...
home | art & architecture | books & cds | dance | destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
...
home
| art & architecture | books & cds | dance
| destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
Actor Todd Louiso debuts as director with the strange,
haunting, and ultimately frustrating Love Liza. Starring the ever more brilliant
Philip Seymour Hoffman, the film follows Wilson Joel, a young man processing his grief
after the out-of-the-blue suicide of his wife. Wilson discovers a suicide note, but cannot
bring himself to open it. Whether he will do so or not and what the note might say
provides the slim (and only) narrative momentum in the film.
Rather, this is an episodic series of scenes in which Wilson, paralyzed
by his grief, acts out in various, largely childlike, ways. He starts sniffing
gasoline, putting himself into a constant fuzzy high as well as echoing the suicide of his
wife by carbon monoxide poisoning. The need for the gasoline leads him to the world of
remote controlled models (airplanes, boats) where he seems to get some diversion, though
he never actually participates himself. It's as if he were fixating on a new interest to
blot out the tragedy that has overwhelmed him. At a model boat competition, Wilson, on
impulse, takes a swim in the lake where the boats are being raced, breaking the rules and
interfering in the proceedings; he seems oblivious to even the simplest proprieties of
social behavior.
His mother-in-law, Mary Ann (Kathy Bates), is mourning as well, but the
two seem at odds rather than finding mutual support. There's a fine shot of Bates
reflected in a window that separates her from Hoffman, seen inside the glass; they see
each other but are kept divided by the transparent barrier. Bates wants him to open the
letter, but he refuses, fearful of what it might say. "I loved well!" he
protests to Bates, "I don't want a letter!"
Wilson sleeps on the floor, perhaps not wanting to return to the bed he
shared with his wife. He laughs hysterically at an office joke, long after everyone else
stops laughing. And he gets ever deeper into the gas, ever further from responsible or
even rational behavior. What comes from outside does nothing to lessen his pain. At dinner
with a couple of friends in a restaurant, the wife spontaneously starts weeping. He brings
a pot of flowers to his wife's grave, but the ground is uneven and the pot keeps falling
over. The glove compartment in his car won't close; like his mourning, it insists on
remaining open.
There is, ultimately, a dramatic but highly ambiguous closing to the
story. It could signify that Wilson has finally put the past behind him and is now ready
to start anew, but it takes the form of such inappropriate behavior that there is a
suggestion that he hasn't come out of it at all, that he is permanently damaged. There's
insight in that ambiguity, but the message on screen is more apt to confuse and frustrate
than enlighten. The image simply doesn't work both ways.
