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Laurel Canyon film review
LAUREL CANYON
Running time: 101 mins
Starring: Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale, Alessandro Nivola, Natasha McElhone
Named after an area of the Hollywood Hills once notorious for its role in LA's debauched music scene, Laurel Canyon takes a look at the complex relationship between a son and his record producer mother whose liberal lifestyle harkens back to the Canyon's golden era. Director Lisa Cholodenko created waves with her provocative lesbian drama High Art. Here the mood is rather less intense, but no less effecting, thanks in main to Frances McDormand's genuine portrayal of the free spirited Jane.
Laurel Canyon weaves an intricate web amongst its characters. At the centre are the freewheelin' Jane, who has always put music and a good time ahead of her parental duties, and her son Sam (Christian Bale), whose barely concealed resentment is reflected by his lofty moral stance and sober manner. Their embittered connection is the film's most compelling element, with Bale and McDormand conveying perfectly Sam and Jane's conflicted emotions.
Where Laurel Canyon is less successful is in its ability to fully develop the supporting characters and make them more than just plot devices. Some of this failing is the result of clunky acting, particularly on the part of Kate Beckinsale as Sam's girlfriend Alex, who lacks the subtlety and depth to make her metamorphosis convincing.
The entanglement begins when Sam and Alex arrive to stay at Jane's house in Laurel Canyon. Assuming they were to be alone, they are put out to discover the house filled with Jane and the angst ridden British rock band whose record she is producing. "We hadn't planned on a change of plan," offers Alex. Sam's humiliation is compounded by the fact that Jane is sleeping with the band's young singer Ian (Alessandro Novella).
As Sam heads off each day to his psychiatric internship, he leaves Alex to work on her dissertation about fruit flies. For the prim intellectual, finding herself in a rock %u2018n' roll den of iniquity provides an alluring distraction. Sam too has a distraction, in the form of fellow student Sara (Natasha McElhone), whose thinly sketched character consists of little more than a pretty face and an enigmatic smile.
Cholodenko, who also wrote the script, does well not to make moral judgements on the contrasting behaviour of mother and son. Sympathy goes to Sam, who once again is having his carefully ordered life thrown into chaos by the intervention of Jane, forcing him to cry out, "I'm trying to keep it together. I'm trying to make it right." But understanding is also reserved for Jane who, despite appearances to the contrary, is not immune to pangs of guilt. "I think the hardest thing I have to live with is knowing how much I disappointed you."
Like the street that bears its name Laurel Canyon is prone to meander, but there is much to admire along its route.
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