Movie of the Week: Ruby Sparks

[jacey]

I admit that if the new Bond movie had been out this week we wouldn't have gone to see Ruby Sparks and that would have been a pity because it's probably one of the better movies of this year's crop. Intelligently written by its female lead, Zoe Kazan, it tells the story of a reclusive, somewhat neurotic young author whose circle of friends begins and ends with his brother (and perhaps his shrink). When barely out of school he wrote his best-seller, THE novel, possibly a great work of literature, but apart from a few short stories he's blocked from writing his second novel. At his shrink's request he puts fingers to typewriter keys and begins to write his dream of a young woman called Ruby Sparks. He obsesses about her, dreams of her and one day she appears in his house, just as she is in his manuscript. He thinks he's going nuts but then he realises others can see her as well.

But it seems as though he can continue writing her, whatever he writes becomes reality. If he writes that she speaks fluent French, she speaks fluent French. So will he be able to resist rewriting her if she does something he doesn't like? That's the big question, and the film answers it intelligently. It's bulled as a rom com, but that's not really a good pigeonhole for it. Don't go expecting a chick-flick with belly laughs.

Kudos to Paul Dano and Zoey Kazan for two affecting lead roles, particularly Paul Dano who put across the emotion of the movie without getting maudlin. I vaguely recognised him and had to look him up when I got home. He was (most recently for me) in Looper, but also in Cowboys and Aliens. He's a funny looking kid but has excellent acting chops. A name to watch out for, I think. Zoey Kazan is granddaughter of writer/director Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront etc.) and daughter of writer/producer/director Nicholas Kazan, so she appears to be following in the family footsteps behind the camera as well as being pretty good in front of it.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That sounds rather good.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I was surprised to find that it was. There was absolutely nothing on last Wednesday that we wanted to sit through, so today we plumped for this rather than miss two weeks in a row - and both enjoyed it very much.