A woman haunted by the untimely death of her former fiancée attempts to ease her psychic suffering by marrying another man and living the idealistic suburban life in director Jason Ruscio's vivid existential drama. Laura (Petra Wright) was in her mid-twenties when her fiancée Chris (Kip Pardue) was stricken down by a taxi in the streets of Manhattan. Flash forward nine years and Laura has remarried and given birth to a child, yet the pain of her past prompts her to embark into a series of
promiscuous and self-destructive extramarital affairs. Having never truly dealt with the death of Chris, Laura seeks out the aid of a therapist as the memories come flooding back accompanied by a tidal wave of grief-stricken emotion. Her mind slowly consumed by tragedy and her fragile psyche finally shattered by her failed attempts to seek solace in the comforts of her past, Laura's affair with her husband's best friend Paul finds her harrowing journey careening to a dangerous and unpredictable end. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Ruscio would rather add forced narrative complications than get to the actual core of what he's tossing out there, the sacrifices made in the name of relationships, dreams dashed or discarded.
It casts an increasingly hypnotic spell, thanks in no small measure to Wright - a fearless actress (and the real-life wife of writer-director Ruscio) who brings this sometimes despicable, often heartbreaking character to life with every atom of her being.
The film hardly registers as an open-wound document of a spirit more lost than she cares to confront. Instead, Laura Smiles exists somewhere in the middle, frozen by its pretension and incapacity to engage.
Unlike many filmmakers who try to stake out the gray area between mundane reality and sleazy surreality, Ruscio maintains a successful balance throughout and gracefully brings the two together in a delicately ambiguous final scene.
The movie's muddy, overexposed look is tough on the eyes, but its unrelentingly bleak take on the land of supermarkets and car dealerships is not without its share of dark humor, and it thankfully eschews easy answers.
In "Laura Smiles," Laura(Petra Wright) seems to be the perfect housewife living in suburbia. She is married to Mark(Mark Derwin), a kind insurance executive, and mother to an eight-year old boy. But something is missing... Nine years before, she had been an actress in off-off-Broadway plays, engaged to a writer,
Chris(Kip Pardue), who had just completed his first novel. Then, tragedy struck... "Laura Smiles" is an intriguing movie about how the perfect life may not be perfect for everyone. The film's structure reflects how much the lead character is disconnected, as she lives her life partially in the past when she was happiest. In the present, Laura is sleepwalking, passing as happy to everyone around her.
July 29, 2007
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
In "Laura Smiles," Laura(Petra Wright) seems to be the perfect housewife living in suburbia. She is married to Mark(Mark Derwin), a kind insurance executive, and mother to an eight-year old boy. But something is missing... Nine years before, she had been an actress in off-off-Broadway plays, engaged to a writer,
Chris(Kip Pardue), who had just completed his first novel. Then, tragedy struck... "Laura Smiles" is an intriguing movie about how the perfect life may not be perfect for everyone. The film's structure reflects how much the lead character is disconnected, as she lives her life partially in the past when she was happiest. In the present, Laura is sleepwalking, passing as happy to everyone around her.
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