation looks askance at its elders’ careless self-indulgence.

Mr. Bale’s Sam is a tense, soft-spoken young man who keeps a tight lid on his seething rage, but when he blows, he goes ballistic. Deeply embarrassed by his mother as well as resentful of his bohemian childhood, he squirms with discomfort under her roof. Alex, however, finds herself inexorably drawn to the party swirling around her.

Each is led into temptation. Sam is avidly pursued by Sara (Natascha McElhone), a fellow doctor (from Israel), and in their scenes together, the sexual chemistry between them crackles. One evening, Alex, who has taken to reading Spin magazine and giving impromptu critiques at recording sessions, is coaxed by Ian and Jane to frisk with them in the swimming pool. Once in the water, she finds herself exchanging kisses with her future mother-in-law.

Having set up its domestic conflicts, the movie doesn’t know exactly where to go or how far, but when the inevitable emotional explosions erupt, the mutual recriminations carry a sharp sting.

Laurel Canyon is superbly acted, with the exception of Ms. Beckinsdale, whose tense, colorless Alex conveys no inner life. The movie is almost stolen by Mr. Nivola, whose Ian is a fascinating contradiction: an articulate, sensitive musician and a charming predator.

As recent films depicting Hollywood music people go, Laurel Canyon is several cuts above The Banger Sisters, with its synthetic groupie nostalgia. It is about equal to Allison Anders’s underappreciated Sugar Town, an acerbic dissection of music-business veterans and climbers that feels more contemporary than Laurel Canyon, which wears a heavy scent of leftover patchouli oil. But Laurel Canyon, unlike Sugar Town, is unabashedly fond of its characters. It doesn’t play generational favorites. It gives its earnest young doctors and rock ‘n’ roll renegades equal sympathy.

Laurel Canyon: Review – Hollywood Reporter

Posted on 03. May, 2010 by in Laurel Canyon: Press, Press

Hollywood Reporter.com
Kirk Honeycutt

This review was written for the festival screening of Laurel Canyon.

In Laurel Canyon, as she did in Almost Famous, Frances McDormand plays a mother who embarrasses the hell out of her kid in a story that takes place in the world of rock music. But what a difference these two roles make. Whereas in Almost Famous her mother fought with uncanny fervor to protect her young son from sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, in Laurel Canyon she plays a record producer deeply immersed in all three areas. Which causes her son, a Harvard Medical School graduate, to worry about even introducing his fiancee to Mom. He has good reason to worry.

A sexual drama with comic overtones, Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon is a witty film that takes fascinating turns yet contains an unfortunate I-can’t-make-up-my-mind-how-to-finish-this ending. The film should make a splash for Sony Pictures Classics later this year within the specialty venue and possibly beyond thanks to a pleasing rock soundtrack, sexy story lines and, above all else, McDormand.

The actress must fall in love with every character she plays. She sees their many faults — indeed she glories in them — but so lovingly opens up their lives to a viewer that you can’t help loving them along with her.

In this film, she plays Jane Bentley, a soul who can change directions on a dime if mood or whimsy or circumstances so dictate. She is an enthusiastic hedonist and hands-on record producer. Sam (Christian Bale), her son, having long ago given up on Mom, learns he must once more enter her orbit. He has received a residency at a neuropsychiatric institute in his hometown of Los Angeles. He returns with his fiancee, Alex (Kate Beckinsale), also a medical school grad, who is working on a dissertation on drosophila genomics.

He believes that Mom has lent her Laurel Canyon house to this happy couple while she will remain in her beach home. Then Sam drives up to discover that Mom has broken up with her lover, given him the beach house and moved back into her house/studio in the hills to cut a record with her latest band, including a new lover, singer-songwriter Ian McKnight (Alessandro Nivola), 17 years her junior. Oh, what fun this is going to be!

As days go by, Alex finds herself attracted to the bohemian work and lifestyle of Sam’s mother, while Sam becomes engrossed in his patients and work, especially a fellow resident named Sara (Natascha McElhone). Soon Alex is taking long breaks from her thesis to smoke dope in the studio or party at the Chateau Marmont with Mom and the gang. Meanwhile, Sam is drawn into long, soulful discussions with Sara, often in her car after she has driven him home.

Cholodenko’s five highly believable characters all start out as types, albeit likely ones, yet quickly take on colorations and resonances that deepen our understanding of who these people are. As with her previous film, High Art (1998), much of the drama stems from the confrontation of “normal” people with the hedonistic lifestyle of artists. Clearly, she is fascinated even as she bears witness to those aspects of such a lifestyle that disrupt true artistry. Cholodenko treats all her characters with balance and insight, not looking for good or bad or whatever else might create controversy but rather what makes people tick.

Her unwillingness to resolve the Alex-Sam-Sara triangle is irritating, though. And certain aspects of the characters’ back stories could be clearer. Even so, Laurel Canyon is an absorbing film about men and women and mothers and sons and how choices can forever alter relationships.

Laurel Canyon: Review – The Los Angeles Times

Posted on 03. May, 2010 by in Laurel Canyon: Press, Press

From the Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis

Different drummers in Laurel Canyon

The Los Angeles sun can make for very deep shadows, nowhere deeper it sometimes seems than in the movies. There are those directors like Robert Altman who take great pleasure in tossing their characters into these pools of dark, usually to drown. Not Lisa Cholodenko: In the young director’s new movie Laurel Canyon, the characters don’t ride out earthquakes or brave any of the other plagues that filmmakers are so fond of launching against us. For her and her characters, Los Angeles isn’t a curse or a benediction, a troubling state of mind or a vacuous lifestyle choice. It’s just home, shadows and all.

Cholodenko was raised in the Valley, and like many of us who drive through Laurel Canyon, she probably often wondered what went on beyond its embankments. (The traffic certainly gives you plenty of think time.) Over the years, residents such as Harry Houdini and Frank Zappa lent to the canyon’s mystique as a boho refuge, as did Joni Mitchell with her 1970 album “Ladies of the Canyon.”

In Jane (Frances McDormand), Cholodenko has created her own lady of the canyon, a legendary record producer whose shelves are lined with photographs of her hanging with Joni, Bruce and everyone who was anyone in the music business. Now in her early 40s, Jane is still going strong, mixing tracks with a hot young British band, whose lead singer Ian (Alessandro Nivola) is also sharing her bed.

Jane embodies a wealth of site-specific contradictions. She chugs vegetable juice and smokes like a chimney, recalling writer Jerry Stahl’s observation that here even addicts eat organic. More awkwardly, she plays earth mother to everyone save her son, Sam (Christian Bale), who, perhaps because he seems too old to be her kid, refers to Jane strictly (and dourly) by her first name. A medical student, Sam has moved back home for a summer job at a hospital. With his fiancee, Alex (Kate Beckinsale) in tow, he has arranged to live at the Laurel Canyon house while his mother moves into her Malibu retreat. Jane, meanwhile, has donated her ocean digs to a former boyfriend, a fact she forgets to tell Sam until he and Alex are at her door, clutching rollaway suitcases as tightly as they clench their jaws.

A psychological patchwork, Laurel Canyon tells the story of how Jane, Sam, Alex and Ian come together and fall apart, individually and together. Sam, who barely can contain his fury at his mother for a lifetime of unexplained injury, has become a physician in desperate need of self-healing. Alex, her hair primly upswept and her computer crammed with dreary data (she’s writing a dissertation on the reproductive life of fruit flies), betrays all the earmarks of a woman on the verge of an affair, a divorce or a prescription for antidepressants. As soon as the two move into Jane’s house, they start drifting apart. Sam loiters around a fellow resident (Natascha McElhone, brandishing an Israeli accent), while Alex starts dropping by Jane’s recording studio, ostensibly to give her opinion on the band’s new single.

In its milieu and parallel story lines, the film suggests a bantam Short Cuts, but for better and for worse, this is Altman without the razored edge. Cholodenko elicits appealing performances from her ensemble, but she never pushes their characters anywhere there isn’t an easy out. Sam and Alex are primed for change (they approach sex like engineers poring over blueprints), and Jane could easily rock their world if given a chance.

Unlike her son, she has followed her bliss, changing partners carelessly while staying true to her own self. Yet for all the story’s free-range anger, repression and resentment, there remains something overly polite and safe about these characters. With the pointed exception of Jane, they suffer from that cliched L.A. syndrome: They’re too nice for a dark side.

That’s too bad because there’s a lot that’s very fine about Laurel Canyon. There wasn’t a moment in the film that I didn’t enjoy, but neither was there anything that got my mind or heart racing. Cholodenko is clearly talented but it’s less clear whether she’s afraid to push harder or whether this is as far as she can go. When her first feature High Art was released, most of the attention centered on its star, Ally Sheedy, but the real revelation was off to the side, with Patricia Clarkson’s dyspeptic German addict. Cholodenko has a way with difficult women, and hands down the best part of Laurel Canyon is McDormand’s sexy, tough performance, which creates a terrific gravitational pull. On paper, Jane comes across somewhat blurry, but in the actress’ watchful eyes there are stories yet to be told. Maybe next time Cholodenko will tell them.

Laurel Canyon: Review – Film Journal International

Posted on 03. May, 2010 by in Laurel Canyon: Press, Press

Film Journal International
Erica Abeel

The energy of this steamy and entertaining film flows from a time-honored dramatic device: Uptight character comes under the influence of a freewheeler who causes Mr. Uptight’s world to go to hell. In this case, the tightly wound figure is expanded to a couple, and the catalyst that serves to unravel them is the guy’s mom, who’s one hot momma. Given the neat setup that keeps Laurel Canyon clicking along, it’s somewhat disconcerting, though, that the abundantly talented writer-director Lisa Cholodenko couldn’t come up with an ending.

Frances McDormand, light years away from Fargo‘s Marge Gundersen, plays Jane, the free-spirited mom who lives in Laurel Canyon, a West Coast Boho enclave receptive to alternative lifestyles. A veteran record producer, Jane is trying to come up with a hit single for Ian (Alessandro Nivola), her much younger pop-singer boyfriend. Into this weed-scented household walks her son Sam (Christian Bale) and fiancee Alex (Kate Beckinsale), both Harvard Medical School grads come west to complete their studies. Jane had promised to deliver the house vacant, but complications involving a previous husband have forced her to change plans. Quicker than Jane can roll a joint, prim Kate gets down with the resident hedonists, joining a kinky pile-on at the Chateau Marmont that includes Ian and Jane. Left adrift, Sam falls prey to the suave seductions of medical colleague Sara (Natascha McElhone.) In the scene closest to a resolution, Jane and Sam, who has fashioned his life as a rebuke to his mother, attempt to mend bridges.

Last out with High Art, Cholodenko has pulled finely calibrated ensemble work from her perfectly cast actors who, despite varied backgrounds, are on the same page and bring a rare authenticity to their interactions. Photographed in autumnal golds, McDormand snuggles into her role like a velour wrap, creating a middle-aged pleasure-seeker determined never to grow up. Bale sheds his American Psycho sadist to plumb new depths as a son who, beneath the carapace, remains a wounded boy. The question the movie leaves unanswered: Will he resist McElhone’s white-coated siren? The underappreciated Nivola, who apparently does his own singing, looks like a dissipated angel. Only Beckinsale appears curiously drab and small among these charisma-drenched actors.

One quibble: Med students with the physical attributes of Bale and McElhone severely strain credibility–McElhone’s hair upkeep alone would be incompatible with an all-nighter cracking the books. But if viewers can ride with the non-ending–literally, a submersion in the pool–Laurel Canyon should make quite a splash.