Soon after relocating from Texas to New York in a bid to make the big time, a 21-year-old actor enters into a turbulent relationship with a struggling singer/songwriter in writer/director Ethan Hawke's screen adaptation of his own debut novel. William (Mark Webber) is an aspiring actor with dreams of making it big. Upon arriving in New York City, William soon enters into a tenuous romance with Sarah (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a talented musician with a winning voice and keen songwriting skills.
Love is a fickle thing, though, and in the thriving world of young and talented artists, it isn't always enough to make a relationship last. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The movie is crisply shot and obviously heartfelt, but search elsewhere if you want the same honesty Hawke displayed as an actor in 1995's Before Sunrise and its 2004 sequel Before Sunset.
The main point I can extract from Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State is that even a peevish and self-centered young man is capable of feeling great anguish when his girlfriend dumps him.
Will the world be different, or their lives irrevocably changed, if they break up? I don't think so. Their tree falls in the forest, and nobody cares except the termites.
Breaking up is hard to do. So is making a movie about it. Ethan Hawke, in his adaptation of his own novel, doesn't try very hard. Or maybe he tries too hard.
Though there are some nutty and offbeat moments in The Hottest State, these young characters fail to generate any chemistry or 'heated state,' despite their tender years and simmering hormones.
Though there are some nutty and offbeat moments in The Hottest State, these young characters fail to generate any chemistry or 'heated state,' despite their tender years and simmering hormones.
Everything we see is tinted by a rose-colored self-fondness, down to the perfectly mussed bedheads, the unusually capacious apartments, the lousy bar music that's supposed to be really good.
The passionate Mexican interlude, the Shakespearean pleas to yonder windows, and the naive, earnest pillow talk all melt into one self-indulgent, faux-hipstery soup.
"The Hottest State" from writer/director Ethan Hawke, could have been fantastic. It is ultra-realistic, focusing on the anxieties, hopes and challenges of real people. Where other films invent absurd situations for dramatic effect, "The Hottest State" stays resolutely in tune with real life as it is lived for the vast
majority of Americans. I loved this about it. The problem is that through most of the film I found the characters insufferably boring and annoying. Being in their presence was at times torturous. It wasn't an interesting depiction of boring people. It was a boring depiction of boring people. It does come together well in the end, when one of the characters finally makes a change in his life. But the beginning and middle were so horrendous that I can't say the end is worth waiting for. Hawke (who also plays a supporting role) strikes me as the kind of filmmaker who has fantastic ideas but just can't turn them into good films.
September 9, 2007
William Dunmyer
Super Reviewer
The pacing is quite fractured and the dialogue doesn't always work perfectly, but I personally enjoyed this film to a great extent. Overall, it's a very well-written piece guided by subtle direction from Hawke and excellent performances from the entire cast. Sad, engaging and driven by a sense of rare honesty.
No quotes approved yet for The Hottest State. Logged in users can submit quotes.
Submit a Quote from 'The Hottest State'
A quote can be a single line from one character or a memorable dialog between several characters. Please make your quotes accurate. Quotes will be submitted for approval by the RT staff.
Example:
Luke: Alright. I'll give it a try. Yoda: No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
Top Critic
