LEAD
CAST: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve
Carell, Elizabeth Shue DIRECTOR: David Frankel SCREENWRITER: Vanessa
Taylor PRODUCER:
Todd Black, Guymon Casady EDITOR: Steven
Weisberg MUSICAL
DIRECTOR: Theodoro Shapiro GENRE: Drama RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes CINEMATOGRAPHER: Florian
Ballhaus LOCATION:
USA DISTRIBUTOR: Columbia
Pictures
Technical Assessment: 4
Moral Assessment: 4
CINEMA rating:
V18
Every
morning, Kay (Meryl Streep) makes breakfast for her husband Arnold (Tommy Lee
Jones)—a strip of bacon, an egg, coffee.
Every morning, Arnold eats his breakfast with his face buried in a newspaper.
Then he goes off to work. Every
night after a quiet dinner, Kay washes the dishes while Arnold falls asleep
watching TV golf. She wakes him up, they
go to bed—in separate bedrooms. Once she
primps up and visits him in his bedroom in a clumsy attempt at marital closeness,
but he deflects her touches, saying he doesn’t feel well. Kay knows that something is missing, sorely
missing, in their 31-year-old marriage.
Not just the children, laughter, or fights, but something that used to
hold their marriage together: intimacy.
Tired
of getting impersonal anniversary gifts from Arnold—like a heater, a cable TV
subscription, and other unromantic items for the house—Kay signs up for an
Intensive Couples Counseling week with celebrity marriage counselor Dr. Bernie
Feld (Steve Carell) in Great Hope Springs, Maine. She pays $4,000 out of her own savings and
buys round trip plane tickets for two. Scoffing
at the idea as a waste of money, the penny-pinching Arnold quips “Cancel it!”
but Kay, resolute and hoping against hope—is going, with or without Arnold.
Hope Springs is NOT a
comedy. It is basically a two-actor drama,
and a compelling one though with a hint of the comic—no mean thanks to the
directorial skills of David Frankel, the same guy who helmed The Devil Wears Prada. The perfect pairing of Meryl Streep and
Tommy Lee Jones provides the spine of the movie. Streep
is, of course, an actress nonpareil, and here, again, she virtually becomes the
character she reprises. Lee Jones on the
other hand outperforms himself as he gives life to a character so untypical of
his other roles.
The
theme of Hope Springs, which Vanessa
Taylor’s script masterfully developed without reducing the film into soft porn,
is marital intimacy, or the near death of it, and how it is revived through therapy
evoking long gone memories of satisfying union.
The heart of the story is the counseling done behind closed doors with
the therapist delving into the sexual history of the dying marriage. Carell rightfully projects a no-nonsense, no
holds barred therapist here, stimulating and facilitating interaction between
the estranged couple. What is spoken and
spoken about in the therapist’s clinic, and what is done by the couple inside
the bedroom upon his instructions, are serious stuff that serves more to
instruct than to entertain. While Hope Springs attempts to include light
moments (sometimes bordering on the naughty) in order to appeal to a wider
audience, and MTRCB rates it R-13, CINEMA staunchly puts its foot down and
gives it a Strictly for Adults rating, for its theme and graphic sexual
content.
Couples
married “too long” may relate to Kay and Arnold’s situation, and vicariously learn
from the counseling they go through, thus CINEMA suggests you catch the movie,
which is a statement upholding marriage.
Its message is loud and unequivocal as delivered in Dr. Feld’s website
where he tells people who want to save their marriage, “It's not too late for anyone who truly wants it and is
willing to try.” The very title Hope Springs is more than the name of a
town in Maine, USA; it is also an echo of the saying “Hope springs eternal in
the human breast.”
